Changing Lenses

I want to pick up on yesterday's subject and continue to reflect on the secular vs. the spiritual world. It is a false dichotomy, and the one of the reasons that the Western church is in such poor health is precisely because it has baptized this unhealthy and inaccurate view of creation. Orthodox theologian, Alexander Schmemann, in his small and powerful book, For the Life of the World, wrote

...nowhere in the bible do we find the dichotomies which for us are the self-evident framework of all approaches to religion. In the Bible the food that man eats, the world of which he must partake in order to live, is given to him by God, and it is a given as communion with God. The world as man's food is not something "material" and limited to material functions, thus different from , and opposed to, the specifically "spiritual" functions by which man is related to God. All that exists is God's gift to man, and it all exists to make God known to man, to make man's life communion with God. It is divine love made food, made life for man. God blesses everything He creates, and, in biblical language, this means that He makes all creation the sign and means of His presence and wisdom, love and revelation: :O taste and see that the Lord is good."

One can only imagine how different the church would be if we had our minds transformed to understand that the whole world is the place of God's presence, and that the division into the secular and the spiritual is fundamentally a false one. Following Jesus as his apprentices involves our changing the lens with which we see the world, so we can see it as God sees it, not as the world would have us see it.