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I have some pet peeves; we all do.\u00a0 Two of mine came up in this week\u2019s reading.\u00a0 These pet peeves are related to the words \u201cblessing\u201d and \u201ccalling.\u201d\u00a0 In my present understanding, these words are often misunderstood, particularly in Christian circles.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I sneeze.\u00a0 Sometimes I sneeze several times in a row.\u00a0 In the American culture, the most common cultural response to a sneezing person is, \u201cGod bless you.\u201d\u00a0 I know there are reasons why this is so.\u00a0 In the American Christian sub-culture it is appropriate to \u201cbless\u201d someone when saying goodbye.\u00a0 \u201cGod bless you, my friend.\u00a0 God bless you richly!\u201d\u00a0 So what does this really mean to have a blessing from God?\u00a0 What does a person\u2019s life look like who is \u201cblessed\u201d by God?\u00a0 Is that person protected from illness and calamity?\u00a0 Is that person free from financial worry?\u00a0 Many Christians in the West see wealth as a sign of God\u2019s blessing; but is that always true?\u00a0 Is that ever true?<\/p>\n
I am a teacher.\u00a0 I have been a teacher for over twenty years. \u00a0Before I was a teacher, I was a minister.\u00a0 I felt a \u201ccall\u201d to ministry when I was a teenager; at least that is what I understood at the time.\u00a0 That season of my life lasted for 16 years.\u00a0 Those were good days \u2013 and bad days.\u00a0 In my late 30\u2019s I taught in my first classroom.\u00a0 I will never forget that day.\u00a0 Three years later I went into teaching full-time.\u00a0 Was this a new calling?\u00a0 What happened to the first one?\u00a0 What does a \u201ccalling\u201d mean for a Christian?\u00a0 Is it a call that leads to a vow of humble poverty, or is it a call that leads to a vow of self-assured abundance?<\/p>\n
The reading for this week was fascinating. \u00a0I was impressed by Max Weber\u2019s deliberate and well-developed argument that the evolution of Protestantism became a primary cause for capitalistic thought and practice, particularly in the modern Western world.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Max Weber writes:\u00a0 \u201cNational or religious minorities, which are in a position of subordination to a group of rulers are likely, through their voluntary or involuntary exclusion from positions of political influence, to be driven with particular force into economic activity.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 As one studies Church history, he or she cannot deny that Protestants were definitely the religious minority in the beginning of sixteenth-century Europe, but they did not remain a minority for long.\u00a0 However, as Weber shows, this new status did not come without much bitter, theological infighting among these protesters of the Roman Catholic Church.<\/p>\n In a relatively short read, Weber covers the development of Protestant theological thought from Martin Luther through modern times.\u00a0 In a deliberate fashion the author reasons that Capitalism, in all its glory, was predominantly advanced in the Western world as an economic and political system due to a Protestant theological framework.\u00a0 An unfolding of Protestant theology, reasons Weber, is the primary cause for the rise and spread of capitalistic dogma and practice.\u00a0 Starting with Luther, the text traces the meaning of the term \u201ccalling\u201d (a product of the Reformation[3]<\/a>) and argues that over time the meaning of this term morphed from \u201cone\u2019s life purpose\u201d (which included one\u2019s secular occupation) to \u201cone\u2019s financial responsibility to the common good\u201d (a concept radically different from its earlier definition).\u00a0 Luther\u2019s reaction to monasticism became a \u201cmoral justification of worldly activity.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Although Luther popularized this concept of calling, \u201cthe task set by God [for one\u2019s life],\u201d[5]<\/a> it was only later that the concept developed a power of its own as it was further advanced by John Calvin and other Puritan sects.<\/p>\n Although it would seem contradictory that asceticism could ultimately produce a capitalistic philosophy of life (at least it seems contradictory to me), yet according to Weber\u2019s thesis, that is exactly what happened over time.\u00a0 Chapter 4 of our text covers the historical unfolding of four principal forms of ascetic Protestantism: Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism, and Baptist sects.\u00a0 Each of these systems made its contribution to Weber\u2019s thesis in different ways.\u00a0 Calvinism focused on rational thought and on the primacy of Scripture.\u00a0 It also promoted the concept that \u201clabor in the service of impersonal social usefulness appears to promote the glory of God and hence to be willed by Him.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Calvinism even encouraged intense worldly activity as that which \u201cdisperses religious doubts and gives the certainty of grace.