"One of the bad habits that we pick up early in our lives is separating things and people into secular and sacred. We assume that the secular is what we are more less in charge of: our jobs, our time, our money, our opinions, our entertainment, our government, our house and land, our social relations. The sacred is what God has charge of: worship and the Bible, heaven and hell, church and prayers. We then contrive to set aside a sacred place for God, designed, we say, to honor God but really intended to keep God in his place, leaving us free to have the final say in everything else that goes on outside that space. Prophets will have none of this. They hold that everything, absolutely everything, takes place on sacred ground. God has something to say about every aspect of our lives, the way we feel and act in the so-called privacy of our hearts and homes, the way we make our money and the way we spend it, the politics we embrace, the wars we fight, the catastrophes we endure, the people we hurt and the people we help. Nothing is hid from the scrutiny of God; nothing is exempt from the rule of God; nothing escapes the purposes of God."
Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way, p. 120.
wow! that's convicting because it's so true. I do that with school...I place it in a seperate category from that which is sacred. Peterson's insight is really helpful when it comes to doing everything for the glory of God. Now i just have to figure out a way to engrain this in my head!
ReplyDeleteI see this as a major problem in our generation and the generation that follow ours. We are too quick to compartmentalize things into areas that do not influence each other. In doing so it is too easy to step over into "What's right for you is right for you and what is right for me is right for me." Thus validating every theory and doctrine regardless of merit.
ReplyDeleteAnd this dichotomy has been built into our nation with the "Separation Clause" of the First Amendment.
ReplyDeleteBut most people think it's a good thing there. *ponders*
Sweet sweet pondering.