The Sacred, the Secular, & the Beautiful (1)

We are oftentimes burdened by the sheer mundanity of daily life. Work and chores conspire to clutter up every available moment. Laundry and the daily commute distract our minds during morning devotions, assuming they can be squeezed in amidst tending to the needs of our children. Surely our lives are dull and vacant of the delights which could be ours if only we would put all our dreary responsibilities aside for intensive Bible study and meditation. We long to spend our lives in undisturbed contemplation of God’s glory.

Clearly, then, sacred labor must be superior to secular employment. Pastors, seminarians, Christian writers and counselors spend their entire days in the study of Scripture, examining the holy things of the Lord. They are not concerned with workplace politics or fussy toddlers. Instead, all their time around others is spent in sweet Christian fellowship. Surely their spiritual lives are rich and profound. They are the ones doing great things for the Lord, whose names will go down as heroes of the faith. The Lord is doubtlessly more pleased with their sacred work than with the drab results of our secular toil.

Perhaps we ought to keep in mind Paul’s exhortation in 1 Thessalonians 4:11: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you.” (NIV) In 4:1, Paul described the purpose of his instruction to the Thessalonians as “how to live in order to please God,” and then reminded them that this centers on living peacefully, doing useful work.

How disappointing. We think we ought to live eventful lives which will make exciting biographies for pious children to read on Sabbath-day afternoons. We want to be bold for Jesus, taking on the entire world single-handedly, loudly proclaiming our faith from street corners. The Lord, on the other hand, wants us to hush up and get a job. Where are the fastings, the hair shirts, the martyrdoms? Not, apparently, very high up on God’s priority list. Instead, he is pleased when we do productive (particularly manual) labor, work that is by definition “secular:” mundane, worldly. But if manual labor is pleasing to God, it must be sacred and holy. Therefore, if the sacred and secular spheres of life are so easily joined, there must be no real difference. The sacred/secular distinction is invalid, and in fact nonexistent.

 The implications of this truth have profound consequences for how we understand our lives and our work. All of life is sacred labor. We glorify God by doing the tasks he has appointed for us, whether in the home, the field, the factory, the office, or the pulpit. Holiness is not measured on a sliding scale: everything we do (including changing diapers!) is consecrated to the Lord. Pay attention to what Paul says: God is pleased with your dull, drab lives. In his eyes, they are bright-hued and rich with faithful vigor.

(Image taken from Tanamachi Studio; feel free to buy the Presbyterian Curmudgeon a print.)

Calvin the presbyterian (Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition: p. 1179, vol. 2)

In his discussion of the power of the Church to make laws (or rules of conduct and worship) for Christians, John Calvin writes,

This is the power now to be discussed, whether the church may lawfully bind consciences by its laws. In this discussion we are… only concerned with how God is to be duly worshiped according to the rule laid down by him, and how the spiritual freedom which looks to God may remain unimpaired for us. (Institutes IV.X.1)

A few years ago there was a bit of a controversy in my presbytery over worship practices, and I was surprised when a fellow minister stated that the regulative principle of worship (God is to be worshiped only as he has commanded in Scripture) is rooted in the holiness of God. While God’s holiness is certainly germane to the question, our regulations for worship are grounded in another doctrinal area entirely, as the above quote from Calvin shows. For Calvin, liturgical practice is an exercise of Church power, which in turn is constrained by Christian liberty (that is, the freedom the individual believer has received through Christ). A discussion of any one of these subjects has necessary implications for the others.

Due perhaps to historical contingencies on the British Isles, presbyterianism is the branch of the Reformed tradition which has most fully laid hold of Calvin’s insight, as is demonstrated by these selections from the Westminster Confession of Faith.

The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. (WCF 1.6, “Of Holy Scripture”)

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in any thing, contrary to His Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship. (WCF 20.2, “Of Christian Liberty:” the clearest articulation of the regulative principle of worship in the Westminster Standards)

But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture. (WCF 21.1, “Of Religious Worship”) 

It belongs to synods and councils, ministerially to determine controversies of faith, and cases of conscience; to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of his Church; to receive complaints in cases of maladministration, and authoritatively to determine the same; which decrees and determinations, if consonant to the Word of God, are to be received with reverence and submission; not only for their agreement with the Word, but also for the power whereby they are made, as being an ordinance of God appointed thereunto in His Word. (WCF 31.2, “Of Synods and Councils”)

With respect to my Dutch brethren, I continue to believe presbyterianism, over against the continental reformed tradition, has best captured the peculiar genius of Calvinsim.

