There Is No Such Thing As Secular
“Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NIV).
When I was a kid, I would always smash all my food together and eat it. Mom would make fried chicken, peas, corn, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and rice and gravy, and I’d swirl it all together, except for the chicken, and eat it like a hot, mushy salad.
Many of us are careful to keep our food separated, just like we compartmentalize our lives. We have our work life, family life, church life, and on and on. There are also occasions when we verbally and literally speak to God, connect with God, and invite God to join us, and there are occasions when we never even consider God as being a part.
For the Jews of all time, including today, prayer has always been the method used to remind them that everything in the world belongs to God and is for His purposes.
The Jews, including Jesus and Paul, have a prayer or a benediction for everything. These prayers or benedictions are called berakhot, translated in English as “blessings.” A blessing is a prayer of thanksgiving to God. It is not a prayer of power or effectiveness upon an item, situation, or place, but a prayer of thanks for the item, situation, or place. In other words, we don’t bless food; we bless God for the food.
The Jews pray a blessing for every part of life. There is nothing that is secular. All things are sacred, set apart for God, but not all people honor God in them. Think about music. All music belongs to God, but not all music is honoring to God. Still it belongs to Him. Whether it honors God or not is up to God’s people. That’s why it’s so important to pray a blessing to God for everything, reminding ourselves that God is always present and expecting to be honored.
The Jewish rabbis taught, “It is forbidden to a man to enjoy anything of this world without a benediction, and if anyone enjoys anything of this world without a benediction, he commits sacrilege” (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 35a). –Marvin Wilson, Our Father Abraham, page 157.
"Secular" did not exist in the Jewish mind, but in the Greek mind it infiltrated the theology of the church. Eusebius of Caesarea in the 4th century said, “There are two ways of life for those of us in the church. The one devotes itself to the service of god alone, while the other, more humble, more human, permits farming, trade, and other more secular interests. The first is the perfect form of the Christian life while the other represents a kind of secular grade of piety.”
Praying a blessing to God for everything is a good way to remember to give Him honor no matter what we are a part of. It’s much more difficult to do something that is sinful, when we remember that after we are finished enjoying it, we will be thanking God for providing whatever “it” is.
There is an ancient rabbinic story called “The Rabbi and the Exceedingly Ugly Man” that reminds us that everything is God’s.
“On one occasion Rabbi Eleazer son of Rabbi Simeon was coming from Midgal Gedor, from the house of his teacher. He was riding leisurely on his donkey by the riverside and was feeling happy and elated because he had studied much Torah. There he chanced to meet an exceedingly ugly man who greeted him, ‘Peace be upon you, rabbi.’ He, however, did not return his greeting but instead said to him, ‘Raca [‘Empty one’ or ‘Good for nothing’] how ugly you are! Is everyone in your town as ugly as you are?’ The man replied; “I do not know, but go and tell the craftsman who made me, ‘How ugly is the vessel which you have made.’ When R. Eleazer realized that he had sinned he dismounted from the donkey and prostrated himself before the man and said to him, ‘I submit myself to you, forgive me!’” –Brad H. Young, The Parables, page 9.
Giving thanks in all circumstances, good, bad, beautiful, and ugly, helps us to keep all things in perspective…God’s perspective.
Forever learning,
Johnny
8 comments:
You should read "Emerging Churches" by Eddie Gibbs & Ryan Bolger . . . They have a chapter that teaches this evry truth. The chapter is entitled “Transforming the Secular Realm.”
The idea is that there is no secular or sacred realm but rather all is sacred. Emerging churches use secular music and offer biblical interpretations of the music. When they hear the song they remember the new translation and think about the message of God.
See you at OC!
Blessings,
Hey Bret,
I am looking forward to seeing you there.
Thanks for the book suggestion. I will take that suggestion and suggest a book to you: "The Art of Exceptional Living," by Jim Rohn.
This is a book on CD and is life changing. This book is life changing. Did I tell you that this book is life changing.
Grace and peace,
Johnny
On CD? Let me borrow it . . . bring it to OC.
See you there!
I had lunch with your daughter today. Too cute!
Caden was crying in the car and she would look at him and whisper, "Stop."
It was funny.
Can't wait to see you guys.
To go along with what Bret said, in Revolution Rob taught the kids to sing Amazing Grace to the tune of "Chain Hang Low." (lyrics to it can conveniently be found on Kristy's blog). It's pretty interesting that the rappers used that same concept by taking the tune of "Do Your Ears Hang Low" to create their "Chain" song.
Of course, isn't that how we got many of the songs found in the SA songbook??
To be sure, the definition of secular that is to be assumed from this article is one meaning "not belonging to God." With that concept in mind, all things belong to God, and, therefore, nothing is secular.
