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 and William Taylor’s 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.