Occupy the streets of gold

When I went off to university, I got involved with United Campuses to Prevent Nuclear War, which title pretty much explains the organization's purpose and constituency. Lest anyone think this will be a rueful look back at youthful folly, rest assured I continue to believe the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction to be about as sane as its acronym suggests. Moreover, our nation's determination to go into massive debt in order to finance weapon systems designed to devastate civilian populations is, in my humble estimation, a self-evident abomination. I very much enjoyed being a part of UCam, as it was known, for its clarity of purpose and for the sober strategies (such as education and lobbying legislators) it employed.

Then 1989 happened, and shortly thereafter the first President Bush grounded the bombers which, the more mature reader might recall, had to that point always been up in the air. With that, all the urgency left the movement. The national organization simply disappeared (which was a more than a little disorienting), and, a little while later, so did our campus chapter.

I focused my attention on homelessness and poverty, but struggled to understand how either of those issues could be addressed by direct political action. In conjunction with my social sciences degree program, I began exploring how my activism could (or, more fundamentally, whether it should) be integrated with my Christian faith.

I still ran into my UCam friends around campus, and began noticing something strange. They had all the anger and passion of our anti-nuclear campaigning, but it seemed to lack any focus. A few turned their attention to the university itself, trying to persuade the student body that the administration was up to something nefarious. (This was James Madison University in the early nineties: the administration’s most nefarious scheme was to fence off the quad to reseed the dirt trails beaten down by too many students cutting across the grass.) The activist community, such as it was, turned in, and on, itself. I remember a self-published “literary journal” in which an “Open Letter to a White Male Activist” asserted that caucasian men, no matter what their actions, could escape or exculpate the stigma and guilt of being representatives of the oppressor class. It occurred to me that this might not be the best approach to recruiting volunteers to the cause.

But of course, that was precisely the problem: what cause? My friends were activists who believed, as a matter of principle, that the world’s ills could be solved by political action and they were thus obliged to take action. However, they struggled to define what those ills were, precisely, and what political action would be able to address them. They knew there is something wrong, terribly wrong, with the world as it is, but were unable to say what exactly that is.

In the meantime, I got permission to sit in a class for graduating sociology majors so I could write a research paper on Christian political activism. In the process, I realized that what is fundamentally wrong with this world is sin, and that while political action might redress some of sin’s symptoms and effects, it can never cure sin. Only Jesus and the Spirit-empowered Gospel of the Cross can do that. I didn’t know it then, but that minor epiphany was what set me on the path which would eventually lead to the ministry of Word and sacrament.

All this came to mind when the “Occupy Wall Street” movement erupted a couple years ago. Say what one will about the efficacy of public protest, I agree with rest of my white middle-aged male compatriots that the “Occupy” movement’s great and fatal weakness was its inability to articulate what, precisely, its goals were and/or how those goals might be accomplished. It seemed instead to be saying litttle more than “Something is wrong, very wrong, with our society.”

And there I agree with the Occupy movement and my undergraduate activist friends. Something is terribly, terribly wrong with America and the world today. However, it’s what’s been wrong with every society and the world itself since the shortly after the beginning of human history: sin. People sin, and world is under the curse because of sin. No amount of political action can fix that. I’m thankful God has provided a solution through the Gospel, and look forward to its final implementation when our Lord returns for us in glory.

In praise of MillerCoors

Even I have expressed cynicism about the way the AC Golden brewery is less than forthcoming about being simply another room in the massive Coors facility in Golden, Colorado, but I have enjoyed its Colorado Native lager since it first appeared here in the Centennial State. Not only has AC Golden backed up that lager's name by making it available only in Colorado, they've made good use of that MolsonMillerCoors money by paying Coloradan hops growers three times the market rate to ensure a local crop.

Three times.

It would appear that even a ginormous, soulless corporation whose founder had the misfortune to be named "Adolph" can love Colorado enough to not only not buy the cheapest ingredients (which would come from Washington state), but to pay triple in order to, for all intents and purposes, create a local supply chain.

Coors. I won't drink the beer with that name, but I'll raise a glass of Colorado Native to the corporation.