Religion
GILBERT M EI LA ENDE R "Friendship and Vocation"
LOVE
GILBERT MEILAENDER
"Friendship and Vocation"
In th is chapter from his book Friendship, the Christian ethicist Gilbert Meilaender sharpens and deepens a distinction between two kinds of love: love of work in service to many neighbors who have been given to us (vo- cation) and reciprocal love of a few, carefully chosen, human beings (friendship) . The chapter is not a developed case on behalf of the joys and importance of friendship, as Heschel's was for Sabbath or Wordsworth's for natu re , though Meilaender does point in that direction. His emphasis, rather, is on the theological turns that led to the devaluation of friendship in comparison to work. He argues that Protestant Christians, from John Calvin and William Perkins to Dorothy Sayers (whose essay, which Meilaender quotes, is included earlier in this chapter) are responsible for "elevat ing work to a central place in life." And he contrasts this Protestant Christian view of life to the Classical view of life in which work was re- garded as irksome and friendship was understood to be the primary source of human fulfillment. So we do not simply have two contrasting and conflicting loves here: we have two different views of what should give to a human life its meaning and significance.
Much of the middle portion of this selection reviews some of the mate rial from Part I and the vocabulary of vocation. Not ice, however, that Mei laender gives a friendly but critical account of this vocabulary, and he is especially careful to demonstrate how the Christian idea of vo- cation ha s been twisted to include notions of self-fulfillment that were
From Gilbert Meilaendcr, Friendship: A Study in Theological Etliics (Notre Dame: University of No- tre Dame Press , 1981), pp. 86-103.
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• • ,. MuSI My Job Be the Prirnory Source of My ldtnli ?
QUESTIOi'lS lJ . hen to it. And he so'.'1etimes sharpens ~he t~nsion bet\1/een
orig1~ally a fnendsh1p by offenng concrete case~ m ~h1eh devotion to vocation an~ devotion to our friends must result m pamfu1 conflicts. Do 0ur WO:'k a~at his examples here, especi ally the on~ taken from a novt1 you think t est that we should never m,x the worlds of by oorothySayers, sugg Work
and frie ndship? Ch ·stian world of vocation and the Classical World f Though th' find early in the essay by the figures of John Wesley
0
fnendship, person~ ie eem at t,mes inimical to one another, Meilaend anct Samuel 1ohnson, 1° :hem or at least to show how work and frien:
1 t tempts 10 r~on;i e ether in the same life . When he suggests that c~ •p might be enJoye reject Say,rs 's id,a that w, live in order to work:~~ 11ans might v,ry w,d to liv," seeking sourc,s of fulfillment elsewher, (
d"work 1nor ,r ' 1n ~:t::ship, for ,xample), has he abandoned the C~ ristian" i~eal of vocai. tion~ Or has he abandoned only what he calls the pagan ideal of vocai.
tion\ n our next chapttr, on the balanced li~e,_we will_ exa~ine several oth,r answers to the question of whether or not•~ IS possible i_n today's world to assum, multi ple responsibilities and to enJOY several different sourc,s of
fulfill mentin alif,thatrnatters.
There is an apocryphal tale of the chronic absentee colliery-worker who was asked by his exasperated manager why he worked only four shifts every week: ~because," replied the man, "I can't live on thrte..•
P. D. Anthony. The Ideology ofWorl
ln order to commit ourselves to the well-being of our neighbors, we do not necessarily have to become Franciscans. There is an important strand of Christian tradition which has believed that love can remain nonprcfcrenml and yet be fined fo r society through commitment to vocation. This bas, in particu1ar, been a Protestant ideal. In our vocation we serve (some) neigh- bors and find our place in a whole system of vocations used by God to art for (many) neighbors.
There can be little doubt that the idea of vocation has had enormous so- cial and cultural significance. I! suggests, in fact , an ideal of life very differ- ent from the classical ideal in which persons found fulfillment and wen: as- sured of their own worth through a life shared with friends. By contrast, 1ht
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G ILBERT MEILA ENDER • .. Friendship and Vocation"
idea of providence- when taken seriously in Christian thought - has sur ested the related idea of the ca lli ng. God calls each of us to some work m
ire and by his providential governance us_es our \:ork t_O ~ervc the needs of many neighbors. The classical ideal remams part1culanst1c and concerned, to a large degree, with self-fulfi\lme~t. : he Christian ideal suggests a more universalistic emphasis and, at least m its purer forms, seems to commend self-forgetfulness in service of one's vocation.
