I really like the set of interviews in this year’s Highlights, but having a couple weeks in a row where Brandon and I aren’t recording really makes me miss the weeks like this one. I love being able to bounce ideas off each other, especially when it’s my turn to write the blog post, too. This week’s pod about the way the sacred is depicted in media has kind of been living in my head ever since.
There definitely seems to have been a significant shift over the past few decades in terms of how the secular world presents the sacred. I think we did a pretty good job of discussing why it bothers us, and even how we feel like it has sort of cheapened the media side of things when the sacred is just a cheap, easy way to bring a shock into your story. What’s been consuming my thoughts since our Monday conversation, though, is what it does to our sense of the sacred as a culture when we make the sacred a prop.
The presence of the sacred in our world is crucial, because it allows us to encounter signs and evidence of the divine which is beyond us. Now, the sacred still intersects with the human, and I’m not opposed to or bothered by the idea that we need to be aware of that influence. After all, there is no shortage of examples of people trying to use the sacred as a shield for their sins and manipulations. It remains true, though, that God chooses to work through people and things to reveal Himself to us. If we train ourselves to view the exceptions(wolves in sheep’s clothing) as the norm, we will close ourselves off to so much of what He wants to show us.
