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+---
+title: Figuring things out
+description:
+  I thought I needed to 'figure things out'. Here's what I did instead.
+pubDate: 2025-06-23
+---
+
+# Figuring things out
+
+'You could always do a Panic Masters.' In my last year of undergraduate studies,
+that was often the sort of advice we liked to console one another with. A lucky
+few people in my year had a clear sense of vocation, but most of us felt
+confused.
+
+Not that we lacked options - graduating with a good degree from a good
+university, we were lucky to have a great deal more options than most people our
+age. We went all sorts of directions. Some followed the money, going into big
+boring management consultancy, big bad tech companies or startups swimming in
+venture capital. Others wanted something more noble, and pursued teaching or the
+third sector. Others still went travelling the world on a shoestring or worked a
+low-skilled job living with their parents, hoping to 'figure things out'.
+
+I thought I needed to figure things out. But I was sure I wasn't going to do
+that by pulling pints, going on holiday, or staying in the university (even
+though I felt passion for academia). I needed something different, something
+that would move my life forward, and ideally, something that would pay the
+bills. Then, maybe after a year or two, I would have a better idea of what
+longer-term future I saw for myself. This, I thought, is the way to start
+figuring things out.
+
+But by January of this year (2025), nothing seemed to have changed. I was still
+working in the same job. I hadn't discovered a passion for software engineering.
+Nor had I discovered a passion for anything else. I was more skilled, I suppose,
+but I didn't have any clearer ideas about how the skills I have should guide me
+into any career into particular. I had looked at other jobs, but not made many
+serious applications. I had applied to a Masters programme in 2024, got an
+offer, turned it down, and applied again in 2025. I was disappointed that I
+apparently hadn't made much progress.
+
+So I vowed to do something about it. I promised myself to study the matter. I
+wanted to know what route to pursue. And, being Christian, I thought, I had to
+figure out how to leverage my theological resources to answer this question. I
+believed that God would have a path set out for me, and so I had to find out
+what it was. A friend told me I needed discernment. That, I thought, was what I
+needed to do - discern the will of God for my career.
+
+I supposed, what God willed me to do in general was quite obvious -- he wants me
+to live in line with the gospel. But that doesn't say much about my career
+choices. So I expected to find something a little more specific. I didn't expect
+to find it in the Bible directly, of course, as there's not much about software
+engineering in the Bible. But maybe the Holy Spirit was trying to nudge me in
+the right direction, and I just needed to figure out how to hear him.
+
+By the way, if you're not a super-spiritual sort and this is starting to sound a
+little kooky, I'm with you -- but I didn't see any other possibility. After all,
+what else could 'discernment' mean in practice, if not 'discerning' some still
+small voice?
+
+So I studied. I got myself copies of some tracts, including Tim Keller's [_Every
+Good Endeavour_][every-good-endeavour] and William Taylor's [_Revolutionary
+Work_][revolutionary-work]. These writers showed me how I had for so long been
+stuck in a view of work which didn't make sense and wasn't leading me anywhere.
+I came away shaken off from how I had been thinking before, and given a new
+perspective from which to start re-thinking my attitudes to work. It's been
+exhilirating, and I recommend both books to anyone for whom work is a major
+concern (but especially to those who, like me, are already infected with
+middle-class thinking, or those at risk of catching it).
+
+The will of God for my life really is as simple as I had feared. What God wants
+for me is the same as what he wants for everyone: to live in line with the
+gospel. God probably doesn't have any special extras for me personally. If the
+Holy Spirit does want to speak to me and wants me to hear it, I can trust him to
+make that happen, and in the meantime, I can carry on listening to God's words
+in the miraculous way he has already provided, not in private whispers but in
+the blinding clear public light of the testimony of the Bible and of the Church
+to Jesus Christ.
+
+I still have unanswered questions about my future career. But my angst is gone.
+
+My angst is gone because I see now I was asking the wrong questions. I wasn't
+really anxious about which career I ought to pursue. I perceived -- rightly --
+that I had been called to walk a narrow path in a life full of junctions. But
+this led me to think that for me, those junctions are mostly about my career
+choices. It followed that the career choices I faced had the power to lead me
+astray from God's way if I chose wrong. Without a map charting the way ahead,
+without a rule by which to determine which was God's way and which the wrong
+way, I feared that my career choices were a dangerous gamble. If I got it wrong,
+I wouldn't be a genuine follower of Christ, I wouldn't genuinely be trying to do
+what's right, and I wouldn't be fulfilling my God-given destiny.
+
+What I didn't see was that I had re-worded the world's anxieties in God-speak.
+It sounded reassuringly pious, but it wasn't right. In fact, it was idolatry.
+
+As I observed at the start of this essay, a large part of my generation of
+university graduates, Christian and non-Christian, share this angst. Most
+wouldn't word it in Christian-sounding God-speak. They might say they're worried
+about fulfilling their potential. But it's the same angst - the fear that if you
+don't choose the right career, you won't be living life to the full, or you
+won't be making the most of your talents and passions, or you won't be genuinely
+doing what's right, but just following the rest of the world into a lukewarm
+career-ladder rat-race. I hadn't 'leveraged my theological resources' at all:
+I'd only leveraged my theological thesaurus.
