Holiness: ‘Perfectly’ Understood

“Surely Jesus came for more than self-congratulative societies who forever circle the wagons around their own saved identity and their own self-serving god!”  

“God makes grace out of our grit, salvation out of our sin.  We are saved, ironically, not by doing it right as much as by the suffering of having done it wrong.  We come to God not through our perfection as much as through our imperfection.  Finally, all must be forgiven and reconciled.  Life does not have to be fixed, controlled, or even understood for us to be happy.  That is the Good News!” 

from The Wisdom Pattern: Order/Disorder/Reorder, Richard Rohr

St. Peter at the Vatican holding the Keys

Probably the biggest surprise of trying to follow the Christian way over my lifetime has been the redefinition of holiness.  I grew up in Pentecostal holiness in the Nazarene church.  Back then, being saved got lost and way overshadowed by the doctrine of entire sanctification. We left the job of saving folks to the Baptists.  Entire sanctification was about achieving sinlessness, or perfection in this life.  This doctrine was constantly taunted and often screamed by preachers and evangelists as well as sung about and testified to on Wednesday nights.  Regularly I heard sister Bruce testify at mid-week prayer meeting “I was saved and sanctified in 1955 and haven’t sinned since”.  Even in my adolescent mind it was not making sense but then there was lots for a teenager to try and make sense of.  

With adolescent hormones pulsing through me, even though I didn’t get into smoking, drinking or drugs, I knew there was little to no chance of perfection in the body I was living in.  It wasn’t just sensual/sexual thoughts, but also all the other thoughts that ran through my head.  My junior high Sunday school teacher told us that if we said or thought ‘darn’, we might as well say, ‘damn’.  If we said ‘shoot’, we’ll go to hell for that so we might as well say ‘shit’.  You were “damned if you do and damned if you don’t”. By my junior year of High School I left the Nazarene’s escaping to the Methodists.  I went with a buddy and joined University Methodist Church in Tulsa attending the Methodist church throughout my undergraduate years.  (The Methodist church was not much of a jump although it felt so back then. They and the Nazarenes are both centered in Wesleyan/Armenian doctrine and theology.)

Even though I didn’t believe in the entirely sanctified state of human perfection, I still strived for it—crazy making.  As a social worker having interacted with a variety of people, I came to see that my history was not unique.  Catholics and many variations of protestant churches preached the same doctrine.  As life went on, it became clearer and clearer that it wasn’t about checking various sins off the list hoping to get better and Godlier.  It was the opposite.  I became more aware of other aspects where I was falling short—so the list grew longer. Then there was always the haunting, damning thought that you must not be doing it right but someone out there was. There were few people willing to be honest about their interior lives for fear of all sorts of reprisal, like loosing your job if you happen to be the preacher or the church worker.  So many folks just became drop-outs in one way or another.  Some actually left the church and Christianity all together, others went stealth.  If you never happened onto a book or met someone willing to risk honesty, many just floundered around in guilt and shame.

Oswald Chambers said that God was not about making himself little trophies of perfection he could shelve in his study.  Look at the scriptures old and new.  The characters in all the stories were not perfect, often far from it.  I suppose Daniel and Joseph of the old testament had higher scores, but still they were not perfect.  

So the huge surprise has been that the most saintly men and women I have ever known were not sinless, perfect people.  But that did not effect how their saintliness shown through.  In fact, it was their ownership of their shadow/dark side, the sins that still beset them, that was so precious.  To know them, there was not an ounce of pretension or haughtiness.  Humility was the outstanding and common quality of all of them.  There was a tenderness that came from a solid understanding of their place with God.  An intimacy of relationship, a connection in their core of being with the Creator—with a peace that does defy intellectual understanding.  There was still suffering to endure, sometimes physical, often relational pain and a sensitivity to the agony in the world around them. 

I’ve come to see so much of church life is self centered, about saving me—a very ‘me first’ philosophy/theology.  It’s often not been about caring for others or the creation around us. I personally have come to more truth in the valleys (or truth found me) and in my waywardness than on the mountaintops or what I saw as obedience.  

Lest this sound like I am saying that we just begin ‘winking’ at sin, or those who would go as far to say “we might as well sin all the more so that more grace might abound”—none of that.  It’s about the place where we all live—in the middle, in between—where the tension between good and evil is within our own selves.  The old teaching said that we could rid ourselves of carnal desires.  Maybe some yet I daresay very few.  Recovery groups have helped thousands of people deal with overpowering issues in their lives but they know that the Way they’ve learned will be the way of life until they die.  Whatever their addictions, their afflictions, they don’t go away.  

In one way or another, we all are addicts.  We choose our medicators.  Karl Marx said ‘religion is the opium of the people—the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of souless conditions’.  Corporate religion can easily become simply a habit. 

I was first shocked when a friend quoted: “The church is a whore, but She is my mother".  Let that sink in.  Throughout history She has ‘prostituted’ herself for wealth and power.  Yet, it is within her that I first came to know God.  She too is/was flawed, yet used throughout history to lead us to God.  The truth is we do need a place to take the rawness and difficulties of living.  Some say that God is just a crutch.  If so, so be it.  Everyone chooses their own ‘crutch’.  Spirituality at the core is about what we do with our pain—as we limp along.  Addicts know that a big part of their personal work is dealing with their own trauma, pain and despair. The process of becoming never stops (thankfully so).  

The closer the relationship with God, the more light is shown within us on all aspects of our being.  It is a gradual refinement for the majority of us but for a few who’ve endured great suffering and agony, grace abounds and rushes them toward a depth of holiness that literally glows from within them.  However it happens, it is not our doing.  We come to see our only responsibility is as Annie Dillard says, to put ourselves in the flow—to let go of our own way.  The Spirit of God does the calling, the moving, the transforming.  

So whatever might be besetting us, or controlling us for the moment, don’t spend too much time focusing there.  Hang closer to the Creator.  Seek truth, beauty and the movement of love wherever it can be found.  We must open our eyes everywhere, in all places, recognizing that all situations are ripe with teaching and instruction. St. Bonventure said “God’s center is everywhere and His circumference is nowhere”.  

Sin was never as much about our damnation as it is about our education—  who I am and most importantly, who God is.  We ultimately come to met a pursuing God—yet one who is a gentleman, not forcing His way upon us.  We come to understand that all love is in pursuit of the object it loves—that may be wealth or power, a sport, a car—but in the mystical, cosmic sense, you, and I are the objects of God’s affection. 

None of this frees us from the difficulties and sorrows of life but it does provide a way through it.  

Ironically to know saintliness is to know sin at its’ depths.  To hold the frailties of my humanity and the holiness of God together in our very being.  It is the essence of following the Christ who was totally human and totally divine. As John tells us, ‘the very Godhead dwelled therein.” 

There is our icon. There is our Way. 

( I originally wrote this July 2020 before the death of Congressman John Lewis. He was a saintly man.) 

Yet another saint to me. Though I am not of the Catholic faith, I have great regards for Pope Francis who is the real thing. Read of his background and life along with his current lifestyle choices. Maybe not perfect, but a man who has tried to follow The Way.