Rethinking Holiness - A Reconstruction of Deconstructionism

As a young Christian, I associated holiness with purity – God is so far above us because he doesn’t sin, and we do. Like many of the notions inherited in childhood, this has undergone major surgery, and these days I see holiness as something infinitely more wonderful than a measure of purity.

God is God and we are not.

It seems to me that any appreciation of holiness must start with the recognition that God is God, and we are not. We can grow in love, manifest the divine nature, and be co-heirs with Christ, but we never become God.

God is the Source, and we are channels for his love. We are not separate, and he is certainly here, in and with us, but however close our union with him, the dynamic of spiritual abundance is a flow from the Source to his creation.

It seems to me that the acknowledgement of God as the Source is a fundamental foundation of faith. Unity/oneness with God is about fully yielding to that healing flow of love. Walking 'closely' with God is about tuning into what's already there. If we distil the message of union with God to its essence, we are left with the knowledge that we love because he first loved. We are many wonderful things, but we are not the Source.

The crucible of theology.

When I worship, I become conscious of the presence of the Great I am, and find great comfort in worshipping the God of Love with my absolute all. The presence of God is the crucible of theology, and in it, our poor ideas are burned up. If I carried the idea that we are somehow gods into the place of worship, it would disintegrate on a single exhalation of the Breath of Life. In his presence, I know that God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent – all things that human beings are definitely not.

A common complaint made by teachers in the Progressive Movement is that a God who demands worship must surely be needy, and the act of worship is therefore self-abasement, but for me, this is a straw-man argument. God doesn’t need or demand worship; it is as natural as breath for the loved creation, responding to their loving creator. God is not jealously clinging to divine rights, insisting we bow the knee. Quite the opposite – Christ gave up all his privileges to serve humankind. Philippians 2: 6-8,

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross!

Christ’s choice to serve us continues into eternity, and yet, this extraordinary divine benevolence should not blind us to the fact that however high the value God places on us, the Creator is greater than the creation. There's a joyful surrender in acknowledging not only the qualities of the divine we get to share, but also those that we don't. We are not almighty, immutable, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent. The world wasn't made through us, and we are not the Great I Am!

The unattainable qualities of God.

For me, this distinct greatness of God is a crucial aspect of what it means for him to be holy. These mysterious and unattainable qualities of the divine are expressed in English through exclusive prefixes (‘im, om, al, and in):

-Immutable (unchanging)
-Omnipotent
-Omnipresent
-Omniscient
-Almighty
-Infinite

We use these prefixes to indicate a degree of divine capability that is beyond us. We can all be potent, present, knowing, and mighty, and we are all finite and mutable, but the prefixes lift our gaze to something much greater, something we can never be. How much greater is the one who is omnipresent than one who is merely present? One who is Almighty than one who is merely mighty? One who is infinite than one who is finite?

This sacred difference between the divine and the mortal is the fundamental foundation of worship. I promise you, as one who spends much time in that place, it is the most secure and reassuring place to stand. God is not only infinitely greater than we are but expresses that greatness exclusively through love.

If God were infinite but less than loving, human experience would be hellish, but somehow, I know that this is not even a possibility. There is something about the infinite that cannot be separated from love; the highest possible being could only ever be loving, because love is the true essence of all that is. Love is the struck temple gong of existence, reverberating throughout the universe.

The place of worship, then, is entirely safe, engaging with the infinite who is infinitely loving. Acknowledging this cross-pollination of divine qualities – infinite greatness with infinite compassion – is, in my experience, the wellspring of gratitude.

Casting our crowns.

We are expressions of the divine artist, but we are not ourselves divine. We have been seated in heavenly realms with Christ and are even his co-heirs, but it was God who appointed us so highly. We have been exalted in Christ, but true worshippers still cast their crowns before him. To become self-focussed, turning our eyes from Jesus and directing them towards the mirror, is vanity.

There is a place of humility in worship that is the ultimate fulfilment of all that it means to be human, relieving us of all burdens and freeing us to see clearly. We enter this place by grasping the enormous privilege of the divine presence – the presence of the immortal, almighty, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, immutable, and infinite. In those moments, we can enter true humility and cry out ‘Holy is the Lord’, knowing that He is God and we are not, and yet we can bask in his presence without a hint of fear, knowing that we worship the God of Love.

Next time, I will focus on the Biblical command to ‘be holy as I am holy’, which is a call to grow in the divine qualities we can and are called to share. I’ll be exploring the relationship between holiness and wholeness, looking at journeys of healing God would lead us on in this life.