Missionaries: The Call

These are comments on Sabbath School Lesson 13, “Here Am I; Send Me:” The Prophet Isaiah.

For me, this final lesson raises more questions than it answers. The lesson primarily discusses “the call” Isaiah received (recorded in Isaiah 6:1-10). Here are some of questions that rise up in my mind:

• Are calls supposed to be dramatic like this?
• How does one know for sure that the call is from God, rather than say, wishful thinking, self-delusions, or foolishness?
• Are calls only given to few individuals?
• When one thinks/believes he/she has been called, should they make no effort to test, verify and validate before responding? (Back to the question, “How do you know it’s really God calling?”)
• How should one respond to someone who says they’ve “received a call?”
• Related to the previous question: What of people who use “the call” as an excuse to do shoddy work and then move on before the consequences catch up with them?
• Why does the Seventh-day Adventist denomination use “the call” almost exclusively to paid, denominational employment? A related question is, why are plain old job offers (because that’s what they are) termed “the call” anyway?

Here’s my taken on all this. You may or may not agree. But here it is…

Everyone who has chosen to follow Christ has received a call: it is to reflect Jesus’ methods and attitudes of self-sacrificing love to the world. No more and no less. In the great majority of cases (80%, 90%, 95%, 99%, 99.999%?) how one chooses to live out this call is not specifically selected by God.

I believe that the will of God for each person is quite broad. One can choose many different paths and still be heading in the right direction. I think that when Jesus’ saying about the narrow gate and path (Matthew 7:13-14; c.f., Luke 13:24) are interpreted to mean that God’s will is narrow and specific, I think that interpretation misses the context. The context (as I read around these texts) is that because self-sacrificing love is so contrary to sinful nature, many will find it difficult to find the gate and pathway into the way of self-sacrificing love (Christ) which is eternal life.

We should keep in mind that what is recorded in history, including the Bible, are typically the extraordinary cases, the one-in-a-million case. Of the millions of Hebrews and Jews through multiple millenia, only a handful are recorded as prophets.

For me the message this week is to live a life the reflects God’s love to the world. As long as I’m doing that, I’m following God’s call and will for my life. I shouldn’t worry that I have or haven’t received some dramatic “call” for a specific work in a specific place to a specific people. I am a missionary right where I am.

Next week begins a new set of lessons on the Atonement of Christ. I just received a book that I’m looking forward to reading and using as a resource for the next three months: Christus Victor: An Historical Study of The Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement by Gustaf Aulen.