John Walt

I use the phrase “modern world” a lot. I often want to stop using it because it can sound cliche, but I don’t think there is any way around it. Our world is drastically different than the world our ancestors lived in. We don’t really know the long-term societal effects of the drastic changes we have undergone in recent decades. For instance, the sexual revolution changed Western cultures and now much of the world's view of sex and sexual identity. How has that impacted our society in the last 60 years? How will it continue to change our world over the next 60 years?

We have undergone radical changes in communication, transportation, and urbanization. Now, what we think of as our “communities” are incredibly large when compared to historical communities. Most people don’t have a deep sense of connection to others. We can bounce around and choose which sets of social values we want at any time and change them on a whim. We can identify with a certain subset of people all over the world and never actually be with them in person. The world was organized around small communities with shared values for most of human history. What is the long-term impact of the technology we have adopted and the new social order we have created? Nobody knows.

I could go on and on, but the truth is the world today is changing so rapidly that we have no idea where we are headed. We also have foundational societal beliefs that are completely wrong. For instance, the concept of box and line thinking I shared in Note 8 explains how we view organizations and groups of people through the lens of org charts, but they are actually complex organic systems. We have built the Western world around a model of organizing people that is actually antithetical to how people are created to function and relate to each other. What has that cost us in terms of individual and communal health over the last 200 years?

For all of these reasons and so many more, I find it necessary to continually return to the idea that we live in a different world than the one we were created for. It’s not necessarily bad, but it is unhinged from an understanding of fundamental human needs as it pertains to spirituality, relationships, and identity. So until I find a better term, I will continue referencing our “modern world.”

A fundamental flaw in our thinking.

One of the greatest flaws of modern thinking and culture is how we have acted like there is a natural division between the sacred world of spiritual things and the real world of practical things. Obviously, most of the Western world just denies spiritual things or treats them as lifestyle choices.

We have made a distinction between the sacred and the secular that has invaded all of our thinking. This thought originated in ancient Greek philosophy as a concept called dualism. Plato taught that the soul and body are fundamentally different and often in conflict. Over time, this led to a form of spiritual dualism where people began to think of spirit and matter as separate and distinct. Now we have taken this separation to a whole new level by ignoring and often denying the spiritual altogether.

Most people groups throughout history believed that the spiritual overlaid every part of life. Most people will argue we have grown in our knowledge and understanding of the natural world, and there is no scientific proof of the spiritual. Our accumulation of knowledge has served to prove that there must be a creator of the universe because it is mathematically impossible that it could have happened by chance. Most experts don’t like to admit this, but it requires more faith to believe in creation by chance than creation by a creator (if you don’t believe me, then read chapter 14 of Solve For Happy by Mo Gawdat). So the real question is, have we created a separation between the sacred and the secular to our own detriment?

Unfortunately, the separation of the sacred and the secular has invaded cultural Christian thinking as well. We see faith as a personal decision of belief and struggle to fully integrate it into our thinking and actions in all areas of life.

Research has proven time and again that people who have a strong spiritual life are more resilient, have better mental health, a higher quality of life, and stronger relationships. As a result, spirituality is now embraced as a way to improve your mental health and quality of life. Everywhere you look, there is the concept of individual truth. We accept that spirituality is important, but we make it an all-you-can-eat buffet where you can choose what you believe, and that is what makes it true. There is no such thing as universal truth anymore unless we are talking about scientific facts.

As a society, we are ok with spiritual things as long as we keep them in their proper place. You can believe whatever you want at home, but don’t bring that to work. This compartmentalization of the spiritual begs the question, how are we even defining spirituality in our culture today?

Spirituality means very different things depending on who you are talking to. For some people, it revolves around a belief in God and active involvement in organized religion. For others, it focuses on non-religious practices such as prayer, yoga, or meditation. Spirituality is often understood as the recognition of a sacred or transcendent dimension in life. For some, this means a belief in a creator, and for others it simply involves exploring themes like love, altruism, wisdom, and life after death, with an emphasis on personal development and living out higher values.

