The Sacred
Our times are characterized by doubts about absolute truth and convictions about absolute personal freedom. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the two have developed at the same time, because truth does have a way of imposing limitations. Most laws are built on at least a perception of truth. Once given the benefit of the doubt, they had better brace for a challenge.
“Irreverent” is one of the most popular words used in describing comedic shows, plays, musicals, programs, writing, cartoons and the like. Apparently, “irreverent” sells. Our generation craves seeing people and ideas which might curtail personal freedom humiliated, lampooned, mocked and rendered impotent. The only thing left sacred in popular culture is liberty to express ourselves without judgment, criticism, or even evaluation. All of this is brought forward by those who reject any authority outside of themselves. Herein lies a problem.
When we, as a culture, desacralize everything except our right to express ourselves, we deny our own sacredness. Nothing of value or significance can arise from that which has no value or significance. Once we have torn down everything which is objectively sacred, we are reduced to merely entertaining ourselves with our own irreverence.
Assembling coherent statistics on “low self-esteem” has proven daunting, at least in the time I have available. However, judging by the web pages I visited for over an hour, it’s a significant issue. The most poignant one was written by a man who is considering giving up his website on self-esteem issues, because he’s feeling badly about himself.
A Christian world-view has a sense of the sacred which is missing in secular western culture. “The Sacred” simply refers to those things that we set apart in our hearts and minds, according to them at least a modest level of respect and honour. When you start looking at the concept biblically, you discover that almost everything is, or can be considered, sacred. God, His name, His word, His people, relationships (especially in the family), marriage, sex, truth, and life itself are all set apart as sacred. Yet these are the things our culture has worked hard at desacralizing - rendering “not sacred,” common, or worse yet, base.
The desacralizing process ensnares us personally when we fail to read the signs. The easiest first step, that is, the one that requires the least energy, is simply to render the sacred as irrelevant. We adopt the position that “it doesn’t affect my life.” It requires some effort to maintain a sense of the sacred. It’s simpler to merely cast a glance in its direction and pretend it doesn’t really impinge on us, so we can safely ignore it.
If we don’t think of something as totally irrelevant, we may well think of it as trivial. At this point, the sacred is thought of as insignificant, especially in light of the pressing issues we have to deal with daily. Compared to paying down our debt, keeping our jobs, recovering our investments, hanging out with our friends, and getting some real rest from the daily grind, the sacred simply doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s something we can just defer to a more convenient time.
The entertainment industry enjoys uncountable profits and immeasurable influence. Much of its appeal is found in its habitual desacralizing the sacred, particularly through comedy. TV sitcoms are loaded with sexual humour and routinely mock family relationships which show any vestiges of the sacred. Cartoons playing on biblical themes provoke giggles. Books of many genres, dealing with almost any theme imaginable, contain a passage or two devoted to bringing down some aspect of the sacred.
Let me add an aside that humour does not depend entirely on the content. We respond with laughter to all kinds of things, like incongruities, irony, exaggeration, understatement, sarcasm, satire, and clever turns of phrase. Often desacralizing humour is genuinely funny. Whether or not the jokester was trying to get us to laugh at the sacred, we often will, even if we don’t want to, particularly if the joke is well executed.
It’s only a quick hop from humour to mockery. This is where we move from the mischievous to the malicious. There’s no doubt about the intent, now. The mocker adopts an external value system which allows him or her to take the high moral ground while taking cheap shots, of one kind or another, at the sacred.
If we were considering these to be stages in a process, the last and most damaging of all appears when the sacred is attacked outright. There’s nothing funny here. No good humour. Just plain assault. I’ve visited numerous websites the intention of which is to denigrate that which Christians (and sometimes people of any faith) hold sacred. All of the things I mentioned and more besides are declared to be bad, wrong, negative, immoral or just plain evil.
If you catch yourself or those you love slipping into these modes of responding to the sacred, be alert and take action. As the desacralization process continues, ultimately human life itself comes under attack. Little wonder that so many are convinced that humans are the biggest problem the earth has right now. Less wonder that this general attitude is being translated into problems of “low self-esteem” expressed in all kinds of self-destructive behaviour.
If you’re feeling totally swamped by life, consider the sacred. When you begin to recognize and respect those things that are important to God and intended to be honoured, you will not necessarily experience a magically wonderful life, but things which are disordered now will start falling into place and the long term results are sure to be more satisfying. God guarantees it.
Paul wrote about presenting “a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’ — but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10 NIV)