These contrasting styles of life mark more than a break between the two great cultures of the West, however; they suggest possible choices for any- one at any time. Boswell records that Dr. Johnson once said of John Wesley, the great Methodist preacher who logged thousands of miles on horseback wh ile traveling around England to preach,
John Wesley's conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is al- ways obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have out his talk, as I do.
It would, in the whole of our cultural history, be hard to find better para- digms of these two contrasting styles of life. No one took more pleasure in conversation among friends than Dr. Johnson. And few had a stronger sense of vocation than John Wesley (referred to by one biographer as "The Lord's Horseman1. And the tension between these two styles of life is noted in Dr. Johnson's comment. Wesley's conversation is good, but - driven as he is by the requirements of his calling - he can never just sit down, fold his legs, and have out his talk! Serious commitment to vocation means that one lives to work, and we should not forget that it is also possible to choose - as some have - to work to live, while seeking delight and fulfill ment in the bond of friendship.
Although the concept of a calling as one's work in life has been of great im- portance _in Chris.tian thought, we could not say that it is particularly pro- nounced m the Bible. The biblical writings concern themselves more with God's_ calling of a people for himself or of a person to exercise a special funcuon for the good of this people. Thus, Israel - and the new Israel - is c_alled as a people_ holy unto God, and Christians are given different gifts fit- 1t~g them ~or vanous tasks within the body of Christ. It is , therefore, some- thing gcnumely new when St. Paul writes , "let everyone lead the life which
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, , ,. Mus< My Job Be rh, Primary Source of My Identity? Q UESTION S
. ned to him, and in which has c~lled him" {I Corinthi. ihe Lord has ass~~ring the call to membersh1~ m Gods peopl~ with the caU ans ,-17)- con . 1 The impact of this passage, part1cularly in the 10 \\-Ork of a certain st · was enormous. Of it Kenneth Kirk has WTitt • hands of Luther and (a vm, en:
·call" and •calling" here obvious~ h~ve .. two meanings. The \\~rds ·call" to be a Christian. and the callmg (as we say}, or There 15 ~:anon, already being followed when the call to Christian. worldly a Q ite deliberately Paul places these secular conditions icy comes. · · · u _ this profession in which a man happens to be and ci":umst;nts onversion - on the same spiritual level as that at tht n_me _0 /E:ch is a "calr or ·calling" direct from God .. .. This convers•o~ :-c .: scetic . this Puritan who stands aloof from the ev- ·orient~l(i /5 ha world _ it is to him we owe the great Christian eryday h e ho t :st ordinary and secular employment can and should rrurh ihrdat tde ma mission directly laid upon us by the Omnipotem be rcga e as God himself.
It is true that chis view did not al~ays. prevail within Christendom be- fore the great Reformers articulated It with depth and po~er. Although Protestant polemic can sometimes o~erdo the contrast, medieval. Ca.tholi-- cism did think of a vocation primanly as call t~ the monas.uc life_
h'ch of course, leaves the majority of Chnsuans without a specifically re- ;gi~u; vocation. One can truthfully say, therefore, with Einar Billing that
ihe more fuUy a Catholic Christian develops his nature, the more he becomes a stranger to ordinary life, the more he departs from the men and women who move therein. But .. . the evangelical church does not seek to create religious vinuosos, but holy and saintly men andwomeninthecall.
For the Reformers, at least in theory, every Christ ian becomes a monk-ex- cept that, now, the serious Christian life is lived out within the world, and the whole of that life is offered up to God.
ii is common, since Weber explored the Protestant Ethic, to note that Calvin's concept of the calling is more aggressive and disciplined than is Lu- ther's. And 1hough here again one could overdo the contrast, there is truth in this much of Weber's thesis. The Calvinist, if not Calvin himself, did want to master the world and reshape it to the glory of God. This task requires unresting activity and a disciplined life. Thus, as one author aptly puts it,
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GILBERT M EILA ENDER • "friendship and Vocation "
"Puritans discovered a utopia of men without leisure." We _can_ see fairly clearly the ideas at work in the Protest~nt conce_pt of the_ calling I~ w~ ~on- sidcr William Perkins's discussion. Perkins, certainly a senous and J~d1c1o~s Puri tan divine, may wel l have been the most important Purilan tl11nker in England at the beginning of the sevcnte_cn1h .. centu?. . . .
