THE SACRED INVADES THE SECULAR

Benjamin Robinson | July 17, 2015

In my previous post I called for a trans-religious, rather than a non-religious, expression of the Christian faith. The heart behind this distinction is my concern that we be careful not to swing too far in the opposite direction in reaction against the legalism of the past two centuries. Till now I’ve spoken in positive terms regarding the call for the deconstruction of the sacred-secular divide. In this post I want to make it clear that my support for the call for the deconstruction of this divide must be qualified. I do believe that Christians should be deeply involved in culture and make an impact there, but that does not mean that there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular . . . it simply means that culture is not the right starting point for making that distinction.

We must continue to distinguish between the sacred and the secular, between the Spirit of God and the spirit of the age, between the clean and the unclean. Just as I am concerned about the misidentification of the distinction, which has led to the isolation of the church and the deadening of the Christian impact, I am equally concerned about the rampant carnalization of the contemporary church.

On the one hand, we have distinguished the world and the gospel to the point at which the gospel can have no impact upon the world. On the other hand, we have so thoroughly integrated the two that there is no longer a discernible distinction between the lifestyle of the Christian and the lifestyle of the unbeliever. We have so thoroughly broken free from the prohibitions of our legalism that we have become lawless. Now we drink, smoke, cuss, chew, fight, gossip, and engage in illicit sexual activity just as much as everyone else . . . because we aren’t under the law anymore, right?

The problem is not the making of a distinction . . . we desperately need to make a distinction. The problem is that the right kind of distinction is not being made. The distinction is not properly made by means of religious ritual: that is the point of deconstructing the divide. Just because something is religious doesn’t mean its godly, and just because something is non-religious doesn’t mean it is ungodly. The sacred rightly invades non-religious realms, and religious realms often embrace and perpetuate the spirit of the age.

Heart, Not Culture

The proper starting point for differentiating the sacred from the secular is not culture. We must extract our definitions of sacred and secular from our cultural preferences. The proper starting point for making the distinction is the heart, not the outward appearance.

Contemporary Christianity is guilty of a gross overvaluation of words. When we criticize something, we are typically attacking the veracity of its words. And when we affirm something, we are typically affirming the veracity of its words. In order to make a proper distinction between the Spirit of Christ and the spirit of the world, we must go beyond the outward appearance of things. Stamping what we do with Christianese does not make it sacred. Right theology does not make a right heart. The Ephesian church had right theology, but Jesus indicted them for the deficiency of their hearts. You’ve lost your first love.

What about the guy who pretended to be dying of cancer and wrote the song, Healer? The song he wrote and performed was very Christian, from a propositional perspective . . . it was sacred. But the spirit in which he performed it was highly secular. His motivation was not the Spirit of Christ, but the spirit of the world . . . the desire to be seen, to be portrayed in a particular way. He wanted his song to be hugely popular, and he thought he could help it along by fabricating a historical context for the song that would make it more emotionally engaging. For all intents and purposes, his song is very Christian. But the spirit in which he performed it was very non-Christian.

Paul Washer said that when he heard LeCrae and others rap, what he heard was not so much a kind of music, but a proclamation of the gospel. It was the heart for the gospel that shown through the musical expression, not simply the orthodoxy of the words that comprised the songs.

Beyond the Rules

We must stop making hard and fast rules for determining what is of God and what is not. Our rules are incapable of penetrating the outward appearance of things. God looks at the heart, and we will only succeed in rightly distinguishing between the clean and the unclean as we begin to focus on the heart and not the outward appearance.

But this will require discernment. The woman with the spirit of divination (Acts 16:16-18) said all of the right things. These men are servants of the Most High God. They have come to tell us the way to be saved. What she said was right . . . she had a very orthodox theology. But she wasn’t right . . . she had an evil spirit. Even the demoniacs spoke truth in the presence of Jesus of Nazareth (Mark 1:24): I know who you are–the Holy One of God. But Jesus would not allow them to speak because their hearts were under the control of Satan. What they said would have passed the canons of orthodoxy, no doubt. But before the court of Jesus, they did not pass muster because of who they were.

There are sacred moments . . . kairos moments in which God is astoundingly present . . . moments that burst the bounds of the normal, that exceed the parameters of our quotidian experiences. To say that there is no distinction between the sacred and the secular is to say that these moments don’t exist. But they do exist, and they are to be distinguished.

Perhaps the assault on the distinction between the sacred and the secular intends simply to burst the boundaries within which these moments can occur. The sacred is not confined to the religious; the sacred invades the secular on a daily basis. Every secular moment is pregnant with sacred possibilities.

There is also the demonic . . . a realm that represents not only the absence of the sacred, but the antithesis of it. In the mundane and quotidian experiences of our daily lives, we await the explosion of supernatural grace that bring us into an encounter with the sacred. In doing away with the distinction, we simply wish to assert the spiritual neutrality of our normal experiences. Faith creates the space within the normal for divine revelation to unfold itself.

But the demonic is not a neutral realm; we do not patiently wait in expectation in the presence of the demonic. We resist . . . we stand our ground . . . we fight . . . we wage the good warfare.

Saying the right thing is not unimportant, but we have a long way to go in ensuring that our orthodoxy (right precepts) is balanced by orthopathy (right passions) and orthopraxy (right practices).