passion – Houghton STAR

Last semester, while sitting in the lobby of the chapel, waiting to pass out Friday papers, the inner doors opened for a moment, and I heard the speaker speak the words made famous by Confucius: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” And my immediate reaction, before I could stop myself, was “no.” No, that’s not right at all. It can’t possibly be that simple, no, why would you say something like that? Is that supposed to assuage the rumpled soul of a soon-to-graduate-student like myself, reassure me that the past four years of my life have not been spent for naught? Is it a guarantee that I will somehow be successful and content in the future if I can just pick the right path, even when stories and statistics tell me otherwise? My questions amounted quickly, my indignation rising. However, recognizing the futility of getting worked up over words that I had heard only indirectly, and out of context, I tried not to let them get to me. Chapel ended soon thereafter, and my afternoon followed in an orderly fashion, according to routine.

Despite my best efforts to forget them, though, those words followed me for the rest of the day, and have been rolling around in the back of my mind since I first heard them months ago. My gut reaction to them is still the same as it was then, a determinedly firm “no,” but after mulling over, I think I can now better articulate why. As I have lived in different places and gotten to know many different people, a consistency has been that I am drawn to those who live life passionately. You know the type. The person who, for one reason or another, is filled with that near-inexplicable…thing. An unquenchable zeal, it would seem, for whatever it is that they love: a language, a theory, a field, an era, a medium, a people group. Of the people like this whom I have had the privilege to know, with their diverse dreams, desires, and domains, the commonality they all share is that they work. Hard. Their expertise or abilities are not the gifts of random chance. The love they have for what they do has been and continues to be the result of time and effort.

Which brings up a concept that came to me of my ruminations: in the lives of people I greatly admire, the love of their field or craft has been honed. They did not stumble, one day, upon an already-formed passion of unique and exquisite construction and go “Ah-ha, now I know what to do for the rest of my life,” get a job in that field, and then let nature take its course. The love each of these individuals brings to their work is attractive to me because it has been acquired and shaped gradually through, yep, work. For me, this creates a picture of the love for your job and the concept of work as being inextricably linked, one influencing the other in a continual, beautiful repetition. The work fuels the love, and vice versa. It is a never-ending cycle, or at least it is in its ideal form.

As I continued conceptualizing my rebuttal to Confucius’ long-esteemed words, I came across another problem: the use of the word “job”. Clearly, cultural and linguistic context are integral in understanding a statement such as this one, so I will refrain from criticizing Confucius himself, since I admit that I don’t really know what he hoped to communicate when he uttered the original version. The way the word “job” is interpreted in my context, however, still causes me to trip up here. I am a senior, and the closer I have drawn to the end of my time here, the more I have found myself confronted with queries about my next steps, my plans for the future. My answers to these questions, or lack thereof, often sound hollow, even to my own ears. I haven’t been able to select just one potential career, narrow down my options to just one path upon which to embark, choose that one job that I love because, frankly, I love too many things. There’s some overlap, sure, but the diversity of the things I have invested myself in makes it overwhelmingly difficult to pick among them. The way I have heard Confucius interpreted tells me that my uncertainty dooms me to drudgery; until I finally discover what I love, choose that job, and my life eases accordingly, but I disagree. I think the order of events is wrong, and I don’t believe that a ‘job’ should be my all-consuming goal in life. There’s so much else to live for.

So where does that leave me, at the end of my mulling-over these old words? It leaves me with the conviction that my focus in life should be in honing my passions, in developing my varied loves through work (since the latter is simply inevitable), and in seeing where these things take me. I desire to see my life amount to so much more than a job, even one that I love. Maybe not having a plan etched in stone will turn out alright in the end. Maybe it won’t. For now, I’ll keep working.

As I come to the end of my undergraduate career at a private faith-based liberal arts college, I think it is appropriate that I reflect on my journey.

I am not sure what sort of Christian I am. I only hope I’m not a heretic. Where amongst the thirty thousand denominations do I fall? I agree with the declaration of the Nicene Creed, so I must be ok.

Throughout my life, I have been dragged through a slew of different denominations. My parents, coming from Gideon and Baptist backgrounds, joined the inter-denominational mission organization Wycliffe Bible Translators. The first four years of my life were spent in a non-denominational Congolese Church. This was quite the Charismatic experience, as I’m sure you can imagine. I recall a story of a woman, supposedly practicing sorcery and possessed by a demon, who barged into the Church hollering in a man’s voice. They say it took seven men to drag her out and beat the demon out of her.

After this, we moved to France, where I was put in a private Catholic school for the following 11 years. I attended Catechism. I was taught that the Saints would intercede for me. I went to confession. I partook in the Holy Communion.

Also in France I attended an Assemblies of God church with my family. Within the first few months I could mimic word for word the “bidi-bidi” sounds that they claimed were Tongues and could also give the interpretations that would always follow.

Around this time, my parents became intrigued by what was happening in Toronto. John Arnott prayed his famous prayer “come Holy Spirit, come;” And thus began the infamous Toronto Blessing. After this, my family joined the Vineyard movement, a neo-charismatic movement stemming out of the Calvary Chapel.

After I moved back to the States, some close friends of the family invited me to attend the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. This is a charismatic non-denominational mission organization that emphasizes post-tribulational premillenialism. Led by a former Kansas City Prophet, Mike Bickle, the movement focuses on the end times.

I am no theologian; however, I’d hazard a guess that I have come across quite a few views that stray in some ways from orthodox Christianity, yet in each of these everyone maintains that their views are most in line with that of the early Church. I find myself distraught. I can’t help but to wonder what heretical views I uphold. Are gays Christian? When does human life begin? Is paedobaptism wrong? Is credobaptism necessary? Do demons exist? Are revivals psychological? Does God carry on personal relationships with everyone? Does God have a plan for my life?

Spiritual people always try to point to scripture. They tell us to base our beliefs on the word of God. Unfortunately, there are verses for and against each one of these questions. I don’t have any answers. I don’t know whether demons exist. I don’t know whether I should be re-baptized, or what happens when I take communion. I don’t know why God has been silent. I find comfort in Thomas’s doubt. But I recognize that for some people, these questions, when unanswered, put Biblical faith at risk.

Rather than continue preaching these ambiguities—that is, all the doctrines that cause division amongst Christians—for which two thousand years have taught us that there are no conceivable resolutions, let us, as Wolterstorff writes, “endure holding on to God… join with God in keeping alive the protest against early death and unredemptive suffering… own our own suffering… and join with the divine battle against all that goes awry with reference to God’s intent.”

At the last supper, Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another. This was nothing new. He had instructed his followers to do this time and time again. Yet a few hours before his death, he tells his followers that they will be recognized for how they treat others.

Ultimately I am no longer afraid of being a heretic because, as one wise blogger once wrote, “what is orthodox to someone is going to be heresy to another.”

Throughout my time at Houghton I have heard, on at least three different occasions, individuals make reference to being Catholic and “converting” to Christianity. This makes me cringe. Was it their Catholicism that made them unchristian? What if I stated that I used to be Evangelical but then I became a Christian? I used to be Charismatic, but then I got saved. The fact is that Catholics are heretics, and so are the Eastern Orthodox, Baptists, Wesleyans, Mennonites, and the 30 thousand other denominations. We are all heretics to someone else. None of us hold the keys to the mystery of the universe. But we can choose how we are going to treat our fellow heretics: with Love.