A vocation or calling is, Perkins wn1es, a certain kind of life, ordai~ed and imposed on man by God.for the common good.~ ~at is, _in g~od scholastic fash- ion we can say that the effic ient cause of ones calling 1s God and the ~n~l cause is the common or public good. Each of these is important fo r Pcrkms s discussion. A calling implies a Caller - that is, God. And Pe rkins uses two metaphors to relate God as efficient cause to 1he system of human callings: a military and a mechanical metaphor. In an army camp, Perkins notes, the genera l appoints each man 10 his particular place, in which he is to remain against the enemy. And if each man fulfills his appointed cask fait hfully, the army will function well. Even so, Perkins suggests, "it is in humane societies: God the Generall, appointing to every man his particular calling .. . . " (It is worlh noting in passing that, while military modes of organization may of- ten be necessary in human life, few of us regard it as the most desirable way to live. Such organization may value insufficiently the distinctive character- istics of different persons.)
Perkins's other metaphor is mechanical. "Againe, in a clocke, made by the art and handy-worke of man, the re be many wheeles, and everyone hath his several! motion, some turne th is way, some that way, some goe softly, some apace: and they are all ordered by the motion of the watch." And Perkins finds a "notable resemblance" between this and the way in which God, in his specia l providence, allots to every person a particular calling. Well-oiled parts of a mechanism - that, it is not unfair to say, is what hu- man beings become in such a system of vocat ions.
So much for the efficient cause. What of the fi nal cause of our callings? The end of this system of vocations is the common good. Service in one's ca lling, if undertaken seriously and fait hfully, will benefit others. One can be confident of that because God - the greal General or, as we prefer, Clock~aker - has so arranged the system of callings with the welfare of human ny at hea rt. We could, of course, interpret this in a kind of laissa-faire manne~: Everyone lends to his own knitting and God, like an invisible hand, secs to 1'. Lhat the system of callings fits toge1 her. But Perkins does not intend ~s to thmk of voca1ions in that way. Indeed, he expliciLly rejects as \vicked . that com~on saying, faery man for himselfe, and God for us all." We are to look, 10 our callings, not to our own interests bu1 to the common good. It is, of course. true Lhat God could care for human beings simply through an im-
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QUE STIONS • 2. Musr My job Be 1he Primary Source of My Identity?
mediare e.'tercise of his power, but he chooses to work mediately. He chooses ·that men should be his instruments, for the good of one another.· It is in service of this end that we "joyne . our callings together," What we sec very dearly here is the universalistic impulse built inro this Christian undcr- sranding of vocation. Though any individual's vocation will , of course, be limited in focus. rhe system of callings as a whole - under the providential go\•ernance of God - serves the needs of many neighbors.
It is this universalistic impulse which permirs a system of vocations to place our works of love in a more universally other-regarding context while still allowing special attachment to certain casks and to needs of certain peo- ple. Bur again, this is not to suggest that individuals can settle contentedly into lheir routine tasks. assuming that God will care for distant neighbors. Einar Billing has suggested that "the call constantly has to st ruggle against two adversaries: stereotyped workmanship and unresponsible idealism." On the one hand, the person called by God must rigorously restrict his ef- forts to the actual task appointed by God. If this is not done, no one's needs are really served. Ar the same time, however, one must remain open to pos- sibilities for ·an infinite expansion of our work." God's call may, after all, lead in new directions, and "we must be prepared for each new assignment he may have for us.· Thus, the universalistic impulse has a place directly within the life of each individual called; its place lies in the openness to pos- sibilities for infini te expansion. But that is, I think, only a qualification, even if an im ponant one. Universality is, in the main, a feature not of any panic- ular vocation but of the whole system of vocations.
