A Career and A Choice

When I was a young student, most people did not have too many career choices. Typically choices were limited to children doing what their parents did before them – so lawyer's children were encouraged to be lawyers, teacher's children to be teachers and so on. Or if the parents were not any of these and wanted something different for their children, then they would push their children to become doctors or engineers or civil servants. These and a few others were considered aspirational careers which parents encouraged their children to strive for. The children's own wishes were of little consequence. If you have seen the movie, 3 idiots, you would notice that still is very often still the case.

And so I became a doctor although I would rather have been a journalist. But because my heart wasn't there, I soon outgrew this and became a part of the charitable nonprofit sector where I have spent most of my life. And in this line of work, I have seen an amazing variety of people who were trained to be something else but are doing something quite different. In my job as the head of an organization that deals with women and children who have been trafficked and puts them in society, my team is full of people who were trained to be something but are finding themselves driven by something else that they are passionate about.

Today the choices and options available to young people are many and on many occasions, many (though not all!) Parents are happy to leave the choice of a viable career option to their children, but people often are finding it difficult to make a choice. They are caught between peer pressure, the materialistic values that increasingly guide society and the inner calling and vocation whose voice often gets muffled out.

As we consider various career options and courses of study, the singular question to ask ourselves is: "Will this help me become a better servant for others?" Our choice of a job or a career in life should be about how we can best serve our family and others with the gifts and bilities God has given us. If our whole focus in choosing a job or career is only about getting rich and serving ourselves, then we are making sinful choices. There was a time when certain professions, subjects of study and vocations were considered holier than others. Those who pursued that path were considered set apart for "full time" work. But today we know that whether we serve as a pastor or serve in a coal mine as a technician or as an Air Traffic Controller at the airport, as long as through our studies and jobs, we are able to fulfill our responsibility of stewarding this created world in a God honoring way, we are doing fine.

William Sloane Coffin, a former chaplain of Yale university speaks to our own challenge of responding to God's call, of choosing the pathway of faithful living, when he reminds us, "A career seeks to be successful, a calling to be valuable. A career tries to make money; a calling tries to make a difference."

The thing is that, no matter what we do for a living, it's about serving others. Whether we work at a Café Coffee Day outlet or are a CEO in a big company; whether we are a doctor or a garbage collector, we should do our job the best we can with the understanding that we are serving our generation in God's purposes as David did (Acts 13: 36) and our careers and studies are but a tool to this greater end.