\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 According to Weber, this resulted in the view that \u201cGod helps those who help themselves,\u201d something that Calvin probably never intended.\u00a0 Pietism promoted the concept of \u201ccalling.\u201d\u00a0 Weber writes: \u201cLabor as a calling was also the ascetic activity par excellence<\/em> for A.H. Francke; that God Himself blessed His chosen ones through the success of their labors was as undeniable to him as we shall find it to have been for the Puritans.\u201d[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Weber adds that Methodists contributed little new information to the understanding of \u201ccalling\u201d; he then traces the input of the Baptist sects of the day, which included the Mennonites and the Quakers.\u00a0 Of this group Weber says, \u201c\u2026the immense importance which was attributed by the Baptist doctrine of salvation to the role of the conscience as the revelation of God to the individual gave their conduct in worldly callings a character which was of the greatest significance for the development of the spirit of capitalism.\u201d[9]<\/a>\u00a0 Finally, Weber sums up his thoughts on asceticism thus:<\/p>\n As we have seen, this ascetic conduct meant a rational planning of the whole of one\u2019s life in accordance with God\u2019s will.\u00a0 And this asceticism was no longer an opus supererogationis<\/em>, but something which could be required of everyone who would be certain of salvation.\u00a0 The religious lives of the saints, as distinguished from the natural life, was \u2013 the most important point \u2013 no longer lived outside the world in monastic communities, but within the world and its institutions.\u00a0 This rationalization of conduct within this world, for the sake of the world beyond, was the consequence of the concept of calling of ascetic Protestantism.<\/p>\n Christian asceticism, at first fleeting from the world into solitude, had already ruled the world, which it had renounced from the monastery and through the Church.\u00a0 But it had, on the whole, left the naturally spontaneous character of the daily life in the world untouched.\u00a0 Now it strode into the market-place of life, slammed the door of the monastery behind it, and undertook to penetrate just that daily routine of life with its methodicalness, to fashion it into a life in the world, but neither of nor for this world.[10]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Finally, Max Weber turns to the writing of the Puritan writer Richard Baxter.\u00a0 Baxter and his supporters objected to leisure and enjoyment; however, they did not object to activity.\u00a0 In fact, activity served to increase the glory of God.\u00a0 But what was truly sinful, according to Baxter, was wasting time.\u00a0 Baxter is even quoted as saying, \u201cWork hard in your calling.\u201d[11]<\/a>\u00a0 Weber then explains that many Protestants came to understand from the Old Testament teaching that they were God\u2019s chosen people.\u00a0 Weber concludes:<\/p>\n In conformity with the Old Testament and in analogy to the ethical valuation of good works, asceticism looked upon the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself as highly reprehensible; but the attainment of it as a fruit of labor in a calling was a sign of God\u2019s blessing.\u00a0 And even more important: the religious valuation of restless, continuous, systematic work in a worldly calling, as the highest means to asceticism, and at the same time the surest and most evident proof or rebirth and genuine faith, must have been the most powerful conceivable lever for the expansion of that attitude toward life which we have here called the spirit of capitalism.[12]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I have a third pet peeve.\u00a0 I do not appreciate when people think they have God figured out, particularly when they think they understand the Bible seamlessly.\u00a0 I used to do this; I used the Bible like a magic book but do not do this any more.\u00a0 I don\u2019t believe that the blessing of God is necessarily about material possessions, wealth, or a problem-free life.\u00a0 If this were so, then we would have to forget about the majority of the world\u2019s population (many of them Christians) who find themselves in poverty and affliction, and I can\u2019t forget.<\/p>\n I loved Max Weber\u2019s book, and I am glad it was an assigned reading.\u00a0 I agree with his basic thesis.\u00a0 But as with most of our readings for the semester, I am left with a question:\u00a0 Now what?\u00a0 How do I apply this to my life?\u00a0 Only time will tell.<\/p>\n God\u2019s richest blessings on you all.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Max Weber. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (BN Publishing, 2008)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [2]<\/a> Ibid., 39.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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