The consequences of this understanding of vocation are of great signifi - cance. To begin with, work is elevated co a central place in life. It is serious business, since, after all. we are called 10 our work by God and used by him to serve the needs of our fellows. Perk.ins, for example, makes this point at great length. The chief enemies of the calling are idleness and slo1h , which Perk.ins, in all the seriousness with which an ea rlier age could invest such terms. calls ·damnable sinnes.~ Indeed, to make his point Perkins uses a scriptural reference which was a Puritan favorite: MThe servant that had re- ceived but one talent. is called an evillservant, because he was slouthfu ll in the use ofii.-we need only remember John Wesley, a man never ar leisure to have out his talk, to understand what serious business a vocation could be- come. Such a calling !eaves little place for self-indulgence wi1hin life. We may simply note, without in any way suggesting tha1 folding one's legs and having out one's talk is unwonhy, that wholeheaned commitment 10 our call ing may leave little time for such pleasures. The inevitable result is that deep personal relationships like friendship, without precisely being deni-
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gratcd, become harder and harder to sus1ain. They are not so much criti- cized as they arc squeezed out of life. Personal significance is found in one's calling - or it is 001 found at all.
Not only is little place left in life for the apparent self-indulgence of a bond like friendship, but something begins to happen to the work one does. as well. Whatever inadequacies Weber's thesis may conta in, it is not hard to see with him that the idea of a system of call ings is related 10 the idea of divi- sion of labor. At the same time that the worker is called upon to fi nd per- sonal significance in his work - it is, after all, God's call - the work itself becomes increasingly impersonal and subject to rational economic calcu la- tion. The worker is a soldier in the great army of which God is General. or a part in the machine constructed by God the Clockmaker. Each person should carry out faithfu lly and seriously his or her funct ion in the system of callings. And one's place in that system is determined not by personal bonds li ke friendship but by considerations of efficiency and fairness. Devotion to the task at hand becomes of supreme importance.
Quite often, perhaps because we prefer not to th ink about it , we do not appreciate what commitment to a voca1ion really requires, how much like an overriding religious commitment it can be. Dorothy Sayers has illus- trated this point bri lliantly in Gaudy Night. The mystery which needs solving in this story results from a case of academic dishonesty. Sayers·s plot re- volves around a women's college at Oxford - a college which is sudden ly subjected to various attacks on property and persons. The attacks, i i is fi- nally discovered, have been made by Annie, who works at the college. Years before these events An nie's husband had been driven from academic life be- cause Miss de Vine - now teaching at Shrewsbury College where Annie works - discovered that he had suppressed evidence which would have disproven his thesis. Interes tingly, one of Annie's acts of violence involved defacing a novel called The Search Mat the exact point where the author up- holds, or appears for the moment to uphold. the doClrine that loyalty to the abs1ract truth must over-ride all persona l considera1ions.~ And it was, of course, precisely such conunitmen l to the truth , understood as integ ral 10 her vocation, which had led Miss de Vine to expose Annie's husband. At one point in 1hc story Miss de Vine, talking with Ha rriet, discusses her own view of what vocational commitment requires. She and Ha rriet agree that if we And a subject in which we're content with second-rate work, that cannot be where our commitment really lies.
"No," said Miss de Vine. "lf you are once sure what you do want, you And that everything else goes down before it like grass under a
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Q UESTIONS • 2. Mu.sr My Job Be rhe Primary Source of My Identir:y?
roller - alt other interests, your own and other people's. Miss Lydgatc wo uldn't like my saying that, but it's as true of her as of any- body else. She's the kindest soul in the world, in things she's indiffer- ent abou t. like the peculations of Jukes. But she hasn 't the s ligh test mercy o n the prosodical theories of Mr. Elkbouom. She wouldn't countenance those to save Mr. Elkbottom from hanging. She'd say she couldn't. And she couldn't, of course. If she actually saw Mr. Elkbo uom writhing in humiliation. she'd be sorry. but she wouldn't al ter a paragraph. That would be treason. One can't be pitiful where o ne's own job is concerned. You'd He cheerfully, I expect, about any- thing except - whatr
·oh. anything!· said Harriet, laughing. ·Except saying that som e- body's beastly book is good when it isn't. I can't do that. It makes me a lot of enemies. but I can't do it.•
· No, one can·t; said Miss de Vine. · However painful it is, there's always one thing one has to deal with sincere1y, if there's any root to o ne's mind at all. I ough1 to know. from my own ex perience. O f course, the one thing may be an emotional thing; I don't say it mayn't. One may comm it all the sins in the calendar. and still be faithful and ho nest towards one person. If so, then that one person is probably one·s appointed job. I'm not de.spising that kind of loya lty; it doesn't happen to be mine. that is all .-
dearly, Miss de Vine is a woman who knows what an overriding vocatio na l com mitment means and the way in which it may m ake purely personal con- cerns secondary. One must simply get on with the job - a nd getting o n with it may leave no roo m even for pity. much less for friendship. Miss de Vine does grant that lhis kind of commitment might be g iven not to a voca- tion but to another person (as Ann ie gave it to her husba nd). She does no t, she says. despise that ki nd of perso nal loyally. Harriet presses th e point.
