I have never really known what “secular” means. I have taken courses and read books that address the meaning of the term, but in practice, in daily life, I have never really seen a clear division between secular and sacred. I’ve read about “construals” and “the imminent frame” and I really do like Charles Taylor’s book that seeks to explain how we went from conceiving of the world in relation to God, to explaining things in other ways. I don’t mean to say that everything is sacred, just that the correlation between awareness of the transcendent and the identification of a space or a practice as religious has not been direct.
Sometimes church has been the most secular space. I am grateful for the church and continue to work in churches. People who are part of the church have been formative in my life. However, often the places and people who would be defined as “secular” by many religious people have occasioned a deep sense of God’s presence and the asking of critical questions for spiritual growth. In fact, to be more explicitly Christian about it, there have been countless times when the presence of Jesus and an overwhelming sense of His love for the world have been palpable in what would by many be called secular.
A few nights ago, Jennifer and I finished the Netflix series, Beef. The promotional material identifies it as being about “the aftermath of a road rage incident”. That is what carries the plot, but the questions that the series asks are ultimately questions about faith and about God. Beef stars Ali Wong and Stephen Yuen both of whom are really good in the leading roles. It is one of those comedies without jokes. The themes and scenes are rather dark, at times even jarring. No doubt that the show is not for everyone. Some of the humour comes from wry observations of the tensions of daily life. Wealth and power are addressed, sometimes targeted. There are church scenes too, but not the more traditional scenes you often see in television. The church depicted is one of the newer churches, the kind that packages its judgment as aggressively non-threatening. These churches almost always have one word names. That works better for marketing. (The Rock, The River, The Fountain …(The article is always definite; they are not “a rock”, they are “The Rock”. Wasn’t there once a character on TV who self-reverentially used the term “The Todd”?)).
As the series progresses it becomes evident that the two main characters need each other, even in their rage. They begin to define their lives by the presence of the other. There is much in here to consider in our current cultural, political and religious contexts. What might happen if we did not have the other to define ourselves against? What if political polarization did not exist as it does? What if we had to envision our faith without the presence of the “secular”?
The relationship between the characters reminded me of David Goa’s framework of what he calls “co-dependent twins”. Goa says that zealousness and relativism need each other and feed off each other. He says that they are marks not of moral progress, but rather of a spiritual adolescence. They insist on dividing the world up.
The final episode of Beef (I won’t give it away), contains a question that struck me when it was asked and has stayed with me since.
One of the characters asks, “Do you think other people feel this way?” The question offers a bridge across the chasm of otherness. This is a question worth hearing and a question worth asking. So often in religious circles you can hear what “they” or “the world” or “the secular” is like. In a polarized culture the standard practice is to assume that you know what others think and feel, not to ask whether their feelings are similar to yours. It is also the case that outside of religious circles church and faith can be defined two-dimensionally or simply mocked or spoken about as vestiges of the past.
The character’s question offers a better way. Rather than telling people what “those others” think or how their ways are dangerous, we might ask the question, “Do you think other people feel this way?”
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This makes me want to watch the show again. It is excellent and really different. You present some great ideas and questions from it......thanks!