Paul had a secular skill as a tent maker. That term referred to a wide array of actual products made from heavy fabrics, leather and rope. As you might expect, he could also do sails and ship rigging. In some contexts it could include the likes of even making shoes and equestrian tackle.
His secular calling bore some analog to his mission calling. The idea of buying a tent was to free you from needing a regular building. You could carry a substantial shelter in a much smaller package, set it up as needed, and take it down all in just a short time. Paul was equipping souls to travel lightly in this world so they weren’t burdened with the normal load of secular care.
I’m the same way; my faith mission has a distinct secular analog. While the standard term for what I do is administrator, my secular calling is decentralizer. It covers a wide array of things, but the overall effect of what I do is reducing people’s dependence on centralized organization and controls. It’s how I do religion and is a direct result of my embrace of Noah’s Covenant.
The idea is to make people less dependent. So my advocacy of Open Source software is an example of breaking down centralized controls and making people independent from Big Technology. But it has an even greater obvious connection to how I do political analysis. It’s not just my mind, but my very heart radiates with a glow of depending on God, not man.
In Paul’s day, the Judean Kingdom was fading into insignificance. He was directly involved in breaking down it’s earthly authority. Meanwhile, Rome was still expanding and quite strong, so Paul made it a point to teach people how to live with that.
In my day, the US is dying. It’s part of the demise of the West in general. I’m prepared to directly engage that breakdown. A part of the breakdown is the rise of the Networked Civilization, so I’m trying to teach people how to live with that.
The difference is that my secular calling is more than an analog; it’s an obvious and direct extension of my mission calling. You should hardly be surprised that I keep calling for a rise in nationalism and an end to the tyranny of centralized control promoted by both globalists and imperialists. Every opportunity to get directly involved in weakening those two forces, I jump at it.
On top of that, I’d bring to the task a radically different value system. I wouldn’t fit too well into most political organizations because they are totally Western in nature. They would see some of my morals as immoral; I can assure you the feelings are mutual. I’m banking on God’s hand of wrath manifesting in ways that promote His revelation, and that would be the Laws of Noah. So I’m prepared to invest time and energy in pursuing that alternative moral frame of reference in society, politics, religious politics, the virtual world — in every way I do this one thing.
Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14 NKJV)
As far as I’m concerned, this is just obeying Christ.
