Mercy, Agency, and Calling

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”¹ So opens the Veggie Tales adaptation of the Hebrew story of Esther, with narrator Eric Metaxas quoting a line from Shakespeare in a Brooklyn accent. Here we see two truths: the enigma of how people discover their calling and the enigma of how a Brooklyn accent solidifies Shakespeare’s street cred.

We shall focus on the first truth and leave the second one for the diner over burgers and fries.

But seriously: How do we walk in our calling? What is our role? Is it up to us? Is it up to some divine conspiracy? Is it “whatever will be, will be” or “it’s all up to me”?

Yes.

Let’s turn our thoughts away from Veggie Tales and Shakespeare to the Matrix, a sci-fi classic from the 90s depicting a post-apocalyptic world where vegetables no longer exist. Here we see the same enigma of calling played out in a symbolic way perhaps easier to decode than talking cucumbers with crowns. Neo is the prophesied chosen one (“the One”), and yet Neo has a choice to make: take the red pill and take up his destiny, or take the blue pill and return to forgetfulness and going through the motions of an artificial life.²

We, too, are chosen, and we, too, have a choice to make. We can lay it aside and assume the patterns of life we are immersed in, patterns that abruptly end when we die. Or we can choose to give ourselves wholeheartedly to that which, as best we can tell, is somehow connected to who we are truly wired to be and translates beyond this present life. All of us make this choice whether we are conscious of it or not: Do we tap into how we are wired, or do we tap into the wiring of the artificial life offered us? As with Neo, the choice is ours.

But we see how the first choice—the pre-pill choice, if you will—is not ours. To employ Matrix terms, there is a prophet figure, an  “Oracle” who foresees “the One.” Likewise, we should ask, who is the prophet in our own story? Who sees who we really are? It is our Creator, who lives outside the matrix of our passions with a fierce commitment to free us from it for a life of creative possibilities.

The ancient, original term for this freedom is called mercy. There are two kinds of mercy, and we would do well to hope for both. There is the kind of mercy that lets us off the hook or gives us a pass, and rare is the day when we don’t appreciate this kind of mercy. But there is another mercy more robust in its benefits: the mercy that heals, restores, and commissions us into the life we were made for.

Victor Hugo’s classic Les Misérables presents both kinds of mercy, which set the stage for the whole epic. Vagabond Jean Valjean (“Prisoner 24601”) experiences both kinds of mercy from Bishop Myriel, who is hosting him at his home. That night, Jean Valjean steals from him and strikes him down, but he is soon apprehended by police and destined for a life sentence of hard labor.

Watch the opening portions of the 1998 film adaptation starring Liam Neeson or the 2012 musical film adaptation with Hugh Jackman, and you will get the picture of what happens next. The bishop who could have condemned him both frees him and gifts him with financial solvency. Both mercies transform Jean Valjean and launch him into his calling to lead with the life-giving energy of self-giving love.³

Now, like the bishop in Les Mis, the mercy we receive is the Creator’s choice. He exercises agency to make it possible. He chooses, on His own initiative, to provide a way for us to return to our original wiring—our calling, if you will. And in so doing, the Maker Himself models for us what we, too, must do.

In light of His mercy that a better life is possible, even an abundant one, we must flee the matrix. We must lay hold of His mercy. We must exercise agency. As it is written:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. (Romans 12:1)

To be a living sacrifice means, among many other things, bowing out of all options except the one we know we are to pursue. It is as if we choose one door to enter while a thousand others remain forever unopened, and written upon each one we forsake are the words, “What might have been.” But the door we do open we do so by faith that it leads, after many hardships that train us, to where all good things are possible.

And in this way, we discover that the most important element of our story is not dithering on the question “Am I called?” or “Do I even have a calling?” but rather, “What choice shall I make among the choices before me? What one brave thing can I do today?” For it is in exercising agency that we fully discover the mercy He has frontloaded into our story. It is in exercising agency that we find our calling. 

“Therefore, since God in his mercy has given us this new way, we never give up.” (2 Corinthians 4:1, NLT)

© Kurt Mähler

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1. Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 5, Lines 144-145. Eric Metaxas gives his best Brooklyn accent as he narrates Esther—the Girl Who Became Queen in this 2003 Veggie Tales adaptation of the Book of Esther.  ↩︎
2. See minute 1:33 in this five-minute summary of The Matrix (1999). The Matrix in Minutes | Recap ↩︎
3. Victor Hugo was a secularist and a skeptic who nevertheless knew all good things must somehow come from life-giving roots. To explore how this novel has its roots in the Faith, see Bishop Robert Barron’s  “Victor Hugo’s Retelling of the Gospel” and Pastor John Piper’s “The Gift of Victor Hugo.” The movie versions greatly reduce Bishop Myriel’s role, which is central in the book plot.  ↩︎