Jesus In the Everyday

So I’ve been thinking about the continuing dialogue going on in this blog about music and movies that have spoken to us. People are still commenting on entries I wrote days ago, and a lot of “secular” songs and movies have been mentioned in the lists. (That doesn’t really surprise me too much, because I started it.) But it’s got me thinking a little more deeply about this, because in reality it’s not so much about the movies and songs themselves, but about how we are interacting with the world, and how God is interacting with us in the midst of that experience.

I, for one, used to live my life very dualistically. I had my spiritual life and my “worldly existence”, and most of my Christian walk has involved doing as much “spiritual” stuff as I could bear, then trying my best to live my “normal life” as sinlessly as possible so as not to spoil all the spiritual stuff I was doing. In other words, the spiritual life was (in my mind) the most important part of my life, and “normal life” was just the part I had to put up with until I could go to heaven, and then everything would be spiritual, and I’d be free from the sinful temptations and impulses of earth.

Sound familiar?

Does it sound like most Christians you know?

Would it surprise you to know that way of thinking is pagan in origin?

Dualistic thinking–the clear separation between spiritual and natural (or between sacred and secular in Christian thinking) actually comes from Greek thought, particularly the philosophies of Plato. This way of thinking led to gnosticism, which was a heresy the early church was fighting as early as New Testament times. In its extreme forms, it suggests that what we do in our physical bodies does not matter because the spiritual world is the “real”, and the physical is the “shadow”. In other words, permission to sin. Gnosticism also believes that there are deep mystical secrets that can only be known to those who are spiritually in tune–which is where the cryptic and inaccurate “gnostic gospels” came from.

Most Christians today would not take these extremes, yet in so many ways we still see our lives according to this spiritual/physical separation. The truth is, most of the Bible was actually written by people who held a more Hebraic way of thinking–because they were Hebrews and Jews! In Hebraic thought, there is no sacred/secular; God is simply present in life. Paul (who was a Jew) did make references to the differences between spiritual and natural, but nowhere does the Bible suggest that these coexist separately from one another. They are constantly interacting. And to the Hebraic mindset, there is no need to distinguish between them. When life is lived unto God, everything is sacred, everything is spiritual.

Certainly there are evil things in the world, and defiling things, and sinful things. I’m not saying we should fill our minds and eyes with crap, because God will somehow sanctify all of it. I’m simply saying when we stop worrying about sacred and secular, and just live life with Jesus at the center, I think we’ll naturally begin to avoid things that would displease Him. And in the midst of that–as we’ve already seen with the movies and music–He’ll begin to use the things in our everyday existence to speak truth to us. This is what I mean by “Jesus in the everyday.”

If you think of Jesus’ disciples when He walked the earth, you’ll realize this is exactly how He taught them. He talked about trees, seeds, birds, and fishing, and all kinds of things. He shared parables about everyday existence to reveal truth, and He walked the earth with them, teaching them as they went.

I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to feel that a lot of my life has been mis-spent by dualistic thinking. I feel like I’ve missed a lot of moments in my everyday existence trying to achieve some sort of spiritual super-existence–when God was in my everydays the whole time. I don’t want to miss that anymore. This life–this life on earth–is to be lived. What better way to live it than with Jesus in the everyday?