The recent emphasis on the spirituality of the routine that I call attention to in my previous blog has taken me back to my Reformed roots.
The father of Presbyterianism, John Calvin, begins his Geneva Catechism this way:
Question 1. What is the chief end of human life?–That men should know God by whom they were created.
Question 2. What reason have you for saying so?–Because he created us for this, and placed us in the world, that he might be glorified in us. And it is certainly proper that our life, of which he is the beginning, be directed to his glory.
Question 3. What then is man’s supreme good?–The very same.
Question 4. Why do you hold this to be the supreme good?–Because without it our condition is more unhappy than that of any of the brutes.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism does a nice job of combining Calvin’s points into a memorable first Q & A:
Question 1. What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
The Reformed tradition teaches us that we are to glorify God in everything we do. This is the purpose and goal of human life. Whatever our vocation, whatever our task, we are to undertake it with a desire to bring glory to God. I have come to prefer the expression “worshipful work.” I recall being told in seminary that one should even sweep the floor to the glory of God!
C. S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory, rejects the idea that certain activities in the culture (such as learning) are more spiritual than other activites (such as cleaning). He writes:
“I think it was Matthew Arnold who first used the English word spiritual in the sense of the German geistlich, and so inaugurated this most dangerous and most anti-Christian error. Let us clear it forever from our minds. The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly `as to the Lord.’ This does not, of course, mean that it is for anyone a mere toss-up whether he should sweep rooms or compose symphonies” (55-56).
Lewis goes on to say that each of us is different in terms of our upbringing, talents and circumstances. We are responsible to discern our vocation in life. I would add that even composers must do mundane things, perhaps even sweep their rooms! A composer brings glory to God with every aspect of his or her life, not only with writing music. It is the whole of life that is spiritual.
The passage from Lewis brought to mind a similar point that was made by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. Even if it does not fall in the category of one of the so-called big professions, do it well . . . If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets so well that all the host of Heaven and earth will have to pause and say, `Here lived a great street sweeper, who swept his job well’” (I Have A Dream: Writings & Speeches, 20).
Lewis and King illustrate that the view that the whole of life is to be lived to the glory of God is not Reformed in particular, it is more broadly Christian. But surely those of us in the Reformed tradition, who have learned this from Calvin and the Westminster divines, should welcome the recent trend in spirituality that seeks to affirm the spirituality of our daily routine as well as our sporadic creativity.