"Then you·re all fo r the imperso nal job?• · 1 am: sa id Miss de Vine. · But you say you don't despise those who make som e other per-
son their job?~ "Far from despising them: said Miss de Vine," / think they are
dangerous."
In the context of the sto ry her words are prophetic. since Annie - whose overriding commitment is one o f loyalt y to a person - is indeed
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GI LBERT M EILA EN OER • ,.Frit ndship and Vooirion w
dangerous. More to the point, though, such persons are dangero us because their commitment is so partial. so preferent ial. Commi1ment to a vocat io n is not like that. The vocation serves many people's needs; God sees to that . But the worker himself shows no particular preference: h is co m m itment is to the work. Miss de Vine is, I think, correct to suggest thal such comm itment may be less dangerous than Annie's. But it exacLS a price, and Ha rriet is not mistaken to suggest that it is Mimpersonal." Humanity has been greatly en- riched by the Protes tant concept of a system o f callings in which each fi nds his or her place. Whether individual lives have been enriched by it is an- other, and harder, question.
II
·oead matter leaves the factory ennobled and transformed, where men arc corrupted and degraded," wrote Pius XI. And it m ay be that the Christian concept of vocation has fostered that corruption: at the very least. it can cer- 1ainlyobscu re it. We no ted above that the concept o f the calling could invest work with the dimension of personal significance while at the same tim e turning work into an impersonal task and possibly (as a result o f d ivision o f labor) a mindless task. In such circumstances, the affirmation that we ca n find personal significance in o ur work begins to sound a bit shrill - as if. just possibly, we were trying to convince ourselves.
To regard work as a calling is to suggest that we live to work, that o ur work is of central sig nificance for o ur person. Still more, the calling g ives to work a religious s ignificance which it is not likely to acquire in any o ther way. Thus, Dorothy Sayers could suggest tha1 work expresses so mething es- sential in human nature; for it is a natural function of human beings w ho arc made in the image of their Creator. The worker gives fu ll exp ression to an essential fearnre of o ur shared human natu re. "His satisfaction com es , in the godli ke manner, from looking upon what He has made and finding it very good." Sayers was no foo l, of course, and she realized that it is not easy to say this about the work many, probably most, people spend their lives do- ing. But 10 realize that, and nevertheless keep o n em phasizing the s ign ifi- cance of work, is to risk obscuri ng something important . For the Greeks , friendship was clearly impor1ant for self~fu lfillm enl. "No one," writes Aris- totle, "would choose to live wit hout fri ends, even ifh e had all other goods.H In comi ng to know 1he friend as "another self," o ne came to know o neself as well and acquired a sense of o ne's pe rsonal significance. To suggesl that wc live to work - and to cloak this in the relig ious garb of the calling - is to
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Q UEST ION S • 2. Must My Job Be the Primary Source of My ldenrity?
try m have work play a similar role in our lives. It is to make work as central in our sense of who we are as friendship was for the Greeks .
It is crucial to see that when we take this step we have really distorted the significance of the calling as it was understood and developed by early Protestants like Perkins. The point of the calling was, quite simply, tha1 it was appointed by God to serve neighbors. If along the way some self- fulfillment came as well, there was nothing wrong with that, but it was hardly the point of the calling. Our modern notion - into which even so in- dependent a thinker as Sayers could be lured - that the point of work is to give meaning, purpose, and fu lfillment to life is a degradation of the calling. It is a degradation against which we should have been guarded by both our c.-cperience and our theological tradition.
