Whatever Happened to Diversity?

I have been reading summaries from Gene Veith’s book, God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life. Dr. Dennis Johnson of Westminster Seminary has been feeding me notes and commentary. Also, the book, The Call by Os Guinness has been helpful.

Some words from Veith, an article on work: “God is graciously at work, caring for the human race through the work of other human beings. Behind the care we have received from our parents, the education we received from our teachers, the benefits we receive from our spouse, our employers, and our government stands God himself, bestowing his blessings.

The picture is of a vast, complex society of human beings with different talents and abilities. Each serves the other; each is served by others. We Americans have an ideal of self-sufficiency and often dream of being able to grow our own food, build our own homes, and live independently of other people. But our proper human condition is dependence. Because of the centrality of love, we are to depend on other human beings and, ultimately and through them, on God. Conversely, other people are to depend on us. In God's earthly kingdom, we are to receive his blessings from other people in their vocations.

The purpose of one's vocation, whatever it might be, is serving others. It has to do with fulfilling Christ's injunction to love one's neighbor. Though justification has nothing to do with good works, vocation does involve good works. The Christian's relationship to God is based on sheer grace and forgiveness on God's part; the Christian's relationship to other people, however, is to be based on love. As Wingren [a Swedish writer] puts it, ‘God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does.’”

And now read the old Scottish Adam Smith from his The Wealth of Nations,

“But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely.”

The current office of the President and his cabinet want us more and more to move to centralization so that there’s a one-size vocation fits all, all dependent on government, not a God-dependent citizenship that’s stirred by an appropriate person to person self-interest, and thus, a mutually dependent, neighbor to neighbor productivity and fruitfulness, all according to one’s own skills, training, desires, and experiences. I thought we were at the intersection of “To Each His Own,” Boulevard and “American Diversity” Drive? Whatever happened to diversity?

G. Mark Sumpter