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       As I have indicated, when Christ and Self are in the right relationship-that of a working indissoluble unity-then many other things fall into their right relations. The unity of things that we had intuitively felt were not two but one becomes apparent to us and life begins to be enriched with a "diversity in unity" which is exciting and exhilarating. An exhaustive look at these would be impossible here, but we will mention a few. Sacred and Secular are concepts which change for the one who penetrates beyond human categories. we have a penchant for pigeonholing things, and the religious man is worse than any at this game. "Sacred" means that which is devoted to God or to spiritual realities; "secular" is that which does not recognize God, or that which has no connection with spiritual matters. If I had to choose, I would choose the latter! I would make this choice because God does not wish to be separated from man's ordinary life, as happens in the sacred. The sacred attempts to fence God in and you cannot do that. So to the contrary, He appears to lean to being incognito, as He is in the secular. But there is no choice in actuality. What is there that is not to be devoted to God in our human life as means of showing His joy, beauty, and self-giving? Everything and everyone is sacred in the sense of being a stream of manifestation of His creative power and love. The sacred only ceases to be sacred when it refuses the sacredness of the secular, which is to deny its own existence.
       All things stand in relation to one factor, one center-- LOVE. What we understand as secular is in reality God hidden, whereas we think of sacred as God revealed. When God came into the religious situation in Christ, He came incognito and moved out into the secular world, identifying Himself with all, in a totality which is quite shocking to the sacred separatists. His birth and death-- with the stigma of illegitimacy on the one hand and that of a malefactor on the other-- as well as just living life among all kinds of people to the great disturbance of the religious, are ample evidences of the completeness of His life and of His views.
       If we mean by "secular" something that opposes God, and therefore man, let us rather speak of a spirit of evil which may control any area of life, sacred as well as secular, just as the Spirit of good can, making it all a medium for God's love. So without this false discrimination and having only love as the final arbiter, we are to live freely in this world in which God is largely incognito. We devote the world wholly to God and His creative and redemptive love for our fellows. We also, as the beloved of God, are to enjoy it under His ordering hand, but never at the sacrifice of love.
        We pass naturally from that to another area where I had to have my sights adjusted, Creation and Redemption. God is the "within Person" in creation as well as in a special way in redeemed humanity. All creation is in God; it has its being in Him, as also do men. "In Him we live and move and have our being," said Paul, and he speaks in Colossians very emphatically of Christ as the origin, center, and sustainer of all creation, "In Him all things subsist." Then again he says in Romans 1, God is manifested in creation to the extent that men may see clearly "His eternal power and Godhead." It is clear that only One has life in Himself, and therefore all that lives is alive in Him. There is no life but God living, and evil is the distortion of this original life. Satan is not a creator, but a distorter and perverter of the one life, a negator of God. There is no escaping the one life and the one Person; evil is but a wrong use of the ever-good, in the mind and personality of a being who sets himself up to be independent of his origin.
        It appears that scientists are moving in the direction of which we are speaking. Many more of  them seem to acknowledge God in some form in their personal beliefs than was so thirty years ago. They are coming, it seems to me, closer to some theologians, in one sense, who express God as "the Ground of our Being." The incalculable and staggering power locked within the atom is not something separate from God, as the car I drive is separate from me. It is a manifestation of God. Someone has used the expression about God in His transcendent and immanent aspects as "the Beyond in the midst." I like that.
       To come to the central point, the special reason I had for writing at all on this matter, I see God as very close to His creation, man-not separated from him even in man's unresponsive, unconverted state. As someone has said, "Closer is He than breathing, nearer than hands and feet" Man cannot escape this One who is his very life, even though he should ignore and separate himself from God in his consciousness and purpose. It is clear that man is never forced by divine love, that indeed he has the power to separate himself, but only at the level of his own awareness, though it is an illusion. This does not alter facts, however. "He is not far from every one of us," says Paul to the Athenians. The tragedy is that man can and does live in a denial of God's rights, even if not of His very existence. It helped me when I saw the fact that God never leaves that which He has created, and is indeed the very life of  all.  Man's conversion to a recognition of God's presence and His Lordship is something like the operation of a radio receiver. The set fails to fulfill the function of the maker until certain controls are used, then it suddenly responds and works according to the law of its being. It fulfills the purpose for which it was made, receiving and giving out what it receives. The point is, where was all this, that it is or now receiving and giving, before the controls were used? Where were the radio waves before that moment? The answer is obvious-- they never could have been closer and more at hand, but the controls were not used rightly. The waves were in and around that be insensitive and unresponding receiver-never absent from it. This is how I see man in God, though in a very crude and incomplete illustration.
       What this does is to give me a truer and, therefore, a more hopeful view of the person I am seeking to pray and work with, that he might come to a knowledge of Christ. This means that God is already in operation and is right on the job, seeking by every means at hand, through good events and bad, to bring him to an awareness of the ever-seeking Love. The first Evangelizer is already in operation; then I can cooperate, with faith and certainty. ________________________________________________________
(1) Whittle, John.  man ALIVE - P.O. Box 2877, Glen Ellyn, IL 60138, Union Life Ministries