Did God want me to be a pastor? Is that why I am one?
"I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president, and that's why he's there," said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president's press secretary, this past Wednesday.
Let's set aside for now the outrageous proposition that God would choose a cruel, unrepentant habitual liar and philanderer to be the president of any country. Not even the people of this country wanted him to be president: he lost the popular vote by 2,850,000 ballots. Instead, let us begin by considering whether God "calls" any of us to do or be anything at all.
There is a deeply rooted belief in most branches of Christianity, including the progressive one from which I dangle, that some people get "called" to ministry by God. This never made sense to me, even though I had experiences along my path to ministry that surely could fit the usual descriptions of such a "call". I had mystical moments in my childhood. Religion always mattered to me. I got goosebumps in calculus class at the university when the professor described the concept of the limit, in which the function gets arbitrarily close to the curve - it reminded me of getting arbitrarily close to God in mystical prayer. That was the moment when I decided to go to seminary. Did God call me to ministry that day? Or did I have an encounter with God, which then got me excited about studying theology, which then led to considering church ministry? My attraction to God certainly had something to do with my attraction to ministry. But a person can be just as attracted to God without feeling any urge to clerge.
I take full responsibility for my career choice. I am far too in awe of God to claim that divine intervention or preference had anything to do with it. I think this "call to ministry" business is hubris, contrary to the religion founded by that humble man, Jesus.
So having laid the whole idea of being "called by God" to rest, we can also put the words of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the amateur theologian in the White House, to bed as well. No, God did not ordain Donald Trump to be the president of the United States. Indeed, had he been more God-conscious, more attracted to Divine Love, Trump might well have made very different career choices. He might have realized that he was temperamentally and intellectually unsuited for political office of any kind, and instead put his efforts into philanthropy with the vast ill-gotten gains he inherited from his father - hopefully hiring people with more qualifications than his own to distribute it properly.
If God is Love, God does not "call" us to this or that line of employment, but rather attracts us to make highest and best use of whatever skills and proclivities we have been given, for the benefit of other beings. God does not call me like a boss offering me a job. God is not a headhunter, placing people in positions based on "his" mysterious preferences. God is the sacred compassionate relationship that happens in almost any profession when one person is truly of service to another.
As a college student earning my way through school, I worked for two years as a nursing assistant in a convalescent hospital. I was paid minimum wage for some of the most significant employment I've ever had in my life, helping elderly people through the last days of their lives and attending to them at death. Nobody ever told me I was "called" to that occupation. But surely it was as sacred a form of work as any I've done since.
Hmmm. Could two years of placing bedpans under patients in a nursing home do Donald Trump's soul some good? I doubt Sarah Huckabee Sanders would ask that question...
Website: MINDFULCHRISTIANITY.ORG Weblog: MUSINGS Follow me on twitter: @jtburklo
See the GUIDE to my articles and books
Sr Associate Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California