If eternity does indeed hang in the balance, why be occupied with anything other than the exclusive occupation of eternity, why fiddle while Rome burns? In other words; is there any reason to bother with things such as enjoying the outdoors, reading a book, or finding love whilst the tether gets ever shorter towards eternity? As one pursues the first question, another, somewhat similar, if not more deeply perplexing question arises; why is it, that when I came to faith the Lord didn’t just replace my secular methods with sacred ones?
Here are my thoughts on the matter, crudely and insufficiently laid out.
It must be recognized, to be exclusively anything is tough, nay impossible, and probably unforgivable, especially concerning things not spiritual. Lewis, in his lecture “Learning in War-Time,” remarks with surprise at how his life, post conversion, inevitably consisted of “doing most of the same things one had been doing before” 1 He shares a story similar in surprise concerning his march towards the front line trenches of WW1. He fully expected, upon arrival, to be totally engulfed in an all consuming aura of war. Instead, the closer the trenches, the less he found himself talking and thinking about the campaign and the allied cause. Other unrelated, non war-exclusive thoughts came to mind. For you can’t “suspend your whole intellectual and aesthetic life” fully. Thus, even the desire to be exclusively sacred, even though desirable, is not going to happen.
What we come to find is the reason why St. Paul extols Christians to keep their job skills honed, and assumes they’ll be attending wedding parties. Because, as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, they’ll never be able to completely disintegrate the secular/fallen human life into sacred holy life. Lewis equates the new sacred life as something that won’t wipe the slate clean of the “merely human life which we were leading,” but acts rather as a “new organization that exploits, to its own supernatural ends,” the old. Thus, the Christian becomes familiar with, “Whatever ye eat or drink or whatsover ye do, do all to the glory of God.” 2 This of course, needs to be squared away with the knowledge that there are some human pursuits, perhaps all, in a particular case, that try as you might, cannot be bent towards the glory of God. These need to be surrendered for His sake, and yours. For example, in my marriage relationship I can’t expect harmony if I indulge in activities that deliberately push my love away.
Conversion changes us, blows us apart, but in our life there still remains the original framework of humanity. Therefor, the new task at hand is not to ditch all supposed secular acts, rather, to commit even our most mundane of toils and normal of pursuits to the glory of God.