+
+I think the scales fell from my eyes when commentators brought me back to the
+New Testament's advice on work, which doesn't talk about career choices at all.
+Since Jesus calls all his followers to enter by the narrow gate (Matt 7:13-14),
+likewise, Paul urged the Ephesians to 'live a life worthy of the calling which
+you have received' while arguing that Christ has given different gifts of
+service to each of us, his workers (Eph 4:1, 7-13). But almost all of the people
+Jesus and Paul were addressing had very little control over what work they were
+doing. Indeed, almost all people in the world today have very little control
+over what work they do. The paralysis of choice that I face is also a rare
+privelege. But that means that, when Jesus calls his followers to enter by the
+narrow gate, and Paul urges Christians to use their gifts of service, they can't
+possibly be primarily talking about career choices: most of their audience
+didn't have careers and they didn't have choices. They just had work, and if
+they didn't carry on working, they wouldn't eat (2 Thess 3:10).
+
+The narrow gate is not about choosing the right career in a world of options.
+The narrow gate is choosing to trust God in a world of temptation to worship
+anything else.
+
+Nor does Paul encourage us to switch jobs until we find our God-provided perfect
+match of talents and passions to service. Indeed, some of his most powerful
+encouragement and advice to Christian workers is addressed to people who had
+almost no control whatsoever over what work they did: slaves (eg Eph 6:5-8). In
+two areas where people did have some limited control, namely, circumcision and
+marriage, Paul advises the Corinthians that 'each person should remain in the
+situation they were in when God called them' (1 Cor 17:24).
+
+So God's will for me in my situation is the same as it is for everyone else: to
+come back to our father when he calls. In practice, accepting the good news of
+Jesus Christ means continually confessing my sin and repenting of it. And that
+means being turned inside out: no longer turned in on myself by sin, but turned
+outside onto God my father and onto my neighbour in love.
+
+Nor is there any need for angst, because this is the good news: that we have all
+already failed to fulfil our God-given purpose, which is to love God and one
+another. If we felt angst, it was justified, and indeed the situation was far
+worse than we feared. But despite that, Jesus Christ has made a way for us to be
+acceptable, and if we trust in him, we are permanently secure; free from fear,
+and free to turn back, however faltingly, to the way we were made to be.
+
+For me, this has changed how I think about my career choices.
+
+I've come to see that my career choices are a rare privelege, and something I
+should thank God for. It's also a responsibility to take seriously, as it's an
+opportunity to choose between service and self-service.
+
+I shouldn't choose a career just because it's easy, and I should seek out
+careers with opportunities to serve, and commit to using the opportunities I
+have in whatever work I'm doing to serve. I shouldn't choose a career just
+because it fits my university-educated, middle-class prejudices about what work
+is dignified and what isn't; what kind of job counts as a 'proper job' and what
+is 'dead-end'.
+
+I also shouldn't choose a career just because it's perceived as 'noble'. The
+world needs carers, teachers and preachers. It also needs principled, committed,
+competent white-collar workers making sure that certain boring, technical,
+invisible systems work well. These systems make caring, teaching and preaching
+possible. Through my own experience, I've been humbled by brilliant people in
+front-line jobs doing amazing work, but I've also seen how important those
+tertiary systems are.
+
+I also shouldn't dwell too long on my career choices, paralysed by an irrational
+angst that the value of my life hangs on making the right decision. I should remember
+that Jesus calls everyone alike, although most people don't have anywhere near as
+much power over their own career as I do. And I should remember that, as a result, God
+will use pretty much any line of work for his glory if I commit it to him.
+
+So I shouldn't choose what's easy, nor what's perceived as noble, and nor should I be
+paralysed by choice. But what ought I do instead?
+
+Instead, I should commit my work to God right now, starting from this morning. I don't
+have to wait until I find a perfect career, because I will never have a perfect career.
+God can use the line of work I'm already in for his glory, and if I don't believe that,
+I'm not just doubting myself, I'm doubting him. I should trust his power. And when I
+do have career choices, I should commit those to him too, not fretting endlessly as if
+one career is holy and another damned, but prioritising service to God and others over
+myself and trusting God with the rest.
+
+Comfort, elitism and moralism are all forms of idolatry. I can toil endlessly
+pursuing any of them and never be satisfied. But instead, I can rest easy in the
+knowledge that my place in God's family is secure, and work hard knowing that
+whenever and wherever and however I make sacrifices for the good of others, God
+is working through me and by me, even though I fall far short of fulfilling my
+potential and my God-given purpose.
+
+I haven't 'figured things out'. As it transpires, there wasn't anything to
+'figure out'. I was saddled with angst at a phantom problem, which my knowledge
+of the gospel should have told me did not exist. I cannot earn my worth on
+earth. But because of Christ, my value is secure. Because of that, I am free to
+work without snobbery, without shame and without angst for the sake of love and
+in the certain hope that in the end, by God's work, not mine, everything will be
+figured out.
+
+[every-good-endeavour]:
+  https://uk.10ofthose.com/product/9781444702606/every-good-endeavour-paperback
+[revolutionary-work]:
+  https://uk.10ofthose.com/product/9781910587997/revolutionary-work-paperback