Deconstructing Holiness

The phrase holier than thou explains on its own how pretty much everyone interprets the word holy. The textbook biblical definition of holy may be “set apart” or, more specifically, “set apart unto God,” but the feeling connoted by holier than thou gets at the crux of what people generally understand the word to mean. It really doesn’t matter what a self-proclaimed holy person wants it to mean. People see through the desire to be “set apart,” especially if they’re the ones you want to be set apart from.

So what does it mean to be holy? Let’s deconstruct it.

When you look at a resource showing a more-or-less evangelical consensus of the definition of holy (biblestudy.org) you get a definition of holy that stresses the notion of being set apart unto God:

Purity, here, isn’t the very definition of holy so much as it is a prerequisite for holiness. This is important to note for establishing appropriate cause and effect. I’m not holy unto God because I am pure, I am pure because I am to be set apart unto God. In other words, God didn’t pick me because I’m better than you; I am God’s, and that relationship with a faultless God demands my very best. This framing is a different way to think about it for the person with the label holy, but it’s a tall ask to expect anyone else to see it that way.

As this notion of being distinct from the rest of the world might have led you to predict, the popular (worldly) definition of holy emphasizes something different:

The people of God say, “Being holy doesn’t make me better than you.” The rest of the world says, “Yeah . . . you think you’re better than us.” The world has a point.

There’s really no way to make this topic more palatable to an outside observer, but the opinions of outside observers don’t really matter when your desire is to be set apart unto God. It’s kind of a convenient loophole for getting around one’s own fears of being conceited. I don’t think I’m better than you, I just think God would never let me be with Him if I was anything like you, that’s all. The more you explain it, the longer you think about it, the worse it sounds to anyone but you.

In the Bible, though, there really seems to be different levels of holiness. This is illustrated by the various chambers of the tabernacle. The outer courtyard is kinda holy, the Holy Place is holy, and the Holy of Holies is super holy. (I realize my description is anything but sacred . . . maybe that’s a defense mechanism.)

In the same way, Israel (in the Old Testament) and the church as a whole (in the New Testament) would be considered holy in the sense that the entire group of people are considered to belong to God and set apart from the rest of the world. But the priests or the 12 disciples or apostles or clergy were holier than that, set apart even from the rest of God’s people. But the higher up you go in the hierarchy of holiness (chief priest, high priest, Messiah, cardinal, pope, pastor, head pastor, whatever the title may be) the further removed or holy that person becomes relative to “everybody else” and the closer to God in working relationship they appear to become.

But this kind of “setting apart” doesn’t set these holy figures outside of the group. These are concentric circles in the Venn Diagram of holiness. These are plateaus escalating upward toward heaven. These are revered, admired levels of ascent into utmost holiness everyone on the outside desires to attain.

You can see which direction things are going by the fashion. People wear their nicest clothes when they go to church. The clothes have to get a little bit nicer if you’re on stage. The higher up you go, the holier you get, the more important it is that you have gold incorporated into your outfit in increasing amounts as the holiness level escalates. God don’t want no scrubs trying to holler at Him.

Even an outsider would look at the pope or a pastor of a megachurch or the leader of a denomination and see the clothes they wear and the power they wield and think . . . Yeah, that would be a step up. NOT that would be a step outside of the group. There’s a big difference between leaving the pack and being head of the pack. One is an outcast, one is an alpha.

But there is another kind of holy in Christianity. There’s the John the Baptist kind of holy in the vein of the prophets before him. Prophets tend to be outcasts, not alphas. They’re thought leaders but cultural rejects. The fashion tells you a lot. John the Baptist wore camel hair and a leather belt. He ate locusts and honey. His church was called: the wilderness. Nobody looks at John the Baptist and thinks, Oh yeah, I want to be that. His message’s selling point is the opposite of social proof. He says if you want to be set apart unto God, be set apart from the whole deal—the materialism, the comfort, the prestige, the friends, the fun, the grand architecture, the power, and the neverending riches.

When I was part of the church, I always got the feeling that people in the church thought they were John-the-Baptist holy but were really aspiring to be High-Priest holy. I’m different from the world, but I’m also gonna have everything the world wants and more. And there were a lot of people who were struggling through those desires, some winning the fight and some barely trying. But verrrrrry few people ever cast off the whole costume. You wouldn’t see a pastor say, “Look, this suit is a symbol of capitalist greed and ambition, plain and simple, and I’m not wearing it anymore.” The goal was to stand out for some reasons and fit in for others. Internal holiness, external social acceptance.

Okay. It’s not a capital offense. But it doesn’t seem all that genuine, either. It always appears that the church as a whole wants the best of both worlds: the feeling of being distinct from everything that’s wrong and fallen in this world but the comfort that comes from enjoying everything they think is right with the world. But in that setup, there isn’t a whole lot anyone does motivated by much else than fitting in with other people.

So when someone whose entire life is an expression of conformity to a group or groups of humans claims to take a stand based solely on allegiance to God and some dramatic gesture of holiness, the only sensible way to respond is to dismiss their claim as holy shit. If someone who has abandoned any pretense of desire for fame, wealth, and power takes a stand, I might not agree with them . . . but I’d at least believe their message was genuine.