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Editorial
Mark D. Allen Executive Editor, “Faith and the Academy” Executive Director, Center for Apologetics & Cultural Engagement
THEOLOGY OF THE PROFESSIONS This issue of Faith and the Academy is the second of a two-part series on faith integration. Last fall, we looked at the theology of the academic fields. We discussed the integration of our Christian faith in specific disciplines such as literature, engineering, education, art, osteopathic medicine, humanities, business, social work, library science, nursing, and music. In this issue, we begin a dialogue about the integration of our Christian faith in the professions. We are working toward developing a theology of the lawyer, the counselor, the interior designer, and the professor. Let me share with you a personal example of how a shift in my theological perspective toward my work made all the difference in the world for the way I view my work and how I now work more hopefully. In 2005, it felt like a big, fat F had been recorded in the blackboard of my professional life. Fifteen years of my life – some of the best years from age 29 to 44 – had been one big failure. What happened? The church that I planted and pastored in suburban Richmond, VA voted to close. My life’s work seemed to unravel in just a few days. When I resigned as pastor to pursue a career in teaching, I never expected the elder board of my church to spend an hour or two in prayer that very afternoon, and then decide to put an end to the church.1 The church followed their lead and voted to terminate the church. I was shocked, especially since no controversy caused me to leave. I never imagined all those years – the struggles, the victories, the memories, the people – would end just like that; I had failed. I carried that burden with me for many years. Any success in my professional life was always haunted by yesterday’s professional failure. But that changed when my new theological perspective transformed the way I view my work. Can you imagine the encouragement I felt in the summer of 2018 when I read in Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church N. T. Wright’s comments on 1 Corinthians 15:58?
... what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that’s shortly to be thrown in the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to be dug up for a building site. You are — strange as it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself — accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world — all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. That is the logic of the mission of God. God’s recreation of his wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God’s people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ in the present will not be wasted. It will last all the way into God’s new world. In fact, it will be enhanced there.2 So, N. T. Wright, you’re saying all the good intentions that I had, all the prayers I prayed, and all the efforts I invested are somehow building life in the next world and shaping our existence there? Even if my efforts seem to come to nothing here they are making something eternally beautiful in the new heaven and the new earth? That’s awesome! Suddenly, all those years turned from an F to an A, because God made it that way. The unfinished ventures and forgotten efforts may look like a failure to people in this world, but they are of eternal significance to God and his new heaven and new earth. You may be thinking, “That’s all well and good for someone who is doing ‘the Lord’s work,’ but does that
