Lie: Secular things pollute the sacred
Truth: We need to integrate the secular with the sacred.
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. — Colossians 1:16
. . . your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven . . . — Matthew 6:10
We walk through the world and live our daily lives oblivious to the glory that surrounds us. Most days and hours are unavoidably filled with the mundane, the daily tasks of preparing meals, eating, personal hygiene, driving to and fro, standing in line, and on it goes. In all these things God is apparently absent, at least our passive minds tell us so. We may acknowledge Jesus’ parting promise — ‘I am with you always . . .’ but it certainly doesn’t feel that way. But why?
Our modern world exacerbates the problem. Today in the developed world we chase after so many things. We have cars and jobs and houses cluttered with a thousand things we rarely use. These things demand our attention, even if only for a few seconds at a time.[1] Consequently our lives fragment and each day it gets a little harder to keep all the pieces of our lives together.[2]
And because so much of our focus is on things, we have less and less time for people. Much of the time we experience those people as things, as objects, that is, as screen images (Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc), or audio signals (phone), or text messages or emails or Instagram emojis. All these mediations dilute the person’s real presence, and the more we rely on these artifacts, the less we benefit and bond with the real person. Thus things — mostly man-made things — dominate our vision.
We also live our lives more indoors as compared to 100 years ago, and so we increasingly separate ourselves from the created order and the glory of God inherent in it. According to The National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS), a resource for assessing exposure to environmental pollutants:
. . . the average American spends 93% of their life indoors. 87% of the life is indoors, then another 6% of their life is in automobiles. That’s only 7% of your entire life outdoors. That’s only one half of one day per week outdoors. Ouch.[3]
What I’m describing are some of the characteristics of modernity (the phenomena of the modern world that we now assume to be normal, but historically, are not). These phenomena affect us all profoundly, even if we’re not really aware of them. These and other related things act as barriers to seeing and experiencing the ‘extraordinary in the ordinary,’ the ‘sacred in the secular.’ We find it harder to see the ‘forest for the trees.’ The good news is that seeing the barriers for what they are can help us overcome them and instead see what’s been there all along — the glory of God, even in the secular.
But what does secular mean and why do we so easily assume it exists separately from the divine?
secular — From the Latin saeculum – the present world. a. ‘Of or relating to the worldly or temporal, b. not overtly or specifically religious.’
By definition, the secular only exists in reference to, that is, as compared to the ‘religious’. So the full-time pastor is fired and must now get a ‘secular’ job, that is, not a religious one. Or a Christian school, whose curriculum has been purely religious up until now, decides to teach ‘secular’ business. But the question is, is this a valid distinction? Is the secular devoid of religion? Is the present world devoid of . . . God himself?
Why God seems absent from the secular
It should be self-evident, but the reality is that God created the world in two fundamental domains. Simply stated, those domains are the spiritual and the physical, ‘the heavens and the earth.’[4] But both exist simultaneously and in the same place. The spiritual overlays or superimposes on the physical world; or you could say (from the spiritual point of view) that the physical overlays the spiritual world. Or said in another way, the physical world is ‘enchanted,’ wondrous; it has an atmosphere, an ambiance, an aroma. We try hard with words to describe the spiritual, but it’s nonetheless real. And it’s not just created with smart décor and good lighting.[5]
Both the physical and the spiritual worlds have substance but in different ways.
And we humans are both physical and spiritual. We cannot NOT be. The only way that the physical and spiritual can separate is if the living thing dies. In a word, death is the separation of body and spirit.[6] But when we ignore or are unaware of or are even unappreciative of the spirit, it sits dormant or becomes captivated by other spiritual entities or both. [7]
Mundane vs Idolatry
Let’s bring it down closer to home.
Imagine you’ve just finished your Bible study on Tuesday night and you’re feeling the afterglow. Then, you go home and prepare to go to work in the morning as a shoe salesman. You almost immediately lose the glow and start to dread work, wishing you could extend the time that you’re feeling so close to God. What’s wrong with this picture? Should there be such a separation? Is God really absent from the shoe store and only at Bible studies? Of course not; the truth is that there is no barrier at all to God, he is just as present and able in the shoe store as in the Bible study. The only barrier is the lie in our minds that the spiritual and the secular are separate.
But there’s more.
Let’s say you come home from the Bible study and then collapse into your recliner and start watching TV. Your attitude and feeling immediately change. Your attention is captivated by the ‘secular’ program and you forget all about God. So where is God now?
We must be careful in parsing this. The objective truth is that God is still present as the man sits in his recliner, glued to the TV. But the TV program is now ‘in charge.’ The man has willingly submitted his mind to whatever may be presented to him. Highly-produced television programs are so sophisticated and powerful that a well-produced program can captivate and ‘drug’ an audience into a zombie-like state of mind and there is plenty of scientific research to back this up.[8] Not all programs, but most network programming is designed to act in this way.
So in some sense, even though God is present, when we submit our minds to another master, it ceases to be simply secular, and subtly becomes sacredly idolatrous.[9]
That’s not to say that all TV programs are sinful, but in today’s world, we must be careful. And it’s not just TV that is the problem. We must reject any other media or system that stands opposed to God. This includes computer applications, social media, AI, the internet, games, music or any system designed to transport you into a false world where it’s claimed that God does not exist or where false gods are sacralized and worshiped — where they’re made ultimate, untouchable, taboo, or — dare I say — sacred.
Let’s be clear then. In some cases, what we may call secular, is not devoid of the spiritual at all. We simply need to learn to recognize and acknowledge the God who is already there in that present world. But we also need to learn to watch out for systems that are subtly anti-God and ‘sacred’ where they try to exalt wealth or power or charisma or sexual allure or intelligence or any other thing as a god that promises a pseudo-salvation from our felt weaknesses.
So our mundane necessities can be just as filled with the Spirit as any church service. But the anti-god idolatries obviously cannot be; they try to form spaces subtly designed to (without our awareness) remove the true and living God — to enable us to imagine a world void of God’s reality — to make it seem so ‘natural’ that God need not enter the equation of our lives at all. Or, if he must remain, to then reduce him to the irrelevant, the ancillary or the imaginary.
Secular simply means ‘not overtly religious,’ and includes all sorts of mundane daily things. So the truth is that these things can be full of God’s life and presence. For example, while we’re driving to work, we can and should fill the car with singing and praying; while we’re cooking, we can do the same; even while we’re doing our jobs, whatever they may be, we can bring Him into the workplace with us and do His will: speaking the truth, caring for people, defending the weak, and we can do it all in His name. He is no less there than in the sanctuary on a Sunday morning.
Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. — I Corinthians 10:31
[1] On top of that are the ‘switching costs’ or ‘task switching’
[2] See also my article series: LIE: I can’t get involved because I don’t have enough time, energy or resources, part 1, part 2, and part 3.
[3] http://snowbrains.com/brain-post-much-time-average-american-spend-outdoors/
[4] See also my article: LIE: Heaven is not connected to earth
[5] See also my article: LIE: God is a vast impersonal force
[6] See also my article: What is death?
[7] It’s beyond the scope of this article but it’s worth pointing out the the Gnostics taught that essentially the physical world is bad and the spiritual world is good. But the truth is that God made both realities very good. See also my article: LIE: I will be satisfied if I learn the secret knowledge of the world.
[8] For example see US Patent 6506148-B2 Nervous System Manipulation by Electromagnetic Fields from Monitors
[9] See also my articles: LIE: Idolatry is rare, part 1 and part 2.