How come no asians ever feel called to be plumbers? (1/3)

What our calling is seems to be one of the two most frequent question among young adults, this question of what career does God want me to pursue? (who I am supposed to date being the other popular question, which I have already tackled in previous posts)

I was at a management training course for work once and was sharing about the volunteer pastoring that I do at Westside Hamilton. One of the ladies asked me in front of the class what were the common issues that I counsel undergrads about. I shared about this idea of an identity crisis, that I often hear the question "What am I going to do with my life?!?!". The class reaction was clearly ageist. The younger half nods vigourously and the older half just erupts in "I was that silly at your age too" laughter.

I have observed undergrads, for whatever reason increasingly so over the last ten years, obsess over this idea of calling as a career; a full-blown quarter-life crisis if you will. Many of them then end up pursuing the quarter-life equivalent of a Porsche: a graduate professional degree and job.

This is going to be a shock for some of you. Even though career is often represented as a spiritual topic, the bible has almost nothing to instruct about vocation other than you should have one. In fact the word "calling" is never used in the bible to refer to a career (seriously, do a search. I will go over it next week). It is always a reference to the character and eternal destiny we all should be pursuing as followers of Christ (when used as an abstract concept, not "calling" across the room). God does not seem to care much about our specific vocation. Rather He focuses on who we are, rather than what we are, wherever we go.

Yet forging careers is what most young believers dedicate themselves to, obsessing over professional schools  and persistently applying to one after another, as if they would not fulfill God's destiny for them otherwise. The question of our lives has now become what and where versus who and for whom. We let our significance rest on what we do and where we do it rather than who we are becoming and who we are living for. We build our identities on our careers and our life progress, rather than our character and how we represent our saviour's holiness and grace.

I say asians only because those are the Christians I encounter most, but I have always wondered why there are never any young asian Christians who feel "called" by God to be a garbageman, or a plumber, or a mechanic? Or really any profession other than law, medicine, accounting, engineering, entrepeneurship and all their secure and prestigious off-shoots? Could it be that God has destined all asians to be high-level professionals? That God has told all of us asian young believers to spend most of our time and energy attaining professional statuses?

Or are we being tricked into thinking that God wants us to spend ourselves pursuing what are really just the things of this world?

We will look at "calling" in the scriptures next week.