The Call

The Call
Os Guinness
W Publishing Group (1998)
This is a powerful book about the purpose of life and discovering God’s call. The author first gives a foundation of the reason for pursuing meaning to life through a relationship with God. He gives an overview of the many different aspects of calling which are often confused or misrepresented in modern society.
The author argues that we can only find our purpose in life by responding to the call of Jesus Christ. This is the only way that we will ever find our true selves. He argues that most of everything that our modern, Western culture directs us to in the area of life purpose is false. He also argues that this is true amongst secular and Christian movements in our modern culture such as the prosperity gospel that is being preached in many American churches. He also goes into great detail about what he calls the Catholic distortion and the Protestant distortion. He argues that both of these distortions are crippling followers of Christ from fulfilling the roles that they were meant to fill in a society. Followers of Christ must first and foremost be called into life purpose for the Audience of One (God).
Most of the chapters in the body of the book cover the aspects of calling such as listening to God, giftedness, passion, heroism, morality, personal calling, corporate calling, journeying, vision, embracing the ordinary, gratitude, suffering, rejection, timing, and finishing well as a follower of Christ. Also, the chapters cover the various pitfalls of the pursuit of calling such as the temptations of conceit, envy, greed, sloth, secularization, privatization, and pluralization.
This book is strong in the deep insights that the author gives to the subject of calling. The stories at the beginning of each chapter are very interesting, and they provide a solid foundation for the main points. I honestly found no limitations in the content. Many profound points are clearly presented on each topic in each chapter (and seemingly in each paragraph).
I actually had to reread much of this book over and over again. It seems at the first read as though the author is presenting fundamental information that should be relatively basic. However, the fundamental information is presented in such a profound way, and with such unique anecdotes, that I was forced to wrestle with my own calling and worldview during the reading of each chapter. It took me a long time to read this book because I really slowed down to process everything that the author was trying to say.
My favorite chapter was about how calling impacts vision. Guinness provided a quote from T. E. Lawrence that I will never forget. Lawrence wrote about vision, “All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.” I would absolutely love to life a life with that kind of vision and purpose!