On Not Preaching Holiness

The Western Church (by and large) has lost sight of the Holiness of God.

One of the great favors you can do yourself, if you are a Christian, is to work your way through Jaroslav Pelikan's 5 book study of the The Christian Tradition:  A History of the Development of Doctrine (I have only made it through Volume 4 but am re-reading the series this year).  In reading the books you find that the develop of the doctrine of the church was a bit longer drawn out that we like to believe ( the best known case of this of course, the Trinity, was not formally worked out until the 4th century).  You will also find that the Church, like any other human institution, goes through trends based on the society around it.

The trend in the Western Church - or at least the American Western Church - is justice.

Justice has become the defining nature of God.  Everything - society, history, current social mores, economy - is viewed through the lens of "The Justice of God" (and by justice, what is meant is equality and righting wrongs).  Thus, preaching of God's word becomes an exercise in 1) showing how the people of the Bible were unjust; 2)  showing how we currently are unjust; and 3) how we need to make fighting injustice our number one goal.

Now, there is a balance to be kept here.  The Bible is rather full of justice - and indeed, it talks about social justice as is suggested (Rights for the sojourner, widow and orphans, caring for the poor - check it, it's all there).  At the same time, the Bible is not ONLY about this thing.

We have lost the Holiness of God in this rush to justice.

God is holy - holy meaning not just as we think of it (really religious), but utterly pure and set apart from anything else.  He is the ultimate holder of gravitas, the one who is so beyond us in our sin in nature and in being that we wither away in His presence. 

God is also very, very explicit about the fact that He is holy - and that He expects us to be as well (Leviticus 11:44 is a fine example:  "Be ye holy, for I am Holy says the LORD").  It is as explicitly discussed as any other attribute of God (such as His love or justice, for example).  Yet holiness is something that you will scarcely hear preached on these days.

Why?  Two reasons, I think.  The first is a somewhat crass one:  The holiness of God allows us to rail against no-one.  We cannot use the word of God as a weapon of God to bring the change we think needs to be in the world, because in that sense holiness has very little to do with this world or our agendas.

The second reason is that the Holiness of God imparts guilt and requires action. 

By demonstrating and saying that God is holy, we are saying that we are sinners.  And sinning makes us feel bad (as it should, by the way).  But feeling bad is not something that a great many churches want to do these days:  it drives away people and convinces them that Christianity is "as seen on TV".  Better to engage them with words and feelings and movements of the society around them. 

And it requires action. It requires us to repent of our sin - even more, it requires us to agree with God on the issues as He sees them and change our view to match His, something which is not popular is a society that sees so much of the Bible as anachronistic and a tool of oppressive morality and domination.

The catch?  Without holiness, no-one can see the Lord.  Ultimately our ability to see God is predicated upon us accepting the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf for our sin - our unholiness, as it were.  And without acknowledging that sin, that unholiness, we cannot be saved from it.

Be careful, Church of the West.  Do not exchange your calling to be a holy people of a holy God to be a socially relevant people of a socially relevant God.  If we do not right this ship, we will end up becoming a chapter in someone else's book of Christian History, while the church that practices holiness somewhere else takes up the torch and moves forward.