What would King Solomon, author of Proverbs, speak on if he was a guest preacher at our church?
Zach Eswine (in this talk) imagines turning up to hear a Bible talk by Solomon, only to hear him share his favourite biological facts about ants (see Proverbs 6:6-8), musing on gardening techniques (see Ecclesiastes 2:4-6), and reading love poems you’re not sure you should hear in public (see Song of Songs)
He seems intrigued by every part of life. That just what 1 Kings 4:32-34 tells us, too:
“Solomon spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs numbered 1,005. He spoke about trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop growing out of the wall. He also spoke about animals, birds, reptiles, and fish. Emissaries of all peoples, sent by every king on earth who had heard of his wisdom, came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom.”
King Agur who we meet in Proverbs 30 seems just as fascinated:
“Three things are too wondrous for me;
four I can’t understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship at sea,
and the way of a man with a young woman.”
(Proverbs 30:18-19)
Not one area of life seems to fall outside of their curiosity, study, and artistic appreciation.
Sacred / Secular
We sometimes live as though there is a divide between what sacred (Christian ‘stuff’) and secular (earthly ‘stuff’).
| Sacred | Secular |
|---|---|
| Bible reading | Watching films |
| Worship music | Our jobs |
| Evangelism | Holidays |
| Prayer | Cleaning |
| Church | Hobbies |
We might start to feel as if the secular distracts us from the sacred.
Others in our life might see our ‘Christian activities’ and think that they’re pulling us away from ‘real world’ stuff.
That way of thinking can be internalised through the way Christians talk to each other with well-meaning phrases like ‘focus on eternal things not just the football score’, ‘integrity in your work place is good because helps you in your witness’, or ‘God comes before your hobbies’.
There are good intentions behind such messages, of course. In some ways, those three are all true.
But think about that last one, ‘God comes before your hobbies’.
It implies there’s a ranking system where God is separate to the rest of life.
1. God.
2. Job.
3. Hobbies.
Etc…
But God is not separate. A ranked list like that is not the only way to think about God and our life.
Another way to think about prioritising God is to think of life’s purpose.
What is everything for?
God is the purpose of all our lives.
That means everything we do, including science, art and work, are for him.
Actually, all things are for him. All of it.
“For everything was created by him,
in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities—
all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things,
and by him all things hold together.
(Colossians 1:16-17)
And all things must come back to him.
“For God was pleased to have
all his fullness dwell in him,
and through him to reconcile
everything to himself,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace
through his blood, shed on the cross.”
(Colossians 1:19-20)
Nothing is left out.
How do you see the world?
We could live as though the world is desperately dark and we have to huddle around a candle to make it through until Jesus returns.
Or we can believe that the world right now is still so bright with God’s radiant light that, once our blind eyes are opened to him, we can’t help but see traces of him everywhere.
These verses paint a view much more like the second option.
In Genesis 2:9, it says,
“The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.”
If creation is made to be beautiful as well as useful, and if we’re designed to see beauty and not just usefulness, then being spiritually alive human people made in God’s image means paying attention to what God has designed us to find delightful in creation.
Take science and art as two examples…
Science: Seeing God in creation
Psalm 19:1-4 illustrates this:
“The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.”
If an Israelite without our understanding of physics could look up and be so in awe at God’s glory, what might an astrophysics student have to say?
Early astronomer Johannes Kepler expressed this sentiment in his 1619 book on the geometry of the planets:
“The wisdom of the Lord is infinite as are also His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises: sun, moon, and planets, glorify Him in your ineffable language! Praise Him, celestial harmonies, and all ye who can comprehend them! And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exist.”
The motion of planets wasn’t just his “work”, it was his worship. He allowed it to lead him to deeper relationship with God.
Science, from mechanics to radiography, in and of itself, can be a way to delight in the works of the Lord.
At Cambridge University, over the main entrance of the Cavendish Laboratory, the home of the Department of Physics, is an inscription in Latin taken straight from Psalm 111:2… ‘Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them.’
Art: Depicting the glory of God’s creation
Francis Schaeffer loved the arts as a Christian, but he was well aware of how some people thought about it in his day:
“What is the place of art in the Christian life? Is art – especially the fine arts – simply a way to bring worldliness in through the back door? What about sculpture or drama, music or painting? Do these have any place in the Christian life? Shouldn’t a Christian focus his gaze steadily on ‘religious things’ alone and forget about art and culture?” (Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible)
If you listed Solomon and Agur’s interests, they’d seem like scientists: ants, eagles, agriculture, irrigation.
