Secular and Sacred: Two or One?

I was thinking: "what would it mean to really have a secular perspective on life?" I guess it would mean making sense of life as if there was no active Divine power in life. Many people have said and written that modern life is characterized by a secular perspective. For instance, when my throat is sore and I have a fever, I am more likely to want some antibiotics from my doctor than a prayer from my minister. Now, of course, if the doctor's treatment doesn't work, well then I might be relying a lot more on prayer. Or, if my car is leaking oil, I am unlikely to pray about that, but very likely to call the mechanic for an appointment.

So,in some ways, where I have answers to problems provided by modern science, medicine or technology, I tend to act as if I live in a world which I understand and a world that is controlled by understandable, even controllable forces.

And, parts of life seem to be that way. But, it doesn't take long to move into other parts of life that don't seem that understandable or controllable. As with the example above about the sore throat, what if it turns out that I have a bacterial infection that is resistant to antibiotics? Or, what if I am not dealing with a problem with my car but with the prospect of death from a terminal disease or the break-up of my family?

The understandable and controllable can quickly become the incomprehensible and uncontrollable in human life.

But, it is not as if we have a secular world in which we can understand and control totally separate from a spiritual/religious world in which we cannot directly understand and control things. Reality is one. Sacred and secular interpenetrate each other in the fabric of life. To think God is only "relevant" or involved where we come to the limits of our own understanding or answers is to think of God as the hypothesis we posit when we need an answer. Dietrick Bonhoeffer wrote that the sooner religion is done with "God as an answer" the better. Bonhoeffer also said that this view of God is one that often finds God irrelevant or unreal in comparison with modern science and experience.

As we begin to think of life as a unity, and our experience as a unity, and of the interweaving of sacred and secular in life, we begin to experience God as much at times in the "secular" as in the "sacred." We become like the scientist who is awakened religiously as he or she comes to a deeper understanding of the forces of the universe. Or, we become like the theologian who becomes deeply interested in science because of his or her spiritual experience that the creation is deeply and thoroughly good.

When I am able to study and come to understand something like how to fix my air conditioner, I experience gratitude for the mind I have been given and the ability to really exercise some control over the forces that affect my life. Of course, in my case, I have to hope I have enough money to pay someone who can fix my air conditioner and give thanks that they have the ability to study and understand such things, since I apparently don't!

Sometimes I think that Eastern thinkers see life as one, not dividing secular from sacred in their thinking and not dividing mind from body, whereas Western thinkers who follow Descarte see life as separated between secular (material) and sacred (spiritual/non-material/mind). A simple example is the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, which might be found when a person is totally present in a simple activity like drinking tea and thus experiences a sense of peace and aliveness. Mindfulness means a oneness between body and mind and an embodied awareness of life itself as one participates in it.

Reality is one. A way of understanding life that helps us experience the oneness of reality, the unity of sacred and secular, is also a way that helps integrate and unite the fragmented parts of our own self.

One parting thought: a Christianity that separates New Testament from Old Testament creates a false religious understanding, one that separates the material from the spiritual, one that separates history from eternity,one that separates Gentile from Jew, and one that separates humanity from God. A Christianity that understands the profound and organic unity of New Testament with the Old Testament (i.e., that the New Testament experience has grown and is born of the Old Testament faith)unites the material and the spiritual, understands the interpenetration of history and eternity, experiences the reconciliation of divided humanity with itself and the reconcilation of the world with God.