Secular

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about being a former atheist, and how the Christian walk and the 'moral atheist' lifestyle look way too similar.  Am I actually set apart?  A wise man I know suggests that we don our faith every moment, every day.  This could create a pressure to put on 'the ornaments' of a Christian life: a bookshelf full of publicly-recognized Christian authors, a Jesus fish on my car, all the right Air1 artists on my iPad, Focus on the Family videos on my Facebook page, footprints on the bookmark in my Beth Moore book?

Please know that, even outside of the Church, there are pieces of God everywhere.  There are morsels on the floor for those of us who weren't raised at the Masters table. Growing up 'secular', my first encounters with God were not in a church building, at a retreat or camp.  I have been bestowed with the gift of seeing the Divine in the secular (whether that is a spiritual gift is open for debate).  Those who know me recognize this. Where one person may gaze critically at the stars and shudder at the falsehoods of astrology, I see the unchanging God in the Heavens. Another may recoil at the sin laid bare in the lyrics of Numb, What I've Done, Leave Out all the Rest, or Waiting for the End, but I hear a cry for redemption and deliverance from Linkin Park.  (Bet we won't be singing those choruses in the building Sunday morning!)  I see through the alleged-witchcraft and savor an allegory of Christ in the story of Harry Potter.  I seek the Holy Spirit in the earthly dirt of a run or a hike.  Hence, I cherish the mountains and visit them as often as I can.  They remind me that faith has already moved mountains, by moving me.

So I question:
Why is the Divine-amid-the-secular seen as unacceptable in the church?  Is truth no longer truth when it is tainted with the stuff of earth?  Or do we consume it only when it comes packaged within a Zondervan label?

Do not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil.
     -Romans 14:16