It’s interesting how often the debate comes up regarding the Sacred vs. the Secular. Often it’s a conversation about music (i.e. “that church is using secular music”). Sometimes it’s regarding the movies (i.e. “The Chronicles of Narnia, was secular but can be helpful for students”).What I try to remember is that this idea of Sacred vs. Secular is man’s construct, not God’s construct. God created the world and everything in it; all of us and all of our talents are useful by God and for God.
Often, people think of certain occupations as being sacred or secular. People will often say they are “in ministry”, meaning their occupation. Actually, God looks at everything that we do as being of importance and potentially honoring to Him. This concept of being “in ministry” is actually a carry over from what the Apostle Paul struggled with in the Hellenistic world. The Greeks held to a view of “dualism” where there was a dichotomy or a separation of the spiritual and the material. That carried over into the early church where we ended up with the enlightened and holy “clergy” and all the rest, the great unwashed and the unholy.
However, that is not how it is meant to be. Throughout the Bible, the Hebrew culture described the earth, morality and righteousness not as separated experiences, either good or bad, but only from the perspective that man was either following the path established by God or had turned to follow something that was evil and perverted.
Everything, including your occupation, is actually to be sacred, or worthy of God. Ministry therefore is that which engages a broken world and restores everything to be completely conformed and transformed into the Kingdom of God.
