Christians Become "Professionals"

In order to enter into a profession - medicine, dentistry, nursing, engineering, cooking, building, or what not, it is necessary that you “yield yourself” to your training or apprentice days to obtain a fixed know-how of the profession. In due course, through these training days, your profession of know-how takes you over, and you call yourself by the name of the profession. Then, with that know-how settled in you as you, you are totally free to express your will by operating your know-how and making a living by it.

You start by choosing or taking over the profession, and you progress to having the profession take over you. You express yourself through the profession. THERE NEVER WAS A HUMAN WITH A “NATURALLY BORN” KNOW-HOW!

In my own case, I made up my mind during my teenage years that I wanted to enter a profession. I had always had a talent for science and math, so it seemed logical to me that some kind of engineering would be best. I had constructed balsa-wood model airplanes and thought that aeronautical engineering was a possibility.

Now my father was a professional, a dentist, and I had seen and appreciated his work. He never tried to push me toward dentistry but was wise enough to set an example and let me choose. He wanted me to be led toward my own desires. All that he would say was that “it was great to be your own boss!” Of course, he understood that no professional is ever his own boss, but rather that the people he serves are his “boss”.

After high school, I decided to enter a pre-engineering curriculum at St. Louis University with the intention of entering Parks College of Aeronautical Engineering. As it happened, many of the classes which I took were shared with pre-dental students and I came to know a number of them. When they heard that my father was a dentist, they suggested that I really ought to look at dentistry. There was a lot of science in dentistry and, as a practical thing, my father could really help me get established.

After consideration, I switched to a pre-dental course of study which made my father very pleased. His non-coercive approach and good example had paid off.

After my pre-dental work, I was accepted to St. Louis University School of Dentistry. Dental school was hard! I did good academic work in the sciences. The work with my “head” was very little trouble. But the practical work with my hands seemed very difficult. I had never had a talent for fine, delicate work with my hands. Even the work on the balsa-wood airplanes which I did as a child did not come easy. I was forever breaking the wood or messing up the glueing operation. But I enjoyed the finished product.

Finally a turning point came by which the profession which I had taken over TOOK ME OVER! As you know, dentists do much of their work looking in a small mirror image of teeth in the mouth. And in a mirror, everything is reversed - left is right, right is left. It seemed like I would never learn to work in a mirror. I inevitably moved my instruments in the wrong direction.

After fighting the mirror during three or four months of practical work on a model mouth, the turning point came. There came a day when, as I started working and looked in the mirror, my brain reversed everything and I just naturally moved my instruments properly. This “mirror-reversal” is a phenomenon which I have since discovered among my fellow dentists is almost a universal experience. From this point on, you feel like you are a part of dentistry and dentistry is a part of you.

I have gone into detail about my professional training for a purpose. CHRISTIANS BECOME PROFESSIONALS. A person chooses, because of his circumstances and by the influence of God, to become a Christian - to make Jesus Christ the Lord of his life and to be a devoted follower of Christ. He chooses to enter the Christian “profession”.

Now he doesn’t know much about this profession or his “talent” for it or how he is going to fit into it. But he sees that, from the way he was going before, he needs a way of life which is redeeming and fulfilling. And God reveals to him that the Christian “profession” is the only truly fulfilling spiritual profession.

In dental school, I had to learn from my professors and from practical situations. Well, at my conversion and new birth as a Christian, my Professor, Jesus Christ Himself, comes to live in a union with my human spirit. He takes what talents I have, and the many that I do not have, and proceeds to make me a professional. At conversion, I receive the nature of God, the nature of Christ, the nature of the Profession. The rest of my human existence is a growth in awareness of how the Profession has taken me.

I start out by looking in that professional “mirror” and invariably moving right instead of left, and left instead of right. I have to constantly think about the way things actually are compared to the way they seem to be in the mirror. I am now forever a child of God and not just a weak human, unprofessional slob who can’t seem to get things right in my own power and ability. I have the professional power of Christ within to teach me and lead me. The Profession has chosen me - but I must, on a daily basis, choose to operate my Profession.

Jesus said, “I can, of My own self, do NOTHING! As I hear, I judge. And My judgment is just because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father” (John 5:30).
He said, “I am in the Father and the Father in Me ... the Father that dwells in Me, He does the works” (John 14:10).
While Jesus lived as a man on this earth, He had to learn the Christian Profession from His Father within. And we must do the same, trusting in and learning from our indwelt Professor.

And what is the true function of a “profession”? It is to use the powers of the profession outward to others. There are tangible rewards to the workings of a human profession. A dentist has satisfaction in a finished product of a filling, a crown, a denture or just a healthy mouth. He receives a tangible monetary reward also. But the profession cannot and does not stop there. The true function of the profession is the relief of pain in others and the outgoing concern for their dental health.

The Christian Profession, in this respect, is the same. We receive tangible earthly and spiritual rewards by functioning within our Profession. But the basis of our Profession is outward to others. We are to demonstrate Christianity outward to others. We are to make them see, as it is possible, the reality of spiritual things.

Every human is born with a measure of neutral ability and a vast potential of application, somewhat like a computer which must have its programmer. In that neutral ability, once “naturally” driven by Satan’s self-for-self nature, but now equally driven by Christ’s self-for-others nature, we function freely in the Christian Profession as though ourselves. But ever inwardly, we know it is He, the Professor, as we.

THIS IS HOW ANY PROFESSIONAL OPERATES HIS PROFESSION: AS IF IT IS HIMSELF, THOUGH IT IS THE “NATURAL” EXPRESSION OF THE KNOW-HOW WHICH TOOK HIM OVER AND NOW OPERATES HIM.

If things are looking somewhat distorted and backwards in your Christian “mirror” right now, never fear. Apply yourself to your Profession and the reversal phenomenon will come. It is all part of professional growth.

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