"The Myth of the Sacred and Secular"

 

The Myth of the Sacred and Secular

By George Knight, adapted from a chapter in his book Myths in Adventism, pp. 127-129. (c) 1999.

Adapted by Gary L. Clendenon, 2024.

The myth of the sacred and the secular is one of the most destructive misconceptions facing Christianity today. This pervasive myth has eaten the heart out of daily Christian living by providing a rationale for people to separate their “in church” attitudes and demeanor from from the way they think and act the rest of the week in “the real world”. The idea of the “natural” being distinct from the “supernatural” is misleading. Such a dichotomy is a product of man.

The Bible, contrary to the myth, show a continuity between the “supernatural” and our everyday world. It demonstrates that God is at work both in the realm of human understanding and also beyond the limited human sphere. Ellen White, in debunking this myth noted that natural law is under the “continual and direct agency of God” (8T, p. 259) and that the daily production of food through the laws of growth is just as miraculous (supernatural) as was the feeding of the five thousand by Jesus (Ed, pp. 107-108). In the same vein, Jack Provonsha, of Loma Linda University, has written that “there is a sense in which everything is supernatural…. But there is also a sense in which everything is natural—natural, that is, to God.”

As popularly defined, secular implies those things that relate to this world as opposed to the church and religious affairs. Sacred, on the other hand, is that which is religious or that which belongs to a god or deity. The dichotomy of the sacred and secular disintegrates, however, when we realize that “the earth is the lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell within” (Ps. 24:1). Everything has an ultimate relationship to God because He is both Creator and Sustainer. In one sense, every shrub is a burning bush, and all ground is holy. Christianity is not a compartmentalized faith. The way a Christian does his work, therefore is just as important to God as the way he worships.

Nothing on earth or in the universe is separate from God. Everything is religious in the broad sense of the term. Even so, the words (“sacred” and “secular”) may be useful and should not be discarded. My point is that we must begin to use them with more Christian understanding and with the knowledge that they are never separate from their counterparts. I might, for example, still choose to use the word secular to express a worldview that leaves God out, but from the Christian perspective it is clear that secularism is still a religious choice. Decisions either for or against God are both religious in nature. Individuals can never escape the Creator and Sustainer, even though they may pretend to live in a world without God. Christians understand that nothing is secular in the sense that it is outside of religion. Everything has religious implications because everything is related to God’s creative and sustaining activities.

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