Life Work: On the Christian Idea of Calling

released 4/1/1998

Paul Marshall, author of A Kind of Life Imposed on Man, discusses how society and the Church have understood work throughout history, and what positive ramifications we might expect to see if Christians began to understand their life at work as part of their life in Christ. On part two, Os Guinness, author of The Call, explains how vocation and identity have lost their theological moorings among Christians.

62 minutes

PREVIEW

The player for the full version of this Conversation is only available to current members or listeners with a legacy account. If you have an active membership, log in here. If you’d like to become a member — with access to all our audio programs — sign up here.

Related reading and listening

Discernment of personal mission — Thomas C. Oden on how he came to understand his vocation within a slow growth toward orthodoxy
Medical tools and the shaping of identity — C. Ben Mitchell and Carl Elliott examine how we form judgments about bioethical questions, and how various medical capabilities form us. (27 minutes)
Our commerce, our selves — Thomas Frank argues that the anti-establishment ethos of the counterculture was not a new phenomenon in the 1960s but was already present in corporate America long before the Beatles showed up. (23 minutes)
“. . . improvising a raft after shipwreck . . . ” — Gil Bailie on symptoms and sources of the postmodern self adrift
The existence of the “self” — Joseph E. Davis talks about the concept of identities and why some social theorists have questioned the very existence of selves. (14 minutes)
Craftsmanship and the infallible judgment of reality — Matthew B. Crawford on the psychic satisfactions of manual work
Six recent books worthy of note — Ken Myers shares a summary of six recent books that we want our listeners to know about but whose authors we won’t be interviewing. (15 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 118 — FEATURED GUESTS: Gilbert Meilaender, Ron Highfield, Mark Mitchell, Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Helen Rhee, and Peter Brown
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 115 — FEATURED GUESTS: Arlie Russell Hochschild, Andrew Davison, Adrian Pabst, Gary Colledge, Linda Lewis, and Thomas Bergler
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 102 — FEATURED GUESTS: Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Lew Daly, Adam K. Webb, Stratford Caldecott, James Matthew Wilson, and Thomas Hibbs
Digital equality and the untuning of the world — Lee Siegel analyzes how web-based pursuits of unique identity is so unbounded that personal definition becomes impossible.
Christine Rosen: “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism” — Christine Rosen examines how social networking is changing the shape of relationships for millions of Americans, and affecting our understanding and experience of friendship. (50 minutes)
David Aikman: “One Word of Truth: A Portrait of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn” — In this essay, David Aikman offers an engaging and lively account of the dramatic and sobering events of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s life. (107 minutes)
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 74 — FEATURED GUESTS: Russell Moore, W. Bradford Wilcox, Joseph E. Davis, Barrett Fisher, Jeanne Murray Walker, Darryl Tippens, and Paul Walker
Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 70 — FEATURED GUESTS: W. Wesley McDonald, C. Ben Mitchell, Carl Elliott, Richard Weikart, Christine Rosen, and Dana Gioia
Free trade zone for preferences — Philip Turner examines “the subversion of Christian belief and practice by the logic of autonomous individualism”

Life Work: On the Christian Idea of Calling

PREVIEW

Related reading and listening

Keep me informed