Holiness
May 1, 2007
Sorry we missed class Sunday, we were helping out in Sarah’s class. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of weeks now, since I took us down the rabbit hole. What I was TRYING to do a few Sunday’s ago was NOT derail the class on a non-essential tangent, but discuss maintaining holy lives in the midst of participating with “the world.” (natives as Clint would say). I was thinking how could I express what I mean by holy living? Why would I need to do that? Why, because we tend to assume a plain moral-centered idea of holiness, and that’s not strictly what I mean by holy-living. When we don’t interact (I mean go to movies with, eat with, talk with) with non-Christians our idea of holiness has that obey the law feeling to it. So as long as I do these things and don’t do these other things I’m living a holy life. The problem is we tend to need a clear rule rather than a guide and embed our cultural preferences within the message of holiness. Is this not the issue Jesus took with the Pharisees.
Joel Scandrett has a great article in the current Christianity Today (May/07). He makes the point that the word for holiness has more to do with belonging to God, not to neglect our moral responsibility, but to keep us from an unhealthy moral-ism (see John’s thoughts).
“To be holy, to be set apart to God, is never an end in itself but is always for the sake of the world.”
Everything, for me, comes back to church (I need to identify what I mean by that…another post). Our closest brothers and sisters help keep us in check, not in a moralistic way, but in a relational way, so that they just know “somethings not right.” A friend of mine put it this way: Would you every say, I’m going to relate to my wife today? No, you just do. If you relationship is hurting, you know it. You may not want to face up to it, but you know. It’s that way with church, we have people that help remind us who we belong to, And that anchors us. If you agree with me you might like listening to this and enjoy reading this. If you think I’m way off, it would still be worth your time to listen/read/think/pray.
a conversation on church 
February 8, 2013 at 8:19 am
I am an atheist. I met the Dalai Lama in 1979, on his first trip to the U.S. when he visited the Kalmyk people in New Jersey. He held my hands in his hands and looked into my eyes and I looked into his. And I believe to this day that he is a holy, supremely good, and compassionate person. I experienced his holiness when I looked into his eyes. “Kindness is my religion”, he has said. I wish everyone could follow that religion.