Os Guinness The Call Quotes

Calling is not only a matter of being and doing what we are but also of becoming what we are not yet but are called by God to be.

We cannot find God without God. We cannot reach God without God. We cannot satisfy God without God—which is another way of saying that our seeking will always fall short unless God’s grace initiates the search and unless God’s call draws us to him and completes the search.

Thus, for followers of Christ, calling neutralizes the fundamental position of choice in modern life. “I have chosen you,” Jesus said, “you have not chosen me.” We are not our own; we have been bought with a price. We have no rights, only responsibilities. Following Christ is not our initiative, merely our response, in obedience. Nothing works better to debunk the pretensions of choice than a conviction of calling. Once we have been called, we literally “have no choice.

We are not wise enough, pure enough, or strong enough to aim and sustain such a single motive over a lifetime. That way lies fanaticism or failure. But if the single motive is the master motivation of God's calling, the answer is yes. In any and all situations, both today and tomorrow's tomorrow, God's call to us is the unchanging and ultimate whence, what, why, and whither of our lives. Calling is a 'yes' to God that carries a 'no' to the chaos of modern demands. Calling is the key to tracing the story line of our lives and unriddling the meaning of our existence in a chaotic world.

Modern life assaults us with an infinite range of things we could do, we would love to do, or some people tell us we should do. But we are not God and we are neither infinite nor eternal. We are quite simply finite. We have only so many years, so much energy, so many gray cells, and so many bank notes in our wallets. 'Life is too short to...' eventually shortens to 'life is too short.

calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service.

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less. . .

We betray our modern arrogance and forget the place of mystery in God's dealing with us.

In practice it undermines the transformation of faith. When Christians concentrate their time and energy on their own separate spheres and their own institutions-whether all-absorbing megachurches, Christian yellow-page businesses, or womb-to-tomb Christian cultural ghettoes-they lose the outward thrusting, transforming power that is at the heart of the gospel. Instead of being 'salt' and 'light' -images of a permeating and penetrating action-Christians and Christian institutions become soft and vulnerable to corruption from within.

The author explores the result of endless choice. It is not only overload, but a profound loss of unity, solidity, and coherence in life.

Either we serve God and use money or we serve money and use God.

Calling is more than purely cultural, but it is also more than purely personal. Discover the meaning of calling and you discover the heart of the gospel itself.

as modern people, we have too much to live with and too little to live for.

An “open mind” can be an “empty head,” and “tolerance” can be indistinguishable from believing nothing. These are no help in finding honest answers to honest and important questions.

Calling resists privatization by insisting on the totality of faith. Calling resists politicization by demanding a tension with every human allegiance and association. Calling resists polarization by requiring an attitude toward, and action in, society that is inevitably transforming because it is constantly engaged. Grand Christian movements will rise and fall. Grand campaigns will be mounted and grand coalitions assembled. But all together such coordinated efforts will never match the influence of untold numbers of followers of Christ living out their callings faithfully across the vastness and complexity of modern society.

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.

The trouble is that, as modern people, we have too much to live with and too little to live for. Some feel they have time but not enough money; others feel they have money but not enough time. But for most of us, in the midst of material plenty, we have spiritual poverty.

Somehow we human beings are never happier than when we are expressing the deepest gifts that are truly us.

All human beings are alike in seeking happiness. Where they differ is in the objects from which they seek it and the strength they have to reach the objects they desire.

the modern world has scrambled things so badly that today we worship our work, we work at our play, and we play at our worship.

For while we may debate our freedom to choose, there is no doubt that we are not free not to choose.

What Socrates called the “unexamined life” that is “not worth living” now seems to be the life more people have slipped into than ever before.

Our task is to focus on our individual callings in engaging with the world, to trust that others are following theirs too, and to leave to God the masterminding of the grand outcome.

Name-calling, insult, ridicule, guilt by association, caricature, innuendo, accusation, denunciation, negative ads, and deceptive and manipulative videos have replaced deliberation and debate. Neither side talks to the other side, only about them; and there is no pretence of democratic engagement, let alone a serious effort at persuasion.

In the biblical understanding of giftedness, gifts are never really ours or for ourselves. We have nothing that was not given us. Our gifts are ultimately God’s, and we are only “stewards”—responsible for the prudent management of property that is not our own. This is why our gifts are always “ours for others,” whether in the community of Christ or the broader society outside, especially the neighbor in need. This is also why it is wrong to treat God as a grand employment agency, a celestial executive searcher to find perfect fits for our perfect gifts. The truth is not that God is finding us a place for our gifts but that God has created us and our gifts for a place of his choosing—and we will only be ourselves when we are finally there.