Our experience should surely have taught us that, although some peo- ple seem to find their work satisfyi ng in itself, it is equally true that "work, for most people, has always been ugly, crippling, and dangerous.~ We may in good conscience recommend such work as service to the neighbor or even as an instrument of spiritual discipline, but it ought be cloaked in no other religious garb. When the system of vocations as we experience it to- day is described in terms which make work the locus of self-fulfi llment, Christian eth ic.sought to objeCI - on the empirical ground that this is fa r from true, and on the theological ground that vocation ought not make self-fulfillment central. When work as we know it emerges as the dominant idea in our lives -when we identify ourselves to others in 1erms of what we do for a living, work for which we are paid - and when we glorify such work in terms of self-fulfillment, it is time for Christian ethics to speak a good word fo r working simply in order 10 live. Perhaps we need to suggest today that it is quite permissible, even appropriate, simply to work in o rder to live and to seek one·s fulfillmen1 elsewhere - in personal bonds like friendship, for example.
Such a suggestion is li kely to mee1 with disapproval from every side, and this disapproval is likely to use 1hat magic word ~aliena1ion. ~ Put most simply, ·alienation means chat the worker has little sense of personal invcs1- men1 in his or her work. We work at one 1hi ng - live for another. The alien- ated worker, we are told, understands his work only instrumentally - as a means to having the wherewithal and the opport unity to pursue other ends and values. And, the argument con tinues, such an alienated worker - one who works only IO live - can scarcely live a full y human existence. Self- fulfillment is 1mposs1ble in such circu mstances. We are by now so accus- tomed to taking this purported fact of alienalion fo r granted chat it comes as something of a shock to be 1old, as P. D. Ant hony has recently argued, 1hat
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GI LBE RT MEIL AEN D ER • · Friendship and Vocation"
· man can be regarded as aliena1ed from his work only when he has been subjected to an ideology which requires him to be devoted 10 it." Yet, An- ihony is quite correct. Alienation becomes possible only when , first, work has been given central place in human li fe , and, second, it is assumed that we arc to gain a sense of personal fulfl llmcnt from our work. The idea of the calling contributed to the first of these; degradation of that idea to 1he sec- ond. The end of this road becomes apparenl in Marxist thought, where alienation has been such a central concept. According to Marx , huma n be- ings ·begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce thei r means of subsistence.w The human being is a worker - and once that is made central, alienation becomes a possibili1y, indeed, a likel i- hood. As the place and importance of work in human life are exaggera1cd. the undesirable charac1cris1ics of work become more glaring and objection- able. It is possible to be alienated from our work only if we fi rsl imagine that we were to find in it a high degree of personal fulfillment . Whatever its de- fec ts, it is one of the virtues of capitalism that it must allow people simply to work for money and seek fulfillmcm elsewhere. Indeed, we might say with Anthony 1hat Mcapitalism represents an imperfect stage in development to- wards the absolute transcendency of economic values and an associat ed ide- ology of work, the fullest develop men I of which is represented in Marxism.H
If our experience should have warned us agai ns1 making work an essen- tial feature of human nature and the locus of self-fulfi llment, so ought our theological tradition . I have already noted that the idea of 1hc calling, in its pure form , had liule to do with achieving personal fulfillment . For Lu ther and Calvin one worked in order not to become a burden to 01hcrs and be- cause God had appointed for one this part icular calling as service to one's neighbors. Even with those qualifications. however, it remains true that the calling may have given work grea1er centrality in life than it should have, and ii is not surprising that coupled with exhortations to fait hfulness in onc·s calling were vigorous auacks on idleness and begging. And in the modern world, work has certainly begun to have the starns of an idol. In such circumstances we need to reassert other aspects o f our theological tra- di tion. Karl Barth, arguing that huma n beings, for the most part, work to live ra1hcr than live to work , directed a much needed polemic agai nsl the idol of work.
It is of a piece wi1h 1he rather feverish modern overest imation of work and of the process of production that particularly at the climax of the 19 th century, and even more so in our own, it should be thought essential to man , or more precisely to the true natu re of
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Q UESTI ONS • 1. i\.fost My Job Be the Prima1y Source of My ldentiry?
man. 10 have a vocation in this sense. On such a view it is forgotten that there are children and the sick and elderly and others for whom \'OCJ.tion in this sense can be only the object either of expcclation and preparation or of recollection. It is also fo rgotten that there are the unemployed , though these are ce rtai nly not without a vocation . Finally. it is forgotten that there arc innumerable active women who do not have this kind of vocation.
