sacred vs. secular

Sacred and secular: I absolutely hate this dichotomy. I know I’ve written about this before, but things have occurred this week to remind me how much I hate it. To create this dichotomy means that we are vastly limiting god, and ourselves.

It seems to me that this distinction is more about giving ourselves boundaries. If we make a separation between sacred and secular art, or music or film then we can prohibit our children from being “harmed.” We can create walls to keep ourselves, families, and churches from experiencing risk. Unfortunately what we often get instead is poorly produced “christian-ized” junk, or plagiarized products like pseudo vans shoes with jesus written on the side, vastly overpriced and made by children in the third world (I know an exaggeration). What is the matter with simply having vans. We wall ourselves up and create our own Christian ghetto and for what? What safety are we giving ourselves. People still fail, priest’s and pastor’s still destroy lives and communities, our divorce rate in the “sacred” world has more divorce than the “secular” world, and our people still hurt, suffer, and live in addiction and pain. The walls of separation between the sacred and the secular don’t work. They don’t protect our children and they don’t truly create safety.

Why because this distinction isn’t real in the way we understand it. God is present in all. God is present in the world which is profane (the actual opposite of sacred) and that which is sacred. Trying to make the world a better place shouldn’t mean we create our own ghetto. In my understanding of what the way of Jesus calls us to, we should live in the fullness of the world bringing love, hope, peace, grace, creativity, passion, vision, etc. that abiding in that which is “Wholly Other” (Eliade) draws the world to god because he makes us more creative, more loving, more hopeful, more passionate, etc.

Enough with this rant. I’m going to a “secular” restaurant tonight while driving in my “secular” car listening to “secular” music, and if you make it to church on Sunday or catch us on-line you might think I am a “secular” pastor but be careful if you hope this offends me because I might take it as a complement. :)