Much of the greatness of the human spirit can be seen in our passionate pursuit of knowledge, truth, justice, beauty, perfection, and love. At the same time, few things are so haunting as the stories of the very greatest seekers falling short. Leonardo da Vinci's magnificent failures point to a very personal entry point to the wonder of calling - when something more than human seeking is needed if seeking is to be satisfied, then calling means that seekers themselves are sought.

The truth is that the greatest enemy of the Western church is not the state or any ideology such as atheism, but the world and the spirit of the age. Anything less than a full-blooded expression of the Christian faith has no chance of standing firm against the assaults and seductions of the advanced modern world. So when the church becomes worldly, she betrays her Lord, and she also fails to live up to her calling to be dangerously different and thus to provide deliverance from the world by a power that is not of the world.

We make a huge mistake when we define our calling in terms of participation inside the church—nursery work, Sunday school teacher, youth worker, music leader, and so on. Our calling is much bigger than how much time we put into church matters. Calling involves everything we are and everything we do, both inside and, more important, outside the church walls. “Calling,” said Os Guinness, “is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction.

Once commonly called “atomism,” the genealogy of atheism can be traced all the way back through the Enlightenment to Roman poets such as Lucretius and his poem De Rerum Natura, and behind that to Greek philosophers such as Epicurus and Democritus and their philosophy of atomism. It was precisely such a philosophy that contributed to the classical world a strong sense of fate and the futility of both life and human purpose. And it also provided the dark setting against which the brilliance of the hope of the good news of Jesus shone by contrast—as soon it will once again.

The universe rests upon making and maintaining proper distinctions whose roots go back to creation,” and sin is seen as the transgression of such boundaries, whether deliberately or unintentionally.4 Rabbi Heschel underscores the same point: “The power to make distinctions is a primary operation of intelligence. We distinguish between white and black, beautiful and ugly, pleasant and unpleasant, gain and loss, good and evil, right and wrong. The fate of mankind depends upon the realization that the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, is superior to all other distinctions.

Prayer O Lord, great Creator of our great universe and all its splendors, and lover of all that is true and good and beautiful, we give thanks for all your works and for your giving us the privilege of being creators too under you. Forgive us that, made in your image, we have represented you so poorly, and we have been such irresponsible stewards in the world that you gave us to order and to enjoy. Grant that even now we may become such faithful agents of your kingdom and entrepreneurs of your calling, that the fruit of your gifts, and the schemes of our minds and the works of our hands may once again produce a way of life that is true to our calling and worthy to represent you. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

It is realistic rather than cynical to observe that in a fallen world there are degrees of virtue in relation to what is right, and good and just. These are important in our human judgments of others, even though they may be blown to the winds by the grace of God. To “do good because we know it is good” is different from “doing good only because we know we are seen,” and this in turn is different from “doing good only because we are afraid of being thought to be bad,” which in turn is different again from “the complete abandonment of any pretense of caring about being good or being seen.” The first type of action springs from what we call morality, the second respectability, the third hypocrisy, and the fourth sheer wickedness. This

Yet if the gross national product measures all of this, there is much that it does not include. It measures neither the health of our children, the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play. It measures neither the beauty of our poetry, nor the strength of our marriages. It pays no heed to the intelligence of our public debate, nor the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our wit nor our courage, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worth living, and it can tell us everything about our country except those things that make us proud to be a part of it. ROBERT F. KENNEDY, KANSAS CITY, 1968

As Os Guinness writes, To be sure, calling is not what it is commonly thought to be. It has to be dug out from under the rubble of ignorance and confusion. And, uncomfortably, it often flies in the face of our human inclinations. But nothing short of God’s call can ground and fulfill the truest human desire for purpose.3

Professionalism embodies the power to prescribe. Today it is the key to determining need, defining clients, delivering solutions, and deepening dependency—whether in healing identity, rebuilding inner cities, dispensing public opinion, or planting churches among baby boomers. The result, however, is not necessarily greater freedom and responsibility for ordinary people, because the dominance of the expert means the dependency of the client. All that has changed is the type of authority. Traditional authorities, such as the clergy, have been replaced by modern authorities—in this case, denominational leaders by church-growth experts. The outcome is what Christopher Lasch calls “paternalism without a father” and Ivan Illich “the age of disabling professions.”[1] The suggestion is that “The expert knows best,” so “we can do better.” But the “ministry of all believers” recedes once again. Even the dream of the “self-help” movement becomes a radical chic illusion that disguises the gold rush of experts in its wake. In most cases, all that has changed is the type of clergy. The old priesthood is dead! Long live the new power-pastors and pundit-priests!

