I really despise most "vocational theology" out there. It amounts to little more than comforting people in their miserable jobs, or convincing ourselves that pointless or even horrific activities are part of God's purpose for our lives. I get what Luther was trying to do by saying that being a good baker is as important as being a good priest, but it has led us to a state of puerility where whatever you're doing right now must be what God intends for you.Most jobs are not vocations. No one has a vocation to make photocopies and fetch coffee. Saying that some people have a vocation to work a shitty job is just a tool the Church uses for keeping a nice orderly society. The protestant work ethic is a stroke of genius for ingratiating the Church to the Government.
Furthermore, many jobs are not even suitable vehicles for fulfilling your universal vocation of discipleship. Some jobs are just Evil (with an Austin Powers emphasis) and if you think you are living out God's purpose for your life you are gloriously deluded. Here are some reasons why your job is Evil...
Servants of Mammon
Sales: If you want to get some practice at lying, become a salesperson. If you want to hone an overdeveloped sense of self-interest, work on a commission. If you want to belong to a fraternity of braggarts, work in corporate sales. The quintessential Evil moment for a salesman is when you give a fist pump after walking away from the trailer park having indebted another family by persuading them to buy the deluxe set of Henckel's serrated knives...
Marketing: If sales is lying, marketing is preemptive lying - brainwashing. Whereas Sales is intimate, marketing is impersonal. If anything though, marketing is far more Evil. Marketing is about denigrating human beings, society, and life in order to create false desires. You then seek to manipulate these false desires so that they build up your wealth, while impoverishing everyone else. If you make a living putting people down for a profit - your job is Evil.
Other Evil servants of the Evil lord Mammon include: Stock Brokers, Investment Bankers, Oil Speculators, Insurance Claim Denial Specialists, "Consultants"...
Servants of Mars
Soldier: Let's face it, at root a soldier's job is about killing people. Killing people is Evil. Worse than just killing people though, by agreeing to the entire military culture of obedience soldiers are participants in the single largest fictional justification of murder down through history. Because as long as it is "soldiers" doing the killing instead of, you know, people, we call it war and invest it with faux virtues like honor, duty, and sacrifice. By enabling this mass delusion soldiers make us all liars and hypocrites. More Evil than any soldier, though, are officers.
Politicians: If soldiers are Evil and officers are even worse, then politicians are really blackhearted infernal vermin. It is the job of a politician to maintain power and order through a steady diet of war, police enforcement, and ideological vitriol. The ideal accomplishment of a politician is for foreign enemies to be murdered, domestic foes discredited and imprisoned, the populace confused, afraid, or infused with a fanatical fever, and the status quo absolutely unaltered.
Other Evil servants of the Evil God Mars include: Mercenaries, Defense Contractors, the Media, Police Officers, Security Guards, Customs Officials, a variety of Government Functionaries...
Servants of the Morning Star himself...
Clergy: Few professions have the deleterious effect on humanity that the clergy do. Not only do clergy justify every form of gross moral abuse and ease the troubled consciences of many a murderer, sexual predator, and thief, but clergy serve by their very existence as a universal excuse for the irreligion and vice of lay people. It is a stroke of pure Evil genius that the presence of a clergy person can at once represent a harsh esteem-crushing judgmentalism and perpetual indulgence for unsavory behavior. Furthermore, a clergy-person's claim to metaphysical authority bestows upon them an unimpeachable power of persuasion over the weak-minded. It is, of all the professions, one of the most Evil.
10 comments:
Sweet! Chemists are off the hook. :)
Awesome pastoral strategy, tell your congregation that their jobs are evil. Dude you are really on the cutting edge of ministry. I guess I should be glad that you've decided building low income housing is same. Now I can sleep at night.
Obviously with the Austin Powers references and the self-deprecating denunciation of clergy at the bottom this was meant in total seriousness without a hint of irony. Equally as obviously the correct pastoral strategy is to tell everyone that they should stay just as they are, that loving God doesn't involve any kind of transformation or anything and that Greed and Murder are cool with Jesus. Jesus definitely doesn't approve of humor though.
I guess I'll have to repent in sackcloth and ashes. I wonder how I'll ever be able to sleep after having Craig disagree with me?
Oh, I understand, you are the only one allowed to attempt humor here. I'll begin the self flagellation now as I've obviously failed miserably.
Dude, you take yourself to seriously. Lighten up.
As long as we are all needlessly beat ourselves, and launching futile sarcastic barbs at each other. I'd hate for anyone to be left out.
Craig - this seems to happen when about half of your (many) comments on our blogs. Maybe if you followed sarcastic/humorous things with a smiley face or something? Because I've been consistently unable to tell when you're being self-righteous, and when you're being ironically self-righteous...
Doug,
I'll try to do better, personally I think the smiley face thing is just an excuse for people to say nastier things to each other. But, I'll try just for you guys. ;)
For the record, I'm rarely self righteous. I just can't compete. ;)
Craig,
That last comment was very clever.
When you say you can't compete, are you saying that other people think you are more righteous than you consider yourself, or are you saying that other people are more self righteous than you?
(thus making your self more truly righteous than them?)
Either way...
I forget my philosophical terms - what do you call something that is self-refuting?
Jodie,
When I say I can't compete;), I mean I cant compete;). Because certainly no one who regularly posts on this blog could ever be thought self righteous;).
Seriously for a moment, anyone who actually knows me (rather than the caricature of me that exists here)would laugh to hear me described that way. But hey, it's all good.
So maybe we should all lighten up, but that's just me.
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