The Way to Holiness

Our call to holiness is easy to ignore. The impossibility of it all seems daunting, and  we may feel like procrastinating the journey. Or maybe we rest too heavily on Grace, knowing that our Father is loving and forgiving, and He accepts us as we are.

And yet the call persists.

Christians, it seems to me, interpret holiness quite differently from each other. Some can interpret it as a strict adherence to moral codes and an intimidating long lists of "don'ts". Don't drink, don't have sex before marriage, don't listen to rock music.

For others, holiness is a matter of justice. Help the poor, do justice and care for the environment. Moral codes can be seen as restricting, and more emphasis is paid to the "do's" than the "don'ts".

What is holiness?

Holiness, in the Holy Bible, simply means to be "set apart". An object or person is holy because it, he or she is "set apart" for the work of God.

This is a very simple definition, and we can see how we can derive different interpretations from it.

From this definition we can see the importance of what I like to call "Internal Righteousness". We can see that in order to say yes to our call to holiness, we have to say no to many things.

Of course, we say no with gladness, keeping the end in sight of our purposes, and knowing the freedom that boundaries can bring us. We should not do so with a sour face, however, or with a simple and strict adherence to Pharisaical ideals.

We can also see the importance of what I call "External Righteousness". We do not live in a secluded Christian bubble. We are called to see Christ in the poor. We are called to do justice and to implement the victories of the resurrection to the world around us.

Both go hand in hand. If one lacks the other they are both not only incomplete, but a counterfeit version of holiness. 

We are both a people of Mathew 25 and Exodus 20.

The Way to Holiness

One night, as I was praying, I asked God to show me the way to holiness.

I was expecting Him to respond with something like this,"OK, here is your 12 step plan to holiness, first you..."

Instead He just said "walk...". Then I saw an image of me going through an strenuous hike.

My response was, "Really God? Is there something else you would like to add?" I thought the answer too simple that I started questioning whether I was hearing from God or not.

Then I heard something along these lines: "Holiness is about walking slowly. Do not try to run. Sometimes it is just putting one foot in front of the other. It doesn't take much, only that you walk".

When we try to run in the hike to holiness, we turn into self-righteous pharisees. We all seen these kind of spiritual snobs. They are no fun to be around. They manage to heroically deny themselves, making quick changes, only to succumb in a few months to an uncontrollable binge of delicious sins. Some are good at hiding their sins while showing a slap-able, saintly, hypocritical face to the world. Tripping when you are running is almost always dramatic and painful.

If you walk slowly in this hike of holiness, you will make slow but noticeable progress. There is nothing heroic about it. In fact, to outsiders this walk may seem boring and borderline fruitless.

The years go by, however, and you are nowhere near from where you started. After a million small, seemingly insignificant steps, your journey can take you farther than the runner who is recovering from running carelessly in the woods.

If you fall while walking slowly, chances are that you won't trip as dramatically as the maniac runner who tripped on a stone and face planted on the mud. You will get up knowing that you have countless small steps under your belt, and that after so many hours of walking, this forest is very familiar to you.

Start the journey and walk slowly. Don't underestimate the small steps. That's the way to holiness.

American Arrogance & Racism

I have been thinking on the role arrogance has on racism, and how much more connected they might be than it is currently acknowledged.

It seems to me that there is no other period in history where human arrogance reached its height than in the enlightenment period. This, mixed in with a healthy dose of Epicureanism, where the gods, or God, did not interfere with human affairs, turned the scale over to the over-reliance of human achievement, autonomy and power, governed by all powerful Reason, which, in the end made us the center of the universe.

Armed with Reason and autonomy, new constitutions arose, new ways of doing government saw the light of day. Modern day civilization was born. This peculiar civilization, however, was mostly European.

Those who adhered to this sort of mentality and worldview were view as "civilized". Missionaries bought into this mentality and included in their preaching of the gospel a good measure of "civilizing savages". That our civilized culture was superior was unquestioned.

And so, white Europeans were civilized, and therefore better, and the rest were "savages" with their only hope of redemption being civilized with western ideologies.

Western civilization was King, the god of the new age.

This disgusting arrogance only added more fuel to the fire of racism, where people who did not fully adhere to our enlightenment worldview were viewed as savages, and therefore, inferior.

Native-Americans, Africans, and those less "civilized" nations, were deemed as less than humans.

If this arrogance is indeed connected to racism, then part of our solution to racism has to deal with humility.

We still carry this arrogance, especially in the United States. Much has been said about our arrogance and sense of entitlement that I don't need to prove the point here.

How many times, with patriotic spirits, have I heard people proclaim "this is the greatest country of the world!"

How many times have I heard presidents proclaim the U.S. as the beacon of hope to the rest of the world, with the greatest insert virtue here "the world has ever seen".

This is nothing short than bullying patriotism, and it causes more harm than good. This is false love of country, for true love "does not boast..." (1st Corinthian 13:4).

Anti-racism without humility is like trying to be a democratic leader with a heart full of dictatorship dreams. A shift of worldview, away from the arrogance of western civilization, needs to happen for the fertile ground of anti-racism to fully materialize.

Maybe what we need, to address the poisonous state of racism in this nation, is to first deal with our arrogance, repent from it, and seek humility before God. Maybe, with this new-found humility, we can start seeing the other as they are: human beings made in the image of God.