Are you open to the possibility that there is one who created you to be who you are and calls you to be who he alone knows you can be? Then listen to Jesus of Nazareth and his two words that changed the world—“Follow me.” —OS GUINNESS

Calling,” said Os Guinness, “is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction.

Our life-purpose therefore comes from two sources at once—who we are created to be and who we are called to be. Not

Those of us who have the nerve to call ourselves Christians,” W. H. Auden said in a sermon, “will do well to be extremely reticent on the subject. Indeed it is almost the definition of a Christian that he is somebody who knows he isn’t one, either in faith or morals.

One might think that after this trenchant diagnosis of the radical dualism in human thinking, Huxley would urge us to take truth seriously and lean against any way in which we may be tempted to rationalize our needs—as Plato and Aristotle would have recommended. Instead, bizarrely, he goes on to take the very approach he was attacking. He freely admits that he “took it for granted” that the world had no meaning, but he did not discover it, he decided it. “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.”7 His philosophy of meaninglessness was far from disinterested. And the reason? “We objected to morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”8 This admission is extraordinary. To be sure, Huxley and his fellow members of the Garsington Circle near Oxford were not like the Marquis de Sade, who used the philosophy of meaninglessness to justify cruelty, rape and murder. But Huxley’s logic is no different. He too reached his view of the world for nonintellectual reasons: “It is our will that decides how and upon what subjects we shall use our intelligence.” After all, he continues in this public confessional, “The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants, or why his friends should seize political power and govern in a way they find most advantageous to themselves.”9 The eminent contemporary philosopher Thomas Nagel is equally candid. He admits that his deepest objection to Christian faith stems not from philosophy but fear. I am talking about something much deeper—namely the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.10 At least there is no pretense in such confessions. As Pascal wrote long ago, “Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true.”11 In Huxley’s case there is no clearer confession of what Ludwig Feuerbach called “projection,” Friedrich Nietzsche called the “will to power,” Sigmund Freud called “rationalization,” Jean-Paul Sartre called “bad faith,” and the sociologists of knowledge call “ideology”—a set of intellectual ideas that serve as social weapons for his and his friends’ interests. Unwittingly, this scion of the Enlightenment pleads guilty on every count, but rather than viewing it as a confession, Huxley trumpets his position proudly as a manifesto. “For myself, no doubt, as for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation.”12 Truth

Formerly, it is pointed out, heroism was linked to the honor of accomplishment. Honor was accorded to the person with some genuine achievement, whether in character, virtue, wisdom, the arts, sport, or warfare. Today, however, the media offer a shortcut to fame—instantly fabricated famousness with no need for the sweat, cost, and dedication of true greatness. The result is not the hero but the celebrity, the person famously described as “well-known for being well-known.” A big name rather than a big person, the celebrity is someone for whom character is nothing, coverage is all.

God calls people to himself, but this call is no casual suggestion. He is so awe inspiring and his summons so commanding that only one response is appropriate—a response as total and universal as the authority of the Caller. Thus

Nietzsche’s madman in The Gay Science is the epitome of someone who recognizes what it means to reject God consistently and face the consequences. To the self-appointed “anti-Christ” and the one who did his philosophy “with a hammer,” the idea that God is dead was no yawning matter. The insane man jumped into their midst, and transfixed them with his glances. “Where is God gone?” he called out. “I mean to tell you. We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? “Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction?—For even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife,—who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event,—and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!”42 Nietzsche saw himself as a “born riddle-reader,” standing watch on the mountains “posted ’twixt today and tomorrow,” who could see what most people could not see yet. There was always a gap between the lightning and the thunder, though the storm was on its way. But while ordinary people could not be expected to have seen the arrival of this great event, he reserved his most withering scorn for thinkers who saw what he saw, but were unmoved and went on as before. They may have believed that God had “died” in European society, but it made no difference to them. Life would go on as it had. Such people, Nietzsche wrote, thinking of English writers such as George Eliot, were “odious windbags of progressive optimism.” If God is dead, everything that once depended on God would in the end go too. Did even science-based naturalism, he wondered, come from “a fear and an evasion of pessimism? A refined means of self-defense against—the truth?”43

The called-out assembly of God’s people, which is subordinated to Christ as its head and coordinated with its fellow members of the body, lives its life by its practical obedience to God’s call in Christ.

Calling is the truth that God calls us to

The heart of the life of faith in answer to the call of God is a call to a relationship, and a relationship of love.

In the beginning was the Word”— and in each of our beginnings was a Word to us. Each of our lives is therefore relational and aural at core. All we are is a hearing and a response. We are responsible because we are response-able. Between the first word of God’s creation and the last word of his judgment our ways of life are our response to God’s Word to us. There is no God but God. There is no word but God’s Word. There is no way of life but God’s way of life. But for the time being our response is up to us; we are not forced to say yes. Indeed, as Kierkegaard insists, “All the shrewdness of ‘man’ seeks one thing: to be able to live without responsibility.