It is worth recalling that it was possible fo r biblical writers to speak of the promise of God for his people as resr. ·so then , there remains a sabbath rest fo r the people of God; fo r whoever enters God's rest also ceases from his la- bors as God did from his" (Hebrews 4:9f.). And , indeed. that sabbath rest, as it even now recurs in the weekly cycle of Christian life, is already testimony to the fact that work offers no fi nal fulfillment for human existence.
This is what we ought to have learned and what Christian ethics should call to mind: that wo rk is not an essential feature of a human life, that the point of work is not our own ful fi llment but service to others, that work has its limilS and need not always make it impossible for us to fold our legs and have out our talk. The proper tone - wh ich docs not idoli ze work but which grants its necessi ty - was captured qu ite well by Calvin when he wrote of the calling: ·each man will bear and swallow the discomforts, vexa- tions, weariness. and anxieties in his way of life, when he has been per- suaded that the burden was laid upon him by God .~
Ill
The Christia n concept of vocation becomes degraded whenever it is seen primarily as a source of self-ful fillment. In a wo rld wh ich thin ks of work in that way there would seem to be good reason to prefer the bo nd of frie nd- ship to work ; fo r, though the self is fu lfil led in frie ndship, the bo nd is recip- rocal. and others are truly loved for their own sakes. And even if work is un- de rstood properly and the calling seen only as a God-appointed means of serving the neighbor, there should be li mits to what the calling can ask of us. hen if a system of call ings has a universalistic im pulse, the final respon- sibility for meeung those un iversal needs rests with God, who structu res this system of cal li ngs. Faithfulness in ou r vocation, even fai thf ulncss which is sensitive to th e da nger of "ste reotyped wo rkma nship~ and alert to the poss1b1ht1es for "mfinite expansion" of the task, docs not mea n unlimited re- sponsibilit y. The ca lling is a way of recognizi ng the legitimate cla ims of dis-
G ILBERT MEIL AEN D ER • "Friendship and Vocation"
tant neig hbors without imagining that any of us is responsible for meeting all of them and without driving out of life any place for special. preferential bonds of love like friendship. In th is way. and unli ke the Franciscan love wh ich breaks through all normal bonds of life, the co ncept of the calli ng makes it possible for love to be universal yet Mfitted fo r society.M
We should not imagine, however. that the fit can ever be perfect - that the claims of fr iendship and the claims of vocation can be perfectly recon- ci led in this life. There arc several reasons why this is not possible, som e grounded in sociological observations abo ut modern Wes te rn societies, others grounded more deeply in the structu re of Christi an theology. Even if our affirmat ion of vocat ion is a chastened one and ou r app reciation of the place of friendship cau tious, we will find that a life which docs ju stice to the claims of each is not easy to live.
A world in which vocation has become central must be a world in which preferential bonds like friendship become increasingly remote fro m large stretches of our life. We do not hire and fi re people o n the bas is of friendship; indeed. to do so strikes many of us as mo re than a little suspect. Thus, in the world of vocation as in that of politics , we purchase fairness at the price of impersonality. Further. as Miss de Vine realized. serious com- mitment to a vocation may leave linle time fo r personal concerns; the task has its own built-in necessities and momentum. More impo rt an t still m ay be the fact that many vocations in our world require m obility. We m ay have to move at any time. And ce rt ainly any advancement in our work - ad- vancement which may well put us in a position to serve more neighbors - will often require change of location. The result is predictable. MDeep per- sonal bonds arc discouraged by the knowledge of transciencc," and we learn to keep our commitments tentative and provisional. One does not have to be concerned primarily with pc~ onal advancemen t to be affected in this way. \Ve need only be seriously committed to our God-appointed task and ope n to the possibilities for Min finit e expansion" of that task. The circle soon becomes a vicious one: for those who arc enticed by vocational necessit ies to keep thei r personal co mmitments tentative become increasingly isolated and increasingly tempted to try to ·· live to work." In such a world , as William May has percept ively noted , "the Bell Telephone Co mpa ny and the Hall mark ca rd indusiry g row ric h on the conscience o f Americ ans uneasy about their overex tend ed personal loyalties ."
