5 Nov 2010
Divided we fall
One life
Have you ever noticed how somehow we have ended up seperating our lives into the stuff we do with or for God, and the rest?
In Australian politics we have formalised this arrangement constitutionally in the separation of church and state.
For most of my life the duality of “sacred” and “secular” has annoyed the heck out of me.
The more I read, the more I realise that it also annoys the heck out of God.
We don’t have two lives, we have one.
As I have mentioned previously, I love the writing of Eugene Peterson. At the moment I am working through, “the Jesus Way” and finding it very helpful.
Peterson tackles the sacred and secular divide in the book:
“One of the bad habits 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 or 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 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.
As I prepare myself for another weekend, I often feel like Saturday is mine and Sunday is God’s. I know that’s not true but its easy to fall into that way of thinking.
Its good to step back and survey my whole life, asking myself what parts aren’t I giving to God? My sense is that those are the bits He is wanting to talk to me about.