Individualism, Commitments and Calling

The American experience of non-slave immigrants and their descendants - the fruitful pursuit of new beginnings and frontiers - has shaped our views of life and it's goals. We often see ourselves as the creators of our own future built upon fresh ground. Any prior obligations are often resented as inhibitors of our work, family and individuality.

A Trinity Forum posting of a father's advice to his son reminds me that our calling and our subsequent goals should reflect our individual history and context with it's inavoidable commitments.

Dr. Gilbert Meilaender, of Valparaiso University, wrote in "Letters to Derek," (Christian Century, in the summer of 2003),

Much too often we suppose that the way to live is to think through what we want to do and then figure out how to do it. People talk constantly about setting goals. . . . Thinking this way does not really prepare us well for living as responsible people, because the truth is that life seldom works like that.

Much of the time we are already committed in important ways before we really decide what our goals should be. And, because we are already committed, other people have expectations based on those commitments. The trick of life is not to figure out who I am and then decide what sorts of commitments such a person should make. The trick is to become the person who can carry out the commitments I've already made. Don't imagine that the point of life is to set goals. Think, instead, that its point is to be faithful to the commitments already built into your life. People who make goals central are people who think the most important things in life are consciously chosen. People who make faithfulness central are people who realize that, quite often, our obligations come to us in ways that are unexpected, unchosen, and even unwanted.

Of this, writer Peter Edmun observes that (Implications: An Online Journal from the Trinity Forum),

our fullest humanity which has to do with honor, integrity, responsibilty, humility, courage seems to be tied to something other than control and planning. There's a givenness, a need to trust to God's providence. And the real thrill comes, paradoxically, only with commitment.

Calling without context reflects an American individualism that, in the words of Robert Bellah, et. al,

is based on inadequate social science, impoverished philosophy, and vacuous theology. There are truths we do not see when we adopt the language of radical individualism. We find ourselves not independently of other people and institutions but through them (Bellah, Robert N., "Habits of the Heart, Individualism and Commitment in American Life," Harper & Row: New York, 1985, p. 84).

None of this should argue for a preservation of dead traditionalism, for a keeping of institutions, styles, phrases of expression, and methods and means of life and work that no longer retain their vigor or utility. This would represent a swing of the pendulum toward the opposite extreme. Rather, we must adapt and innovate in a changing world. Bellah writes of

"reappropriating tradition" - that is, finding sustenance in tradition [and he means specifically republican and biblical tradition] and applying it actively and creatively to our present realities (p. 292).

A friend commented that this sounds fatalistic. But a 'calling in context' should not be an excuse for sociological determinism, a fatalism dictated by our family, circle of friends or personal history. We are not merely an extension of our context just as we are not totally free of it. Rather, we are now free to respond to God's call to be and do something different from our context as he sends us back into that context to pursue his will. Between absolute slavery and total freedom is God's call.

We live in a culture that is saturated with an individualism that distorts the image of God in us. For Bellah, the failure to 'reappropriate tradition' results in social and political despotism. For the biblicist, it is a failure to "love your neighbor as [you already do love] yourself."