But if you listen to how they talk about those interests, you’d recognise you were listening to an artistic soul.
It’s poetry.
Art gives us a window into God’s creation to notice it.
If the Cavendish Laboratory reminds us about the scientific endeavour to study God’s works (Psalm 111:2), the artist helps us pay attention to the wordless glory of God’s visible world (Psalm 19:1-4).
That’s true whether that’s a child doodling pictures of animals they think are cool, or screenwriters trying to depict the complex beauty of human relationships, or artists finding delight even in the shape shopping bag takes under the weight of its contents (see this).
Some artists see glory in just a singular pigment of the colour blue (click here to see Yves Klien):
Klein saw monochrome painting as an:
“open window to freedom, as the possibility of being immersed in the immeasurable existence of colour.”
Being a Christian who appreciates art doesn’t have to mean only appreciating art produced by Christians. A Christian can stand before that blue canvas and be led to worship God for making a world so vibrant with colour.
John Calvin supposedly said:
“There is not one blade of grass, there is no colour in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.”
Being a Christian in the arts doesn’t mean you must paint Jesus, set up shop at Christian festivals, only focus on happy things, do typography of Bible verses, use it for evangelism, or hide secret Christian messages in your brush strokes (none of those are bad things either!).
Francis Shaeffer once said:
“A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God, not just as tools for evangelism, mind you, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be an act of praise to God in itself.” (Art and the Bible)
Christian artist called Alistair Gordon talks about how artists are to be like window cleaners:
“Art matters because it wipes away the dirt so that we might peer through the windows and see the wonder inside. The goodness of God leaks through from the new creation. Our task is to polish the mirrors and clean the windows.”
This might also mean shedding gospel-informed light on the darkness of our fallen world. Click here to read how creators of the game That Dragon, Cancer depicted the tragedy of their child’s illness and death informed by their Christian faith.
What about other work?
When it came to craftsmanship, Martin Luther put it like this:
“The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”
The same might go for everything we create.
Replace ‘shoemaker’ with your craft.
The Christian student doesn’t have to link every film studies essay back to the Chronicles of Narnia.
The Christian web designer doesn’t need to find a way to sneak Bible verses into code.
The Christian shop assistant doesn’t need to stack the Pepsi cans in a cross-shaped pattern.
We bring glory to God by doing good work.
We don’t do good work just for evangelism (see everything above), but imagine what kind of effect it would have on sharing our faith if we did live this way.
C.S. Lewis imagines this scene:
“What would happen if, when a non-Christian was looking for information on a given subject, he found that the best work on the market was always by a Christian? What if a non-Christian constantly discovered that the best engineer, the best doctor, the best teacher, the best musician, the best janitor, etc. he knew were all Christians? How would that work to overcome his society-induced prejudice against Christianity?”
The real divide
If we take all this to heart, it should reframe how we think of sacred and secular.
The real ‘sacred / secular’ divide is about why and how we do things (for God’s glory or not) rather than what we do.
Like this:
| Sacred | Secular |
|---|---|
| Reading the Bible to meet with God | Reading the Bible so we can boast about what we know |
| Dong our job so we can help God’s world flourish | Doing our jobs so we can be glorified by others |
| Sharing our faith so our friends come to know Jesus | Sharing our faith because we feel guilty if we don’t |
| Watching a film to enjoy the life God gave us | Watching a film to escape from our responsibilities |
| Saving money so we can care for our family and be generous | Saving our money so we can buy things that others think well of us |
Framed like that, I live a much more ‘secular’ life than I like to think. My heart is so often not in the right place.
But thanks be to God because, when Colossians 1 quoted above says that God is reconciling everything to himself, that includes me and my heart. He has made peace with me through his blood shed on the cross. I am a new creation in Christ, being made new each day as my heart becomes more tuned to the ‘sacred’ motives for life.
Questions to ask yourself sometime:
The Goodness of Creation: When you learn something that blows your mind or encounter a stunning piece of art or music, how can you see these moments as opportunities to praise the God who designed that chemical reaction or created the possibility of musical harmony?
The Destruction of Sin: In history, medicine, policing, politics, psychiatry, and environmental science, the reality of sin is evident. How can seeing the effects of sin around you deepen your prayer life and increase your love for a God who stepped into a world full of evil to take it on himself at the cross?
Hope for Something Better: Every area of work or study proposes solutions to the worlds’ problems, forming what we put our hope in for our lives and this world. How does your area of study, or work, or hobby reflect an idea of what the world could one day be?
