16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
When you are assessing a potential endeavour, there is the consideration of how the task and demands of a given career are going to impact one’s ability to faithfully discharge other duties. You have duties beyond the workplace. We do not diminish those duties; they are central and important. There are great mission fields in addition to other things. There are other duties outside the office, outside the workplace. Will the occupation being considered demand such time from me as to imperil the duties I sustain to my own soul, to my family soul’s, to my church? While one’s labour is a central aspect of life, it is not the only aspect of life. Christians have duties to let the Word of Christ richly dwell within them—duties in secret prayer, duties with reference to the Lord’s Day, fundamental to which is the attendance at the stated meetings, the duties of the fourth commandment (sanctifying the Lord’s Day). How does a given profession bear on that? Fathers have duties to be actively engaged in bringing up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Husbands have duties to lead and love their wives. These duties and others cannot be rationalized away on the basis of overwhelming demands at work. Negligence of fatherly and domestic duties, inconsistency with duties to nourish one’s own soul to be integrated into the life of Christ’s church cannot be excused due to occupational pressures. The point is, the consideration of the assessment of a vocation must bear in mind, a broader framework of biblical priorities and goals.
Again, in the language of W.B. Sprague, in his Lectures to Young Men, he writes: “You ought to beware that you do not neglect other collateral duties of equal or even greater importance, that is in the interest of your work. If there is danger that you may not engage with sufficient earnestness in the duties of your worldly vocation, there is danger on the other hand that you may become so intensely occupied by them, that they will lead you to forget that you have anything else to do in the world that can make money or hunt after fame.
You have various duties to perform towards your fellow men from which nothing can absolve you. You have duties to your family, to your friends, to the community in which you live. You also have duties you owe more immediately to yourself and to God, such as the reading of Scripture, devout meditation, private devotion. Everything that enters into the cultivation of the soul. You must never pursue any worldly vocations so eagerly that you shall not give yourself time to fulfill all these various classes of duties with rigid fidelity. That kind of diligence which looks with a cold eye on the obligations you have to God and exhaust itself in efforts to gain the world—no matter in what form—poisons the comfort, mars the character, ruins the soul”. Another way of saying that is: do not imperil your soul in the interest of your vocation. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? What does it profit a man to gain the whole world of an imminent career, great career success, lucrative compensation, but do it at the expense of his family, at the expense of his conscience, and at the expense of New Testament churchmanship? What kind of bargain is that? It is the fool’s bargain.1
George McDearmon
34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.