Sacred or Secular?

How often have you heard someone say, I’m not religious, implying that one can either have a sacred or secular nature. But for a moment let’s get a better understanding of what these two words mean.

Secular in earlier Christian times was understood to mean of the world as opposed to Sacred referring to the church. So in grammatical terms, Secular is an adjective that describes something that does not have any connection to church matters or religious matters. Whilst Sacred is an adjective that describes something holy, something religious or connected to God.

Now here is the problem. If as in yesterday’s devotional we stand by the first verse if Psalm 24 says, “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” then there is nothing that is not connected to God.  As Paul writing to the Roman’s put it, “nothing can separate us from the love of God. So is the dichotomy between the secular and the sacred a human construct. 

A W Tozer puts it this way, “It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular; it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act.” It is therefore important that our spirituality must not be seen as a separate compartment marked sacred whereas real life is lived in all the other compartments marked secular.

The early Celtic Christians believed that nothing was secular because everything was sacred. Nothing is outside of God’s love and grace. It was a “holy worldliness” to use Bonhoeffer’s phrase where a holistic approach to life was expressed daily in the real incarnational ordinariness of life as it is. There was no false divide between the sacred and secular. Where an integrated life, of body and soul, work and worship, wonder and ordinariness; prayer and life are the norm. A sacramental outlook that because it sees God in everything, encourages a reverence for God’s creation and a respect for the care of his world. An everyday spirituality of ordinariness accessible to all. It is what Julian of Norwich believed that “The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything."

Prayer

Lord, open the eyes of my heart. Heal my shortsightedness, my farsightedness, and the astigmatism of my soul. I want to see all things from your perspective, including the hope to which you have called us. To see with eyes of hope means that I will be able to discern your heart and hand at work everywhere. Amen