We make things "secular" when we use them for purposes not honoring to God, the owner. For example, sex is a beautiful ordained gift of God. Pornography is a non-God honoring use of the sacred act. Still, sex belongs to God.
Thinking of all things as belonging to God, rather than saying one thing belongs to God and another doesn't, helps us to see that we have a choice, the choice that Eve chose to take, which is the knowledge of good and evil, or the ability to use God's creations for good or for evil.
In the end, we will all realize that our Father's treasures are still his treasures whether we use them to buy medicine or illegal drugs, use a knife to heal or kill, write a book to incriminate or encourage.
Nothing is secular.
Hi Johnny. I can’t believe that I am actually replying to your thoughts, because once it is written…then it is evidence! But here I go. I love to read the letters from prison by Bonhoeffer and his thoughts on secularization. He is the creator of the “God of the Gaps” and “Religionless Christianity”. Bonhoeffer was a product of the war in Europe and the enlightenment age that produced Deism. It was the age of reason and God was becoming less believable and less needed. As science unraveled some of the mysterious unknown truths of the universe we found the Church struggling to define God. He became the God of the Gaps. Whenever we did not understand something…it was God. The problem of God became apparent as we knew more and more and God diminished. Bonhoeffer thought that was ridiculous and challenged our understanding.
So, he proclaimed that our world/culture has been through a maturation process and is now entering adulthood.
"So our coming of age forces us to a true recognition of our situation vis-à-vis God. God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get along very well without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who makes us live in this world without using him as a working hypothesis is the God before whom we are ever standing. Before God and with him we live without God. God allows himself to be edged out of the world and onto the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us. (Letter of July 16, 1944.)"
It is fairly clear how the meaning of these passages can be put to work in our day. This is, first of all, a rather untypical Christian reading of modern intellectual history. The movement toward secularism, autonomy, away from God, is approved not so that secularists will applaud, but for theological reasons: i.e., dependence and need are not proper descriptions of man’s relationship to God. Bonhoeffer invites us to accept the world without God as given and unalterable. If there is to be a God for the modern world, he will not be found by renouncing the world that can do without him.
"There is also, in Bonhoeffer’s vision of the world come of age, a rejection of religion as salvation either by transmitting the individual to some protected religious realm, or even as protection from something that, without religion, a man might fall into, like despair or self-righteousness. Put more clearly, Bonhoeffer states that in the world come of age, we can no longer be religious, if religion is defined as that system that treats God or the gods as need-fulfillers and problem-solvers.
There are thus no places in the self or the world, Protestants who listen to Bonhoeffer go on to say, where problems emerge that only God can solve. There are problems and needs, to be sure, but the world itself is the source of the solutions, not God. God must not be asked to do what the world is fully capable of doing: offer forgiveness, overcome loneliness, provide a way out of despair, break pride, assuage the fear of death. These are worldly problems for those who live in this world, and the world itself can provide the structures to meet them.
Familiar intellectual worlds are being rejected by Bonhoeffer and by those who are using him as their navigation chart today --Protestant theologies of correlation, for example, where worldly forms of art and knowledge are used to illustrate the incompleteness or brokenness of the world without God. It need hardly be added that the vulgar world of the problem-solving preacher, the pro-God subway ad, and the slick, vulgar world of the clever T.V. commercial for God, are being set aside as well.
Technically, what Bonhoeffer is saying is that in the modern world that can do without God, the idea of the innate religiousness of man, the religious a priori, must be rejected. Augustine has sung lyrically and soothingly to many: "restless is our heart until it comes to rest in Thee." Our response today is, maybe some hearts are, and maybe some are not." William Hamilton
In Religionless Christianity the world is grown up and has moved out of its dependency situation, the God of religion, solving otherwise insoluble problems, meeting otherwise unmeetable needs, is impossible and unnecessary.
Interesting? Is Bonhoeffer murdering God or giving us a realistic and practical way to perceive Him. He states this, "Man is challenged to participate in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world." (The letter of July 18, 1944.) That is his answer to secularization.
He would say that the world isn’t all God’s, but completely secular with a theologically Moltman type of God on the outside piercing the world of corruption.
JD,
That is some fantastic information. Thank you for placing such wonderful teachings in your comment.
Ultimately, Augustine and others were clearly wrestling with who and what God is for, to, and with mankind. They continued to struggle with disturbing additions to the One True God given by Platonism, and the philosophical frameworks of docetism, Marcionism, and Manichaeism as well as the influences of other isms that brought as much confusion to our faith as they did understanding, and all in the name of a unified and systematic church.
It didn't take long for those theologians to convince the church that it needed to place God safely in the confines of religion and remove Him (in their minds) from the rest of our world.
Thank you again for your comments.
Grace and peace,
Johnny
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