The problem with most of our cultural definitions of spirituality is that they make spiritual things a peripheral concept. The way we talk about the spiritual makes it feel far away and disconnected from the “real” world we live in today. Most people seem to believe that it either begins when we die or its something we dabble in as we have time. Either way, the subconscious narrative in our modern world is that the spiritual is not a foundational reality of the day-to-day lives we live here and now.

Where did this come from?

I believe the separation of the sacred and the secular is the result of five primary factors. I will hit on each of these only briefly for now.

The separation of church and state: The separation of church and state was mostly a good thing in that it created more religious freedom. Religious leaders had long used governmental power to oppress people and limit religious freedom. The negative impact of the separation of church and state over time has been that we have officially removed belief in God from the foundations of our political and social systems. For instance, this is why public school teachers can’t pray in their classrooms. Accidentally, this drive for religious freedom has created a society that operates as if the spiritual is not real.  

The shift to a science-based information society: Darwinism seemed to definitively disprove creationism by introducing the world to the theory of evolution. The scientific world adopted this and has run with it ever since. This is despite the fact that there has never been evidence of macro evolution, which is the creation of new species. The only evidence we have for evolution is for microevolution, which is adaptations within the same species. Darwin gave scientists around the world the freedom to deny the spiritual since they could now deny the creator. Unfortunately, our scientific world has spent the last 200 years believing and teaching that the evidence of micro evolution is proof that there is no God and therefore no such thing as the spiritual.

Our modern world only believes in what it can see, touch, and measure. We value the external and not the internal, the visible and not the invisible. We are floating around on a ball in the middle of a universe we barely understand that stretches on farther than we can imagine and we somehow have the audacity to believe that only what we can see and understand is real.

The cultural loss of universal truth: As the influence of religion has declined in the Western world, our culture has lost a key source of universal truth. As a result, our culture has shifted towards believing in relative, pluralistic, and subjective truth, where each person is free to choose their own personal truth. In the name of diversity and inclusion, we have done away with the idea that there are foundational truths and values that guide our understanding of the world, morality, identity, and meaning. In essence, believing something is true is all that is necessary to make it true. This has created significant social problems that are only getting worse.

The industrialization of religion:As commercialization and consumerism have grown throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, we have seen dramatic growth in the business of religion, specifically Christianity. Full-time careers in ministry have become common place. Production-grade church services and facilities are the norm. You can attend church virtually and access teaching and worship at any time. From conferences to books, retreats, and counseling, we have created an entire industry around faith in Jesus Christ. This has fostered a consumerist mindset towards faith and spirituality. We have outsourced our spiritual lives. Just like we have people who prepare our food, work on our houses, repair our cars, and deliver our packages, we have people who take care of our spiritual needs. Our faith communities have evolved to create spiritual consumers who believe in conversion rather than disciples who pursue transformation.

The growth of humanism and marxism: Humanism is a progressive philosophy that celebrates human potential and rejects supernatural beliefs in pursuit of a better society. Marxism is a socio-economic and political ideology that emphasizes collective ownership, economic equality, secularism, and the well-being of society as a whole. Humanism and Marxism are very different philosophies, but they both replace the role of God being the highest good with humans and the common good as the ultimate goal of society. The 20th century was heavily influenced by both of these. Marxism shaped the spread and adoption of socialist ideas worldwide, and humanist thinking was influential in the rapid growth of capitalist countries. Amidst the global conflict over the best way to organize our societies, I believe our faith communities accidentally adopted the belief in the “common good” as our ultimate goal. We did this accidentally over time without recognizing how antithetical it is to the core of Jesus’s teaching… personal transformation.

Now we have a Christian Western industrial complex devoted to promoting the common good in the name of Jesus while accidentally ignoring the call to personal transformation. The reality is that in Jesus' teaching, service of others and communal transformation are byproducts of personal transformation. By elevating and pursuing the common good, faith communities have lost the heart and soul of spiritual life. Do we actually believe that there is such a thing as real change without first changed hearts?

How this lie affects us.

There is no such thing as the separation of the secular and the sacred. All things are sacred because of their Creator. All activities are spiritual because we are spiritual. We are called to a life where the highest reality of our daily lives is not the things we do but the spiritual way in which we do them. We are called to be transformed into our true identities and our true way of living in spiritual union with God. From that perspective, everything is spiritual, even the smallest and most mundane of activities.

