Goodwill or God’s Will?

A lesson often learned the hard way in each of our spiritual journeys is mistaking goodwill for vocation. Sometimes we feel deeply about an experience we have, whether it be on a mission trip or even a documentary, and this feeling leads to a decision: we are to go where those people live to help them (you fill in the blank: escape poverty, experience wholeness, hear the gospel), never giving attention to whether or not God has equipped us or called us to this critical juncture. Instead we raise the funds, buy our plane tickets, and begin the journey.

I’ve seen this many times before. One comes to mind of a few college friends who, after returning home from a year abroad, decided God had called them to go back to Europe to bring the gospel to this post-Christian part of the world. Needless to say, they returned home a year or so later, with little to show for it, minus perhaps a few great trips across the European continent. Henri Nouwen experiences a similar journey and describes it in his book, The Road to Daybreak:

My trips to Latin America had set in motion the thought that I might be called to spend the rest of my life among the poor of Bolivia or Peru. So I resigned from my teaching position at Yale and went to Bolivia to learn Spanish and to Peru to experience the life of a priest among the poor. I sincerely tried to discern whether living among the poor in Latin America was the direction to go.

Slowly and painfully, I discovered that my spiritual ambitions were different from God’s will for me. I had to face the fact that I wasn’t capable of doing the work of a missioner in a Spanish-speaking country, that I needed more emotional support than my fellow missioners could offer, that the hard struggle for justice often left me discouraged and dispirited, and that the great variety of tasks and obligations took away my inner composure. It was hard to hear my friends say that I could do more for the South in the North than in the South and that my ability to speak and write was more useful among university students than among the poor. It became quite clear to me that idealism, good intentions, and a desire to serve the poor do not make up a vocation.

Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak, Doubleday Publishing.