According to their own testimony, God has called Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum to run for President. God has even, reportedly, called Mike Huckabee to keep his cushy media job and not to run.  There is no shortage of coverage of these divine vocations. Much of the writing on the subject is barely pronounceable due to the tongue’s affixation to the cheek.  One writer after another jokingly complains that God needs to figure it out, make a decision and get with it.

One friend even joked that we should lay off God, who is no doubt getting old, and perhaps a little senile.  Other writers imply that the candidates are really hearing the voice of their own ambition, or lack of it—but the important thing to note is that they’re hearing voices, and that’s just plain trouble. OK. I get it.  It’s funny.

But, what does it mean to be called?  A calling or a vocation seems to imply a relationship of some kind: a caller and a called.  Here is a sketch of a few approaches:

Classical Christian Theism: If you think the caller is God and if you think God is all powerful (which is the meaning of ‘almighty’), that would mean that no other creature has power—God has all the power, remember—and that would mean no one really has a say anyway: whatever happens is what God wants, so stop worrying about anything, since the status quo is the tautological evidence for what God wants.  The funny thing, to me, is that these Christian candidates would no doubt say that God is like that: almighty, that is.

Organic Relational Theism: Another Christian perspective would see a God who shares power, a God who works by the tender, loving allurements that emerge in our hearts.  This alternative Christian perspective would take seriously the fact that Christ called followers never by an act of coercion—but always only through persuasion.  We must not forget that almost everyone who laid eyes on Jesus, and literally heard his actual voice was not convinced, was not persuaded.  And when they were not, he did not resort to authoritarianism, to bullying, to insistence.  In fact, his tender care that none should be lost (A.N. Whitehead) meant that he would not resort to violence of any sort, but instead became a victim to violence, rather than a perpetrator.

In other words, the calling of God, as we learn it from Jesus, manifests in the real world as real and incarnate facts, and has the character of authentic love that  never coerces, but instead persuades, urges, and beckons. And our response is free and possible because this is a God who does not hoard all the power.

Buddhism: For a Theravada Buddhist,  who shares the Buddha’s agnosticism about God (and all ultimate questions) what could it mean to be called—because who is ‘calling’?  There is a vast world of samsara, of breathtakingly complex and unimaginable interconnectedness of all beings (known as pratitya-samutpada).  It is this unfathomable network of cause and effect that stretches out in every direction, linking every being with every other being that is the energy behind the law of karma.  That world of (what Thich Nhat Hanh calls) ‘interbeing’  provides each of us with every new emergent present moment—a present moment pregnant with the data of what is possible for our life, and what is not.

In this way, the whole cosmos conspires to urge us into making a decision (in each moment) of how to respond.  What is the cosmic voice urging me to do? Who is the cosmic voice luring me to become?

Atheism, Agnosticism, Humanism: The Buddha’s refusal to answer questions about God, or what I think of as his vital agnosticism, requires answering questions of meaning without resorting to the supernatural.  Perhaps that attitude can even be useful to atheists.  To discern a calling, we require self-knowledge and sensitivity to the world around us.  Humanist and atheist Chris Stedman has said, “A calling blossoms when you see a need in the world that aligns with your passions, and you dive into addressing it head first. This can happen whether you’re an artist or a social worker, whether you’re young or old, and whether you believe in God or not.” I think he’s right.

Now, back to our Republican Presidential candidates. Most of the satirists who are being so uncharitable to the manifold divine callings are forgetting what it means to be human.  To be human is not to experience utter, absolute success in every endeavor.  To be human means that sometimes we fail.  It is categorically impossible for every being on the planet to succeed in all its efforts.  The success of one means the failure of others.  In the language of vocation: you can be called to fail.

Rick Santorum has compared his calling to that of Moses.  Unless I am reading the life of Moses wrong, that patriarch failed plenty: not the least of his failures was the fact that he never crossed over into the Promised Land.  Santorum (Cain, Bachmann, Perry, etc.) might be called to run, or even to lead, though he may never lead, and he may never be President.  But that doesn’t mean we should mock him for struggling to discern his calling.  He may be called to fail. In fact, they might all be called, only to fail in the end.  At the most, only one might succeed in being elected President in 2012.

Martin Luther King, Jr.  also compared himself to Moses, and foretold how he like Moses might not pass over into the promised land with the people.  In his famous final speech, he said this:

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.”

He didn’t get there with us.  The conditions were insufficient for him to succeed in that way.

Mother Teresa said, “God has not called me to be successful; He has called me to be faithful.”

What do you think?  Can many people be called to run for President? Have you ever answered a calling, only to fail?  And has your attitude toward that failure changed over time?  Has a failure ever given way to new horizons of possibility?

Listen carefully for the invitation of God, the cosmic whisper, the unfolding events in our actual world…  I think they are calling us to become a new creation together, even if the way is punctuated by failure.