Consider a few of the ways this lie affects us in our culture and day-to-day lives.

How we look for leaders: Look at how we choose leaders in our culture, whether it be in business, politics, education, or faith. Most of the time, what people look for in the leaders they follow are external accomplishments and the appearance of power and control. Even in Christian circles, how often do people say, “I don’t care how successful he or she is, what I want to know is what has God done in their heart?” I know some people who think this way, but most people don’t know how to value the sacred over the secular in a leader. It seems that most faith communities in our world today choose leaders the same way the rest of the world does. We judge by appearance and accomplishment and then see if we can check the faith, character, and morality box. I think we have this very wrong, and we are paying the price for it. What if we looked for leaders in all areas of life who walked closely with God?

How we do business: Scott Dohner has drilled into me for years that doing business as a disciple of Jesus means you do business differently than the rest of the world. You work and make decisions from a place of constant conversation with God and with complete trust in His guidance and involvement. I have tried my best to practice this for years, and I can say it is very counterintuitive. When problems arise, instead of reacting in fear and trying to take the situation under control, you respond with prayer and surrendering what little control you may think you have. Doing business with God is an act of worship. It’s rare to see people who treat business as a spiritual act. Instead of putting profit and growth first, they put people and God first. The profit and growth are a natural byproduct over time of doing business in the right order as a fully integrated spiritual act.

How we educate our kids: Our modern model of education fails to view education as the holistic development of a child. This problem isn’t just the schools, it starts at home. We see education as primarily the impartation of information into a child so that they can become a “successful member of society.” What we miss with that approach is that we have the wrong definition of success. Our educational model treats spiritual development as a peripheral concept. For followers of Jesus, we should be teaching kids how to walk with God in everything they do and how to recognize the lies of our culture that try to pull them off the path of life. They need to be trained to resist the false allure of self-gratification, wealth, sex, and power that have proven time and again to be hollow without a foundation of connection to God. We must raise them to know how to be transformed, to live from identity, to walk in trust through every part of life in conversation with God.  

How we spend our time and what we pursue: If we lived lives where there truly was no separation between the sacred and the secular, then we would be seeing everything through a spiritual lens. What am I giving my time to, and how is that impacting me spiritually? Consider the content we engage with and the people we spend time with; how do they affect us spiritually? How do we affect them spiritually? What are we pursuing with our time, energy, and resources? Is it more wealth, status, and stuff? Or are we giving our time and energy to pursue spiritual growth and personal transformation?

Our spiritual practices: Our modern culture teaches us that there is a time and a place for spiritual practices, and that is primarily at home or a place of worship. As a result, we seem to define spiritual practices as prayer, worship, and reading our holy texts. Is that the extent of what spiritual practices are? I would argue that everything we do should be a spiritual practice because of how we do it. Work can be a form of worship; daily, mundane tasks can be a time of prayer. I have been challenged by mentors over the years to live a life where everything I do is first and foremost a spiritual act with God. I can say this is so unnatural much of the time, but slowly over time, I have begun to see my approach to everything change. Before meetings, I pray for God to go before me and guide our conversation. During the meetings, I am asking Him to show me how to respond and what to say. When challenges come up, I am learning to respond with trust and surrender when part of me wants to grab control.

Untangling the lie

How do we untangle the lie that there is a division between secular things and sacred things? There is only one path, the journey of personal transformation. By acting like there is a difference between the spiritual and practical, we have cut ourselves off from the path of transformation. We have relegated the spiritual to be secondary to the practical. A transformation journey is a process where the sacred and the secular meld together again and all things become sacred.

Most of my notes so far have centered around tools for transformation and reintroducing the concept of transformation to our modern minds. In order to step into the spiritual reality we are created for, we must wholeheartedly reject the belief that there is anything that is non-spiritual. We have to stop living like sacred things are different than the rest of our lives. We have to stop outsourcing our spiritual lives to full-time Christian workers. We have to reestablish God and our personal pursuit of him as the highest good. We must reject the belief that there is any truth apart from God and surrender ourselves to the reality that He is the beginning and end of all truth. In short, we have to stop believing the lie that there is a separation between the sacred and the secular.

- John Walt

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