The Impact of the Sacred-Secular Divide

The Impact of the Sacred-Secular Divide

The modern Church’s thinking is strongly influenced by the concept of a sacred-secular divide. We elevate “spiritual” things—like prayer, Bible study, and evangelism—over “physical” things—like washing dishes or eating vegetables. Likewise, some professions—like missionary and pastor—are called “full-time ministry,” while plumbers and farmers (by default) have a lower calling. The sacred-secular divide is not something Jesus taught. It isn’t found in the Bible. Yet it has impacted everything. It shapes our understanding of what it means to be a Christian, how we are to live our lives, the approaches we use to serve the vulnerable, and even the importance of loving others. It impacts individual believers and churches in every nation.

Some of the many implications include:

• Our lives are divided
  We’ve come to believe that some things—like Bible study, prayer meetings, and evangelism—are most important. Other things—like the way we work and how we care for our land and families—seem less important. In most Majority World countries, Christians have a reputation of being the worst workers because they believe it is right to leave the office to go to a Bible study. Alternatively pastors’ families are neglected, often the poorest, as the pastor heads off to do ‘spiritual’ things rather than making sure his family are provided for. Too many Christians have no idea how their faith is meant to impact every area of life.
• We make our God seem weak and irrelevant
  Most people, especially in the Majority World, don’t suddenly pick up a Bible to learn about God. They judge who God is by the lives of His people. We are called to display God, to make Him visible to the nations. As non-believers see dirty villages and neglected families, they aren’t left in awe of how powerful and loving our God is. Rather they are left believing God is irrelevant to the needs of today—the needs they are concerned with.
• We lose the impact of the gospel
  Far too many understand Christianity as a way to heaven with little to offer our life on earth. As a result, Christians can still be found going to witch doctors when they are sick or concerned about the harvest. The sad fact is, while Christianity helps them relate to God and get to heaven (both of which they are happy about), the gospel they’ve been given has nothing to say about day-to-day life. The problems they face—from growing sufficient crops to staying healthy—are not covered by their new religion, so they keep old practices in place to cover the gap.
  Other Christians, when facing a problem, spend hours in prayer—often not leaving the church until an answer comes. Without a theology that includes God’s concern for things like work, people aren’t praying for guidance or the ability to earn more, but rather that God would “send money.” The Christian message they’ve been given doesn’t seem to apply to their everyday issues, so they spiritualize everything, expecting miracles as the only way God works. People are left looking to God to provide through a miraculous gift, when all the while they have land that’s left unplanted or skills they aren’t using. As a result they remain in extreme poverty.
• Our vision is small
  Not realizing we are called to redeem all areas of life, we focus only on spiritual growth. In areas like politics, where we see so much brokenness, Christians tend to retreat. In Africa, well-meaning church leaders have declared they would discourage a young person from going into politics for fear they would be corrupted rather than disciple them to bring change and godly leadership to their nation. Likewise, few business people have a vision for how our Christian faith ought to affect every aspect of a company—from HR to finance to customer service—so they “save Christian things” for Sundays or, at best, hold a Bible study on their lunch break. Meanwhile, we shake our heads at almost daily news headlines about corporate corruption, cover-ups, and scandal.
  Without a strong understanding of our call as Christians to redeem all of life, we lose our vision. We are left watching from the sidelines as things go from bad to worse.
• We lose the importance of loving vulnerable people
  Many church leaders around the world believe that helping the poor is actually sinful, because it distracts them from evangelism, which is the most important thing that the church can do. Their belief is that caring for vulnerable people is the government’s or development organizations’ responsibility. In those churches that do help the poor, it is generally a separate ministry off to the side rather than something essential to the life of the church.
• The way we address poverty is broken
  Since addressing poverty is put on the secular side of the divide, we tend toward a secular understanding of poverty and its solutions. We’ve come to believe that poverty is, for the most part, a lack of resources—a material problem. The natural solution is to provide material resources: wells, food supplies, irrigation systems, agricultural training. When trying to work out how to address poverty, we turn to “best practices,” learning from others’ experiences. We don’t tend to look for answers to these problems in the Bible. The problem is, this approach just isn’t working. Billions of dollars of material solutions have been poured into the Majority World for decades, and few countries are better off now than they were fifty years ago.