Thus, the tensio n between the clai ms of vocation and fr iendship is partly a result of certain characteristics o f a society like o urs, o ne which has been organiu d increasingly aro und the hub of vocat ion . But the roots o f the difficulty go considerably deeper. We may disce rn 1his in a paradox
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QUESTIONS • 1. Must My Job Bt rht Primary Source of 1\.fy Identity?
which St. Anselm saw in the divi ne will. Anselm distinguished a di vine dispo- sirion from a divi ne disrribuiion. The divine disposition requires tha1 we go where God wills. that we be obedient to his disposition, even if ii should re- quire separation from friends. At the same time, however. the divine distri- bution bestows the gift of friendship in our lives. This paradox, wh ich Anselm fi nds in his own experience. is one of the centra l problems of the Christian life. Earthly affections like friendship are bestowed by the Creator and no fu lly human life can do without them; yet that same God may lay upon us a task wh ich makes the enjoyment of such attachmenis difficult or impossible. -The cause of God," Adele Fiske writes, "may o ften run contrary to human affection ... . Anselm says rather piteously: 'do not love me less because God does his will in me.'"
God gives both the eanh ly bond of friendship, wh ich enriches life, and the calling, which serves the neighbor. Theories which rest content in pref- eremial loves o r, ahernarively, which glorify the calling above all else fai l to apprecia te the paradox of the divine will which Anselm discerned . The ten- sion between bonds of particular love and a love which is open to every neighbor (in the calling) cannot be overcome.by any theory, however int ri- cate. Our thinking can only warn agai nsl certain mistakes, certain wrong turnings which we might take. But this central problem of 1he Christian life mus1 be lived , not just thought. This much, if Adele Fiske is correct, Anselm d early reali zed. "Sr. Anselm soberly faces the fact that God's wi ll often seems to work agai nst itself, destroying the g ift it has given. This problem is solved ambulando. or it is no t solved; he suffers and admits it, but does not try 10 escape by turning away from human love 10 love 'God alone'." The tension bet ween particular bonds and a more universally open love - of which the tension bet ween friendship and vocation is an instance - cannot be eliminated fo r creatures whose lives arc ma rked by the part icularit ies of 1i mc and place but who yet are made to share with all o thers the praise of God. The tension between part ic ular and universal love is Msolved~ only as i1 is lived out in a life understood as pilgrimage towa rd the God who g ives both the friend and the neighbor.
If Chris1ian commitmem to vocation shattered forever the classica l ideal of a unified life devo1ed to leisured conversation with fr iends and con- templaiion, this was not wi 1hou1 loss. And Christian though! at its best has never pretended 1hat voca1ion exacted no price. Only the glori fi cation of vo- cat ion as self-fulfill ment, which is si mult aneously a degradation of th e true concept of the call ing, has led us 10 believe 1hat no price was asked. We have, in a sense. sough1 once again to unify li fe . As the Greek found a uni- fied life cemercd in fri endship, so the modern pagan seeks it in vocation. Bu t
G I L BE RT ME JLAE NDER • "Friendship and Vocation"
a proper Christian undcrst.an~ing will fo reg~ tha1 unity in _fa vor of a life which, recognizi ng 1hat God gl\'es bo1 h the fnend and the neighbor, prefers co face the problem ambulando. It may be wise 10 allow 1he fi nal word about friendship and vocation to St. Augunine, who, as much as anyone, shattered ihat classical ideal of a uni fi ed li fe. In Book XIX of his City of God Augustine considers whe1her the best life is one of leisure (a nd con1empla1ion) or one of action - or some combination of these. Af1er making all the appropriate ualifications - that one should not be so active as to have no need or ti me
ir God, that the active li fe is not to be sought fo r reasons of ambi1io n - Augustine comes to terms with 1he_life he himself ':'ould have love~. a life of kisurcd pu rsuit of truth among fncnds, and the life he actually lived as a bishop.
We see then that it is love of 1ruth tha1 looks for sa nct ified leisure, while it is the compulsion of love that undertakes righteous engage- ment in affa irs. If th is latt er burden is not im posed on us. we should employ our freedom from business in the quest for truth and its con- templation, wh ile if it is laid upon us. it is to be undertaken becau se of the com pulsion of love. Yet even in this case the delight in truth should no1 be utterly abandoned, for fea r that we should lose 1his en- joyment and that compulsion should overwhelm us.
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