A Disenchanted Vocation

Eugene Peterson writes,

The French have a wonderful phrase, deformation professionale, to refer to maladies that we are particularly liable to in the course of pursuing our line of work. Physicians are in constant danger of becoming calloused to suffering, lawyers in danger of cynicism about justice, and those of us who think and talk and read and write God are in danger of having the very words we use about God separate us from God, the most damning deformation of all.” (Eugene Peterson, Subversive Spirituality, 59)

This is scary. For any of us, that thing towards which we gravitate can become, if we are not careful, our very weakness.

How do we guard against this natural tendency? Well, we can't go wrong if we continually, persistently, regardless of roadblocks or failings, seek to be re-oriented to God. Unless we are striving to see Him throughout our lives and careers and callings, we will easily lose the very life of our calling.

But I believe that God, in His mercy, does not simply tell us to do this and fix our eyes on Him without help. And that help can, I believe, often be found most deeply in the work of the Holy Spirit through trials and pain.

I have grown in the conviction that my struggles and questions of faith - which feels like a daily battle with some longer and some shorter reprieves, though often not as many as I sometimes wish for - though not ideal, have been used by God to turn me to Him. During these times, I find it much harder to simply read a text assigned in class in a detached, simply studious, professional manner (as this deformation professionale tendency may naturally tend me towards). Rather, I am forced to wrestle with the text as it interacts with the weights on my own heart.

This, I believe, can be evidence of the mercy of God in our lives. He brings us to return to Him - not simply to His work - through these very difficulties and struggles. Perhaps an "easy" life is not what we want to pray for...