Dimensions of the Sacred

One of the marks of the emerging churches is a certain kind of rejection of the distinction between the sacred and the secular. Of course, pious people have always insisted that none of life is secular, that all of life is (or ought to be) lived as worship to God. The pietistic approach is to extend the rubric “sacred” to all of life so that even life outside of church is regarded as sacred.

Exactly the opposite is happening in the emerging churches. They have reasoned that, if there is no distinction between sacred and secular, then the corporate worship of the church can and should include the ordinary activities of life. Virtually anything can be brought into worship.

This philosophy had been growing for some time before the emerging churches began to emerge. For several decades American evangelicals and fundamentalists have displayed a tendency to bring everything but the kitchen sink into their public worship. The practice of the emerging churches simply brings this trend to its reasonable conclusion.

A good bit of confusion could be cleared up if we were to remember that the sacred has more than one dimension. The word sacred can refer to more than one thing. I am going to argue that we use the word in at least two major senses. For the sake of convenience I shall designate these as the “inner” and “outer” dimensions of the sacred.

By the outer dimension I mean that dimension of the sacred that we encounter outside of the assembled church. This dimension of the sacred is an aspect of our everyday lives. It stands in contrast to the secular.

The notion of secularity comes from the Enlightenment. It involves the detachment of some aspect of life from divine interest and superintendence. To be secular means to live as if God has no interest in a particular area of life, as if He has nothing to say about it, as if that area is simply disconnected from whatever religious beliefs a person may hold.

I suspect that most church members are practicing secularists much of the time. They do not understand how God is interested in or glorified by their employment, their avocations, their amusements, or their domestic life. They restrict their religion to the confines of the church.

Biblical Christianity explicitly disavows secularism. For the biblical Christian, none of life is detached from God. None of it is outside of His interest or purview. For the Christian, even such a mundane thing as eating and drinking is to be done to the glory of God.

In this sense, biblical Christians see all of life as sacred. Everything is done with an awareness of God’s glory and Christ’s lordship. Every activity of life is performed as an act of worship, for whatever cannot be done to the glory of God has no place in the life of a believer.

To say that all of life is worship, however, is not to say that all of life takes the shape of explicitly religious activity. We worship God best in our lives by remembering that whatever we have is from Him, by receiving it with thanks, and by using it according to His purpose. A worker worships God, not so much by passing out tracts to his customers, but by doing excellent work. An artist worships God, not only by painting religious art, but by depicting ordinary subjects as God sees them. A husband worships when he kisses his wife, not by thinking about God, but by thinking about her. In a flower garden, one worships God best by enjoying the beauty of the flowers, realizing that their beauty is a mere suggestion of the glory of their Creator.

For the biblical Christian, the whole world is sacred. The earth is bursting with worship, for everywhere is the potential to bring glory to God. This is the outer dimension of the sacred.

The inner dimension of the sacred involves the deliberate worship of the gathered people of God. When they gather to worship their Lord, they constitute a temple—indeed, a holy of holies. The congregation that assembles to worship God creates its own space, and that space is sacred. We are not free to bring into the temple all of the things that we enjoy in our daily lives.

The ancients had a way of expressing this exclusion. What was permitted in the temple was sacred. What was not permitted in the temple was to be kept outside, in front of (pro) the temple (fanum). For a thing to be “profane” meant, not that it was unclean or immoral, but that it was ordinary, common, or everyday. Such things had no place in the corporate worship of the temple, and the things of the temple were never to be treated as profane (ordinary or everyday).

For example, to take the Lord’s name in vain means to treat is as an ordinary or common word. That is precisely to “profane” the name of God. Profanity is not about cursing God, it is about using His name (and hence, regarding His person) as a common, everyday thing.

Obversely, we also become guilty of profanity when we introduce the ordinary or everyday activities of life into the worship of the temple. The local church is a temple, the final purpose of which is to engage corporately in the worship of God. Here, the worship is deliberate and it must be focused upon God’s person and His mighty deeds. Any distraction from God, Who alone is the center of worship, is a profanation.

For example, in everyday life, kissing his wife is a virtuous and moral thing for a husband to do. It may even be obligatory. Under the rubric of the outer dimension of the sacred, each man should kiss his wife to the glory of God. This kissing may and should be an act of worship to the One Who created and gave the wife. In the public worship of the assembled church, however, we would not call upon a man to lead the congregation in a season of wife-kissing. To do so would be unfit, inappropriate, and perhaps mildly obscene (an obscene act is one that ought not to be viewed under the circumstances). It would be a distraction from the purpose of the gathering, inasmuch as most men have difficulty concentrating on other things while they are kissing their wives.

Which activities may be brought into the corporate worship of the assembled church? The short answer is this: we only know what pleases God in corporate worship when He Himself tells us what does. We may perform only those acts that He has told us to perform. When it comes to the worship of the church, we must look for biblical authorization for every element that we include. To do less is to profane the worship of our God.

The sacred has an outer dimension. That dimension comprises every act in ordinary life that may be performed to the glory of God. But the sacred also has an inner dimension. That dimension permits into our corporate worship only those elements that God has authorized.

Christ and Our Selves

Francis Quarles (1592–1644)

I wish a greater knowledge, then t’attaine
The knowledge of my selfe: A greater Gaine
Then to augment my selfe; A greater Treasure
Then to enjoy my selfe; A greater Pleasure
Then to content my selfe; How slight, and vaine
Is all selfe-Knowledge, Pleasure, Treasure, Gaine
Unlesse my better knowledge could retrive
My Christ; unles my better Gaine could thrive
In Christ; unles my better Wealth grow rich
In Christ; unles my better Pleasure pitch
On Christ; Or else my Knowledge will proclaime
To my owne heart how ignorant I am
Or else my Gaine, so ill improv’d, will shame
My Trade, and shew how much declin’d I am
Or else my Treasure will but blurre my name
With Bankrupt, and divulge how poore I am
Or else my Pleasures, that so much inflame
My Thoughts, will blabb how full of sores I am:
Lord, keepe me from my Selfe; ’Tis best for me,
Never to owne my Selfe, if not in Thee.

This essay is by Dr. Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). Not every professor, student, or alumnus of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.