Domesticating the Sacred

"We have domesticated the sacred by stripping it of authoritative wisdom and by looking to it only to make us happy....Religious leaders want the churches to play a heroic role in our society - challenging people to make deep commitments, inspiring them to great deeds of service, encouraging them to be concerned for the poor, and liberating us from the excesses of greed and materialism. In reality, religious faith prompts few people in any of these directions....The way in which our faith influences our economic behavior is to an important degree a function of the economic system itself, and more broadly, a reflection of the cultural norms that govern Middle America. Thus, religious commitment often makes only a marginal difference to the economic behavior of individual believers."

-Robert Wuthnow, God and Mammon in America, p. 6-7.



How sad that the church should be viewed in such a light and yet how accurate that description is. Before anyone jumps up to defend the American church, let's think carefully about several examples of a deeply committed life to see if many modern churchgoers that you and I know are following in that pattern:



The early church sold property owned by individuals to pay for the needs of everyone. Acts 2:44-45; 4:32, 34-37. Among the early church there was no destitute poverty as the church helped each member as a need arose. Simon J. Kistemaker, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Acts of the Apostles, p. 112. The early church did not claim ownership of possessions individually, but instead viewed property as belonging to the church. Kistemaker, p. 173. This sharing of property was voluntary and done from a desire to follow biblical commands to help the poor. Kistemaker, p. 173. The book of Acts even gives a specific example of Barnabus selling a plot of land and giving the money to the Apostles to use as they saw fit. Acts 4:36-37.



Mother Teresa began a life of service at the age of 18. At the age of 36 she left her home in a convent and went to live in slums in India to care for the poor. She started a mission called Missionaries of Charity to help people rejected by society because of disease, poverty and deformity. Throughout the time she worked she had two heart attacks, pneumonia, a broken collar bone, malaria, and other heart problems. She died at the age of 87, having given a lifetime of service to the poor.



Brother Lawrence lived in a monastery as a lay brother. He spent his lifetime working in the kitchen of the monastery and repairing sandals, yet he wrote letters that were compiled into a profound work entitled The Practice of the Presence of God.