The One Hundred Seventy-Nine Day of 2023

Gentle Reader,

Do you want to be right or do you want to be holy?

Last week I asked: What is holiness? And that’s a good question, if I do say so myself. It’s one worth pondering. One for which we ought to seek out, and continue to seek out, an answer. But today, as I sit down to write, having planned to pursue a different line of questioning, I find myself wondering if we even want to be holy.

I know that there are a wide variety of people who read these posts of mine. I’m grateful (and, more than occasionally, a little baffled) by that. Some of you don’t really believe in God at all. Some of you are fellow Christians, but you look at our faith through Baptist or Reformed or Catholic or Something Else Entirely lenses. So you may be reading this and wondering why I even care about this idea of holiness. That’s not your emphasis. Not what matters to you.

Stick with me.

Do you want to be holy – which as we discussed last week is a defining characteristic of God – or do you want to be right?

I think holiness encompasses or envelops rightness. But I don’t think holiness and rightness are equivalent.

Again, stick with me.

Take a scroll through Twitter or a glance at the evening news and you’re faced with a whole lot of people who want to be right about something. Who are convinced that they are right about something. And hey, maybe they are. For example, the statement “Pepsi is better than Coke” is absolutely correct. You cannot convince me otherwise. I know beyond doubt that I am right about this.

So, because I am right, I should obviously go around destroying soda fountains in restaurants and throw cases of Pepsi at people’s heads. What choice do I have? I’m right.

This is very obviously a ridiculous example, but it gets to the point: rightness doesn’t always encompass or envelop holiness.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

 who, though he existed in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be grasped,
 but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
     he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.

– Philippians 2:5-8 (NRSV)

This is the first half of the Christ Hymn found in Paul’s letter to the Christians in the ancient city of Philippi, in northern Greece. I’ve written two papers on this passage and have referenced it I don’t know how many times in other works. Its depths are plumbless. Bottomless. This is arguably one of the first creedal statements of the Church. Jesus is God – eternal, ever-existing. Jesus is Human – self-limited, bound by time. God came to earth to serve in humility, culminating in death on a cross. (But spoiler alert: Jesus didn’t stay dead)!

If God is the essence of holiness, its very definition and highest expression, then the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus tells us something about holiness. Jesus doesn’t model simple rightness to us. If that were all He focused on, then He probably would have taken an army to Rome or something. He would have been right to do so. I mean, Jesus is God Incarnate. Who is really going to be able to successfully argue that He didn’t have grounds for dethroning Caesar? Instead, Jesus models holiness, and it goes beyond rightness. Yes, Jesus is right, then and now, and Jesus cares about rightness, then and now, but holiness is so much bigger than that.

And I think it often, maybe even most of the time, looks like setting rights aside.

Like not going into a conversation spoiling for a fight.

Like not seeing anyone who thinks or behaves differently from you as an enemy.

Like not scheming, manipulating, grasping for power, all of which seem justified when you’re focused on being right.

So do we want to be right or do we want to be holy?

GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,

MARIE

Image Courtesy of Jessica Da Rosa