Hello and welcome to my blog, The Sacred Secularist, where we'll discuss what makes the divine human, and the secular sacred. In future posts I will be sharing my journey of discovering Jesus over and over again in all the places that I was told I wouldn't. Today, I wanted to share a little about myself, where I come from, as well as introduce you to this little project of mine!
New Number, who dis?
My name is David Pate. I am 29 years old and married to my beautiful wife, Katie. In summer of 2019, we moved to Zanesville, Ohio from Columbus, Ohio.
Columbus, featured below in orange, is an interesting place. Forbes called it the 7th best city for young professionals in America and US News called it the 36th best city to live in. We weren't quite in the Bible Belt, but it was only a stones throw and 45 minute drive away. Zanesville, 45 minutes east of Columbus is a different story. It's lost somewhere in the green hillbillies portion on the map. There are literally dudes walking around with "Got Jesus" signs. We'll get into that later, but the map kind of nails it.
I have a love for dark beer and red meat, moody weather and literally anything Thom Yorke. I have a certain aversion to green food, sweet wine and I like my music devoid of anything resembling a country twang.
THE SACRED
And then there is Jesus. Recently, I have realized that I don’t really “know” Him like they say I am supposed to, and I’m not really sure that I want to. It's hard to feel that you know someone who completely surprises you at every turn. I'm fascinated because surprising me at every turn is precisely what He does. Having grown up in a fairly strict, conservative evangelical household, "knowing" or "loving" Jesus was a way of life. That way of life seems to have lost some of it's gusto and its sacredness. Just like grandma's silver, it has something of a tarnish to it. Knowing Jesus, for me, comes with some baggage.
Some of that baggage is that I don't know what the hell it means to "know" someone I've never met, who died, and according to some folks rose and ascended into this place or thing called Heaven. Oh, and did I mention that this all was to have happened some 2,000 years ago? It's not that I don't believe, necessarily. It's that looking a little more closely at the beliefs I grew up with, it seems that knowing Jesus was really less about Jesus and more about what I believed and how certain I was of that belief.
A CERTAIN UNCERTAINTY
Growing up, I was told that I needed to be certain about what I believed, and constantly on the defense of those beliefs. I needed to solidify my "testimony" so that I can have conversations with people who weren't Christians and persuade them to be more like "Jesus". The more I thought about it, the more I came to realize this was a Jesus I never knew. This door-to-door peddling, "heaven-when-ya-die", one dimensional "Jesus" - always resembled the person telling me about Him more than the Jesus I read about in scripture. The more I study the Bible and hear what others have to say about Him, it seems like nobody can pin him down to our required 30-60 second pitch that will invariably convert non-Christians into carbon copies of
My inability to pin it all down created a lot of uncertainty about who this Jesus was, which was frightening and created no shortage of discomfort. On one hand, I was taught that God was everywhere, but then, somehow at the same time, there was this place called "the secular", where Jesus wasn't and if I went there, it could begin a trajectory that would somehow leave Jesus and me separated in the end.
So, after beginning to ask a lot of questions, it seemed that I was holding onto an image of Jesus that just wasn't big enough. Due to this Jesus' inherent smallness, he had little likeness to what I would later begin to recognize as Him. I decided it was time to move on and investigate a Jesus who didn't fit into the package I had inherited.
ENTER MY ELEPHANT GRAVEYARD
I found myself just as drawn to "The Secular" as Simba was to the elephant graveyard when he snuck out of the watchful eye of Zazu. Soon after, Simba needed Mufasa to rescue him from all the yappy hyenas and a lurking Scar. When I entered these forbidden places, sneaking off to listen to “secular" music and read “secular” books, and talk to “secular” people, I found someone I never expected: Jesus.
For the record, when I say "secular", I don’t just mean the “I listen to Creed on the way to church in 2000,” secular stuff. I mean the “God is dead and we have killed him,” anti-god, atheistic sort of secular stuff. Even though I was sure I had severed the tie, right there, smack-dab in the middle of all that "secular" stuff I was told to avoid was...
...Jesus...
...waiting for me...
...like I was late.
This isn't to say that entering into your own unique, proverbial elephant graveyard will leave you unscathed. If you choose to enter, if you follow the white rabbit and take the red pill, you will not return the same. Along the way, you may find that your little roar isn't quite as ferocious as you thought it was, but what's waiting for you on the other side may just be more than sufficient.
You Have Heard It Said...
I was told a lot of things growing up. Even though I had an intuitive doubt about some of those things, I struggled to give these questions and doubts expression. When I would choose to become vulnerable enough to share what was troubling me, I found myself being feverishly prayed for...or on...or at...(I don't know, it's a charismatic thing...).
Eventually, when the doubt still lingered and the prayers ran out, I was told just to ignore them. Told to bury them. Honesty was never fully encouraged. Eventually the Jesus I was told about utterly failed, all the certainty I was told I needed began unraveling. To survive, I finally had to unleash the questions and the doubts. It was only then that my elephant graveyard came into view.
SACRED SECULARISM
Therefore, The Sacred Secularist will be a place where I discuss my faith, my doubt, my failures and successes as I continue on the journey of faith. I'll catalog all the strange, un-clean, un-christian, secular elephant graveyards where I've crossed paths with Jesus. I'll describe all the ways I've found, the secular to have more than a hint of the sacred and how I've found Jesus right in the middle of it.
I’ve found Jesus to be dangerous and uncomfortable to the self-righteous, yet welcoming to the no-goods, the nobodies, the sinners, the saints and secularists alike. He provides an example of how to be unafraid of places we've been told not to go, people we've been told not to associate with, and experiences not to be had. He commands a beautiful game of Hide and Seek where we are the seekers and He will always let Himself be found in the most outrageous and wonderful places.
What to expect in future posts:
- Life Updates
- As Katie and I navigate the struggles of leaving the comfortable traditions of our youths, we'll share our search for God in all the places we were told not to look. We will discuss our various experiences and some interpretive thoughts to go along with them.
- Theology
- As we learn new things and new ideas, we look forward to sharing them with you and discussing them further!
- Special Guests
- I'll have guest interviews discussing Jesus. And Art. And food. And life.
- Art
- I will take a piece of secular art, one that may even seem to be antagonistic to the gospel. This may be in music, film, poetry, or any other medium. I'll discuss the ways I've found Christ there waiting for me.
Again, thank you for joining me on this journey. I look forward to all the unsuspecting places we'll find Jesus. I can't wait to hear about your experiences. I look forward to the highs, the lows, the mistakes and their lessons.
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