“How foolish!” my ten-year-old self would think, shaking my head at prosperity gospel preaching.
Growing up in a Christian home with two wise parents, I knew the promises of the prosperity gospel rang hollow and delivered little in the way of lasting hope. And yet, I have recognized a strain of prosperity gospel in my own thinking as it relates to feelings of ‘spiritual intimacy’ or closeness with God.
God does reward the faithful. “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working,” says James 5:16. David writes in Psalm 34:17, “The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles.”
Seeing answered prayers and recognizing God’s hand moving in our daily interactions often challenges me; and yet it is not so much the absence of my idea of deliverance that bothers my mind as much as the words about a righteous person.
To our human minds, so much of life seems paradoxical or at least conflicting.
“God is in control and has a sovereign plan for our lives.” Do we ditch retirement planning and the 401ks? Unfortunately, no. “We could die at any moment so live like there’s no tomorrow.” Do we spend all our money on Mojitos and Prada? Again, I hate to say it, no. “God has plans to use our talents as we work.” Do we forget LinkedIn and the hundreds of job adverts? Not yet.
The Bible gives us more general examples. ‘Live in the world but not of it.’ Live as someone who is fully saved but not fully sanctified. Live as new creations in your old broken body - that body which will drag you into the ruts of winter depression or push you towards too many drinks. God has a plan for our lives, every second and nanosecond of our lives, but we must still plan for our lives. I have always wrestled with this.
As humans, ‘things’ in a very meta sense, are beyond us.
Even staunch atheists will admit to this fact. Often, we view the world through distorted lenses: either overly optimistic, because it is either easier or brings us comfort, or pessimistic, because the problems are too large and the worries too beyond us. In her Ted Talk, “Everything Happens for a Reason,” Kate Bowler, professor at Duke, Stage IV cancer survivor and four-time author, remarks: “Sometimes we cannot even explain the happenings in our lives. We find ourselves unable to explain our ever trusted logic, “everything happens for a reason,” even if we can still believe it.
This is not the problem; the problem arises when we deny this fact - that things are beyond us - and try to make meaning and purpose for ourselves.
We have only to read the news or an occasional Buzzfeed article to see celebrities and other people we celebrate as ‘achievers’ wrestling with the same issue. Award-winning writer Melissa Broder puts the struggle to especially fine words in an article for the New York Times. In the article, Broder discusses how her disillusioned hope that she could make “meaning of life” ultimately left her with a “spiritual longing…for some kind of eternal beauty or ineffable truth…always just out of reach.”[i]
The struggle Broder voiced actually relates to issues of desire and longing, Dr. Chris Yates argues, in a piece he wrote for The Hedgehog Review. “Desire has become longing’s counterfeit,” Yates writes. We fail to see that desire is something cultivated in us by culture, society and nature to a degree, while longing extends past the physical reality of our world to something greater. In short, we can often satisfy desire, but we cannot satisfy longing.
My generation gets (probably well-deserved) shade for our distracted nature, our obsession with technology, and our idealism, among other things. But we have made progress in other areas of life, such as the fresh value many young adults place on tying purpose to work. Michael Jackson may have sung about personal commitments to make a change and address homelessness and child hunger on the streets in 1988, but the difference is that we seek to do so through our work, not just on the side. That is unique.
You may wonder where I am going with this, and here it is: sometimes we take our quest for purpose in our work too far; we try to satisfy our longing for Good and Meaning with our own efforts. As in an article for One Republic, many people feel a profound sense of disappointment in their search for purpose if they look to their work as the source. Indeed, the search for capital ‘P’ Purpose in any activity or relationship of this world will leave us unsatisfied, wanting more. And yet, we should pursue good relationships; we should seek a job that aligns with our values and uses our talents.
So how then can we make sense of vocation? Vocation suggests a commitment to something beyond ourselves and a hope for something greater than ourselves. When it comes to vocation, I am learning a few things.
First, that there is value in doing things we do not always enjoy. When we are challenged, often our perseverance and perspective grows. Relatedly, I am learning that much of life consists of showing up, completing responsibilities, and fulfilling duties to our coworkers, friends, and family. Third, I am realizing that we are called to live step-by-step and walk with wisdom - what some have called ‘doing the next right thing.’ We are not called to plan every second and nanosecond of our lives. God has done that already.
Much of life is not black and white. God has not left us with a template for how much to sleep and eat, where to work and who to befriend. So much of life is beyond us. We are simply called to constantly realign our desires with our longing for heaven and harmony with God. This requires immediate action and immediate waiting. Ah yes, another paradox. We act in faith and we wait in faith. This must become our practice.
The practice of realigning our desires toward longing, and thus toward God, requires that we cultivate this ability in our minds and hearts. Cultivation may mean slowing down or stepping back from certain commitments; it may mean beginning some friendships and ending others; it may mean walks in nature or afternoons of pick-up soccer. Cultivating an active and waiting heart in our daily lives, attuned to our responsibilities and God’s will takes work. In fact, it is our vocation.
“Oh what a bother,” you may be thinking. “How tiring and discouraging this will be.” God knows our human frailty. He knows our frame better than we know ourselves. Thankfully, God hears us when we cry out not on the merit of our own righteousness or our belief; rather, we are given the prosperity of heaven by the merit of His grace and Christ’s saving work on the cross. Our Father knows our needs and has given us the Holy Spirit to guide us in our vocation and cultivate our hearts. With his help, when we cultivate them with intention, our desires will move us in the moment, but our longing will move us toward eternity.
In Ephesians 1:18, Paul writes, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.” To anyone who stumbles across this reflection, as I pray this for myself, I pray this for you: that you may draw close to He who guides our vocation, fulfills our longing and restores our souls.
[i] Melissa Broder, “Life without Longing,” New York Times, February 9, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/style/love-infatuation-longing.html.)
