Secularization and Sacralization
Since the dawn of the Enlightenment, western civilization has rushed along the process of secularization. Spiritual and religious significance is stripped from every aspect of life, and the bland, colorless objects that remain are marketed to us as reality. It is the reality of a dull mind: simple existence, without any sense of mystery, wonder or purpose.
It is this process of secularization that keeps prayer out of school, morality out of law, and religion out of vocation. It leads to Sunday-only Christians, and it makes men practical atheists.
Such secularization is hardly new. It existed in the days of Isaiah, when secular Jews paid homage to their Creator on the Sabbath with expensive sacrifices, and then returned to the daily work of extortion, injustice, and evil. Such secularization is life lived apart from God.
How can we combat such a process? I would submit that we must sacralize daily life. If secularization is the process of stripping spiritual significance away, then sacralization is the process of redressing with spiritual significance.
A simple review of Bible teaching reminds us that this is Christian:
- Vocation and labor are divine service, unique acts of obedience to the ultimate Master.
- Marriage is a spiritual allegory of mystical truths, in which husband and wife portray the greatest drama of history.
- Parenting is a work of eternal significance, the preparation of souls to engage in the great spiritual warfare of the ages.
- Trials are a God-designed testing-ground to teach lessons of eternal value.
- Friendships are a demonstration of the divine image implanted in man, so that we value relationships in the same way as our Creator.
Sacralization includes all this, and more. It recognizes that every aspect of this world, and everything that can be understood, has moral significance. This even extends to grass and trees, sand and stardust. It is all part of the divine tapestry of creation, designed to lead us to know and consider God.
It is high time for Christians to explicitly recognize and fight secularization. Through the process of sacralization, let us aim to be “renewed in the spirit of [the] mind.”
This post is revised and edited from the original post on February 1, 2016
