Mr. Obama and the Christian doctrine of vocation

On the eve of his inauguration as our country's 44th president, Barack Obama is urging Americans to engage in "Community service". This exposes a fundamental misunderstanding that he has about what it means to be a productive member of society. By "community service", I'm guessing that he means by this is that I am supposed to engage in some activity to help and serve my neighbors without expecting anything in return.

Unfortunately, this assumes that what I do "for a living" is not part of my service to the community and that what I do "at work" is just me looking out for my own selfish interests so that I may receive a paycheck.

The Christian doctrine of vocation since the Reformation has always taught that productive members of a society will engage in producing useful goods and services for their neighbors because this is what God intended for them to do. In return for this contribution, I receive from others part of their contribution to society so that as we all work together in this way, all of our needs are met. In our society, we abstract the value of this contribution in the form of currency which we trade with one another.

Obama seems to want for the producers...those that are contributing goods and services to society to donate not only their money...but now their time to those who in many cases are making next to no contribution, not because they can't, but because they won't.

I resent this. Every day that I get up for work, I am performing service to the community by helping educate the next generation of citizens for this country...but apparently this is meaningless to Mr. Obama.