Recently, Todd Parker and I have been discussing what it means to be Reformed. Both of us grew up in Protestant families and churches. In 1996 we attended Covenant Theological Seminary together. Both of our fathers are elders in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Todd and I often become euphoric talking theology, amazed as we are at the power of God, that He is three in one, that He is transcendent yet immanent. We love to sip imported beer and discuss these things – as well as all the latest films and cultural events. After all, we're Reformed!

For the past five years, Todd and I and our families have been part of a rather outgoing church that centers its life around ministry: gospel preaching, education, adoption, feeding the hungry, providing housing for the poor, and so on. Our church is a place of racial boundary-crashing – the leadership tries very hard to foster a diverse congregation, believing that to be an expression of the grace of God. After all, it is God's nature to love His enemies, to reach out to the weak, to embrace those who are unlike Himself. In our economically and ethnically stratified nation, our church's vision is not only holy, but timely. It is a solid local application of eternal principles.

But like most Christians in our denomination, Todd and I and most of our Christian friends have tended to stay fairly detached from active ministry. Our workdays are spent in professional occupations, while our spare time is dominated by cookouts, sports, reading, writing, and traveling. It seems that our generation's (late 20s/early 30s) mentality is that it's just as God-pleasing to engage in a secular vocation as it is to minister to the poor. By implication, we believe that going to concerts and movies, becoming connoisseurs and critics, is just as valuable as preaching the gospel to unbelievers. We believe that we must be sharp culturally in order to glorify God in a holistic way, to shine His light into every corner of the universe. We reflect His image as creators.

Often, our work becomes sanctified not through its substance, but through its dedication: "to the glory of God." It follows that we see our work lives as spiritually neutral, a kind of demilitarized zone. We see ourselves as subduers and cultivators, and we believe that the sheer fact that we are working faithfully and with the fruit of the Spirit means that we are doing the will of God. Our objective is to do our job well, whatever that job may be. This has been my own self-image for as long as I can remember. We believe this because we've been taught this, but is it true?

The source of much of the Reformed view of culture is God's command to Adam in Genesis 1:28: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it." Due to the influence of 20^th-century theologian Herman Dooyeweerd, this verse has become known as the "cultural mandate." After the Fall, the command is modified to a curse: "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground" (Genesis 3:19). The "cultural mandate" stems naturally from the design of creation; this world is set up in such a way as to necessitate the work of man to make it blossom. We plant, we prune, we manage. Things grow beautifully – but since the Fall, plants, as people, grow up only to return to dust.

Another source of this Reformed view of secular service comes from the writing of another 20^th-century theologian, Francis Schaeffer. He looked around at the then-fundamentalist Christian world and asked, where are our lawyers? Doctors? Artists? And he was right, at the time. But the problem that now looms is that many of our Christian doctors, lawyers, and artists, are not carrying the gospel into their professions. I must include myself here as well: a poet and teacher. Most of us are not spending our free time in service of the needy. We attend worship, we tithe, but there is little fervor for missions. There is no sense of urgency.

There is no evidence in Scripture that Genesis 1:28 has been abrogated, but there is little mention of it in the rest of the Bible. The focus changes from civilization-building (i.e., the design of the tabernacle) to broad evangelization. In fact, Christ instructs the fishermen to abandon their trades – to drop their nets and follow him, to make disciples of the nations. The call of Christ is so urgent and radical that one disciple-apparent is not even allowed to go home to take care of his father, who is either dead or dying (Matthew 8:22). As to the curse of work, followers of Christ find harbor: water becomes wine, 3,000 are fed, then 5,000. At Christ's miraculous instruction, the disciples catch 153 fat fish.

I think that we, especially as Americans, labor under a false, romantic notion of work, a notion that has swept away our sensibilities as Christians and left us "redeeming culture" with little real direction. Our ideology is shot through with sentiments such as are expressed by Walt Whitman in "I Hear America Singing":

The Bible does not romanticize man's daily work; it is portrayed as laborious, sweat-inducing, and ultimately vain. The book of Ecclesiastes expresses the meaninglessness of laboring under the sun ("meaningless" appears 35 times in Ecclesiastes). The Bible is not even partial to the work of the scholar, the critic, the pundit. Isaiah 29:14 says, "The wisdom of the wise will perish, the intelligence of the intelligent will vanish." Paul paraphrased that passage even more strongly: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. The intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate" (I Corinthians). Our clawing after tangible things, our efforts to improve the human kingdom and become knowledgeable, are vain enterprises in and of themselves.

Our outlook must be shaped by the knowledge that physical death may come this evening. After all, we are very transient creatures: "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:13-14).

Furthermore: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:19-21).

I know that there's more to being Reformed than exploring and cultivating the created world. Reformed theology's contributions to Christianity also include its view of church structure, of the accessibility of scripture, and of means of salvation. I don't reject any of those things. Also I do not intend to reject culture per se, not at all. I want to see it flourish, ultimately, and I want to be a part of its flourishing. I don't want to form my life and community around a negative rejection of human society (as the Mennonites do), but around a positive acceptance of God's will that the nations be evangelized with the gospel.

But I do call into question our generation's aloofness when it comes to participating in church ministry, and our value system that embraces the good things of the world as more important (if not in theory, certainly in practice) than the things that apparently should form the core of Christian life on earth: gospel preaching and ministries of mercy. Perhaps we have reacted too strongly against the fundamentalism of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. We have misinterpreted Schaeffer. In doing so, we have become people desperately in need of correction, people that must rearrange our lives according to God's desire for the repentance of the nations. Does this mean we should leave secular trades? That question lies between each person and God; certainly salvation does not hinge on whether or not one enters the "full-time Christian ministry." It is not so much an issue of what we do with our time as it is an issue of our motivation, which I believe has become overly accommodating of the secular world.

We should pattern ourselves after a man who had no comfortable place to sleep at night – who sweat blood – who wandered in the desert fasting for forty days in preparation for ministry that involved no redemption of cultural forms. He spent his time with hookers and bureaucrats, extremely unsophisticated and undesirable people. The elite Saducees could not figure him out. The children of God who expected Jesus to rebuild Jerusalem could not understand his actions. They thought he was wasting his life.

"To condemn the world and to enjoy the world are things contrary to each other. How then can we condemn the world which we are born to enjoy? Truly there are two worlds. One was made by God, the other by men. That made by God was great and beautiful. Before the Fall, it was Adam's joy and the temple of his glory. That made by men is a Babel of Confusions: invented riches, pomps and vanities, brought in by sin. Give all (saith Thomas a Kempis) for all. Leave the one that you may enjoy the other."

–Thomas Traherne, Centuries

A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good–except God alone. You know the commandments: `Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'"

"All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.

Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

–Luke 18:18-25

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel–not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."

Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things–and the things that are not–to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God–that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."

–I Corinthians 1:17-31