The Wrong Question

Abstract

Calling or vocation are words often used, but they are chimaeras, and, unfortunately, we have no Bellerophon to conquer these illusive creatures. Google has 743,000 pages with "vocation" as the subject. When professor Bob Cochran of Pepperdine Law School asked me to be a speaker at the Symposium, I said at once that I didn't like the title. I've had a personal aversion to the word "religion" since becoming a Christian in 1970. Religion to me stresses organization to the detriment of relationship. Little did I realize, that as I contemplated the title, "Can the Ordinary Practice of Law be a Religious Calling," that I would have a larger issue with the term calling. If you had asked me then, if I was called to be a country lawyer, I would have, with deep conviction, told you, yes, and that my "calling" was no less from God than the calling of a priest or pastor.