To make the choice of career or profession on selfish grounds, without a true sense of calling, is “probably the greatest single sin any young person can commit, for it is the deliberate withdrawal from allegiance to God of the greatest part of time and strength.

Many lives have a mystical sense, but not everyone reads it aright. More often than not it is given to us in cryptic form, and when we fail to decipher it, we despair because our lives seem meaningless. The secret of a great life is often a man’s success in deciphering the mysterious symbols vouchsafed to him, understanding them and so learning to walk in the true path.

The secret of a great life is often a man’s success in deciphering the mysterious symbols vouchsafed to him, understanding them and so learning to walk in the true path.

Among the powerful truths that helped to shape the rise of the modern world were the Reformation’s celebrated six Cs—calling (with its impact on purpose, work, and the rise of capitalism), covenant (which led to constitutionalism and constitutional freedom), conscience (and the rise of religious freedom and human rights), a commitment to God’s people, the Jews (and the reversal of the horrendous anti-Semitism that stained the record of the medieval church), coherence (so that people tried to think about anything and everything under the lordship of Jesus), and corrigibility (the notion of semper reformanda and the principle that we are all, always, in ongoing need of renewal and reformation).

With the Holy Spirit resting upon us as Jesus promised, our part is to host the very presence of God wherever we are, to exercise the very power of God in every situation and to witness to the gospel and what God has done in Jesus and is doing in the world today. The call to be witnesses is central and decisive. We are not out to prove something new through the brilliance of our arguments. Our calling is to point to something old, or rather to bear witness to the established facts of the story of the gospel, though in the process clearing up anything and everything that may obscure or block a person’s understanding. We therefore speak only on behalf of God, we speak under God, and we have no authority or power apart from God. The prophet’s formula is always “Thus says the LORD,” and the worst indictment against the false prophets was for their presumption in claiming to speak for God when their words were entirely their own. In short, the major work in the defense of the faith is about God and by God. It is not about us, and it is not up to us.

The lights of the little café had signaled and called to his heart that, across the wasteland of the earth, there was home.

What Mailer did was what I call creative persuasion or subversion through surprise. To people predisposed to reject what he had to say, he communicated in a way that made them see his point—despite themselves.

We live today in the grand age of diversion, and the reasons why are obvious. With our economic prosperity, our high-tech devices and the cornucopia of entertainment pressing for our attention, we can surround ourselves with diversion from the cradle to grave. We do not focus our attention on anything for long. We do not ask what 'the good life' is and what it requires. Happiness is a small circle, and it is no surprise that the last thing on most people's minds at any moment is the question of the meaning of life, the coming of death and the priorities that are needed to choose wisely. What Socrates call the 'unexamined life' that is 'not worth living' now seems to be the life more people have slipped into than ever before.

The one aim of the call of God is the satisfaction of God, not a call to do something for Him.

True seekers are different. On meeting them you feel their purpose, their energy, their integrity, their idealism, and their desire to close in on an answer. Something in life has awakened questions, has made them aware of a sense of need, has forced them to consider where they are in life. They have become seekers because something has spurred their quest for meaning, and they have to find an answer.

This strategy proceeds by making people aware of their human longings and desires, and what these passions point to. These are longings and desires that are innate and buried in their lives. In particular, the strategy draws their attention to what have been called the “signals of transcendence” that are embedded in their normal, daily experience.

Even the best of pursuits can become the worst of diversions. But whatever the source of the diversion, diversion is the most common reason for what Socrates called the “unexamined life

As it happens, the differences are clear between the major answers to the search for purpose in life, and they lead in entirely different directions.

Stranger, tell the Spartans that we behaved as they would wish us to, and are buried here.

A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame or money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well.

calling in the Bible is a central and dynamic theme that becomes a metaphor for the life of faith itself.

Does meaning matter? Philosopher Ronald Dworkin’s cheap dismissal is often quoted, “Philosophers used to speculate about what they called the meaning of life. (That is now the job of mystics and comedians.)”2 But that of course is too cynical. “Man cannot stand a meaningless life,” Carl Gustav Jung claimed.3 Anthropologist Clifford Geertz agreed. “The drive to make sense out of experience, to give it form and order, is evidently as real and pressing as the more biological needs.”4 But if meaning is so important, what accounts for the striking carelessness in pursuing it?

Disciples are not so much those who follow as those who must follow.

This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.

Thus a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but, what is worse, as many masters as he has vices. ST. AUGUSTINE, CITY OF GOD