"FAREWELL TO SACRED"
An editorial from World magazine, by Tom Watson Jr., April 18, 1988.
One disturbing notion characterizing the society we find ourselves a part of
is the conviction that no idea, place, object, time or value enjoys any
greater specialness than any other idea, place, object, time or value. To put
that another way, nothing is sacred anymore.
Let us note in passing that television may have as much to do with our loss of
specialness as any other influence, but this is not intended as another attack
on the "boob tube." If TV hadn't done it, something else probably would have,
given man's predilection to whatever perpetuates his estrangement from God.
One of television's more notable contributions to our society, however, may be
the notion that anything and everything is appropriate for public exposure.
There is no special category. Suitable and unsuitable are relative ideas,
rapidly becoming archaic concepts in more and more of our communications
media. However repugnant, nothing can be denied the privilege of public
viewing and public comment because nothing can be regarded as sacred anymore
and some people like it that way. No picture is too graphic to be shown. No
extreme in dialogue can be censored as long as "everyone talks that way
anyway." Modern, mature and honest people like us ought to know we are too
enlightened to disallow the dissemination of information just because it
happens to be private, personal, prurient, perverse, or prejudiced.
As one minor example of the demise of the sacred, note the repealing of the
"blue laws" in one state after another as legislatures take progressive action
to "make Sunday like every other day." But, lamentably, in the minds of most
Americans, it already is. Sunday is seldom referred to anymore as "The Lord's
Day," for the transparent reason that people no longer believe it is. Gone
are the days of Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, Sunday dinners, Sunday visits--
and most especially, those hopelessly obsolete Sunday evening church services.
Rare is the family that even fools with Sunday picnics these days. We want
the closing day of the weekend to be just like every other day off.
It is understandable, of course, that certain people want Sunday open for
business as usual. The byword is "convenience" - a public service - but one
suspects a more compelling dynamic probably is cash flow. Yet we may concede
that if no day is different from any other day, and no concept takes
precedence over any other concept, then the sense of specialness has been
forfeited already and there are no convincing arguments against business as
usual every day of the week.
All of us are aware, of course, that no one ever got to heaven by keeping the
Sabbath, and it is just as true that no one ever went to hell because he
failed to do so. Yet Sunday does have a special quality that is God-ordained,
and that specialness lives not in the luxury of leisure time but in the
completion of a sacred process. We are instructed to work for six days and
"keep holy" a day of rest, just as God did when he created our cosmos. By
renouncing that specialness, we place ourselves in a unique kind of jeopardy.
Important as Sabbath-keeping is, however, its observance is neither the
immediate question nor the pressing problem.
The question is: "Whatever happened to specialness?"
The problem is: Not often enough do we find in modern society a clear concept
of higher or lower, better or worse, appropriate or inappropriate - or even
true or false, for that matter.
So everything is accorded equal value, and in the end that comes down to
someone else's concept of God and appropriate behavior being on a par with a
Bibical concept of God and appropriate behavior. Neither is better or worse
than anyone's else. Who, after all, has a corner on Truth?
Can that journey into relativism be because we have lost our definition of
"sacred"?
Well, let's check it out. One dictionary says the word means "devoted to ...
religious purpose" or "entitled to veneration or religious respect." Another
sums it up quite simply with "revered."
As far as most Americans are concerned, those definitions probably are
accurate. But in reality, religion and reverence have little to do with the
word, sacred. The idea in the Bible's use of the word is represented more
accurately by our expressions "special" and "set apart." There is nothing
mystical or metaphysical about the word. It need not relate to church or to
ritual; sacred simply refers to an often awesome quality of specialness. That
same quality of specialness we celebrate in adoration of God the Father, who
revealed himself in the unique Person and work of his Son.
Specialness is the reason we celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas,
and Easter, and run up huge bills for wedding receptions. The same sacredness
is the reason for stained glass windows, crosses, and altars, and why churches
feature special implements of worship, special costumes, and special liturgy.
Worshipers sing special hymns and gospel songs, seldom Glen Miller music or
excerpts from rock concerts. It would not seem appropriate to lease the
church sanctuary to a gambling casino during the week; the building is
special. For similar reasons we break our routine habits to recognize and
reward unusual accomplishments, peerless qualities, exemplary commitment and
unique virtues. We cheer for the heros and we hiss the villians. Those
special observances somehow give richer meaning to everyday life.
Therefore the things we consider really special, truly set apart, we try to
acknowledge with ceremony - like "Ta daaah! Here's the birthday cake!" Take
that specialness away and we sink into a hopelessly drab routine of repetition
that transforms us into godless automatons, as incapable of feeling as we are
of establishing a hierarchy of values rooted in the Eternal. A world devoid
of that has lost its meaning - and its way.
When people no longer comprehend the implications of the sacred, it can be
traced to their failure to relate to the absolute specialness of God. The
solemn truth is, we ourselves have no specialness apart from him. The very
uniqueness we possess as indiviguals and as a species is ours by his grace.
Only by accepting that truth in faith can we begin the process of restoration
to the sacred image and likeness our first ancestors forfeited in the tragedy
of the Garden of Eden.
Editorial "Farewell to Sacred" by Tom Watson Jr., in WORLD magazine, a
publication of God's World Publications, Box 2330, Asheville, NC 28802, on
April 18, 1988.
