Go Ahead . . . Jump A Wave

. . . live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear (1 Peter 1:17b NIV)

Holiness is a nearly ruined word. In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis wrote that one of Satan’s most subtle and effective tactics in waging war on faith is to take a perfectly good word and ruin the meaning of it. It works. At the top of the hit list these days is the word “marriage.” But that’s another blog for another time. Right now I’m thinking of a far more familiar word that’s becoming increasingly strange to us. Holiness.

A couple of things seem clear to me: First, like it or not, this is what God calls us to be as his people. An entire book of the Old Testament, Leviticus, addresses God’s desire for holiness with excruciating detail. Get past the peculiar instructions for bringing a variety of sacrifices, and the book boils down to one repeated theme. “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:1). In the New Testament, Peter writes a letter in which he reaches back to his Hebrew scriptures, lifts that very verse, and applies it directly to Christian congregations (1 Peter 1:15). Writing to the very troubled church in Corinth, Paul reminds them that they are “called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:2). “All those everywhere” includes us. We’re called to be holy.

The second thing that seems clear to me is that holiness isn’t held up in an explicit way as the aim of our lives. It’s not that we don’t believe the scriptures. We readily acknowledge that holiness is important. We just don’t like saying it. The word is damaged. It doesn’t get us pumped. No one walks around church on Sunday asking their Christian brothers and sisters about their progress in holiness. That was fine for the Puritans, but we’ve gotten beyond that. The word suggests to us a kind of stodginess. Holiness isn’t daring or bold. It’s snug and smug. Who really wants to be holy?

I realize there are theological dimensions to holiness that need to be kept in mind – that holiness isn’t something we do or attain as much as it is something God gives to us in Jesus Christ. But discussions of imputed righteousness aside, holiness is a way of living and being in the world. It’s not a theological construct. It’s a way of raising children and driving in traffic and dealing with the bored, tattooed kid working the drive-thru window. So what does it mean to be holy? How do we recover the adrenaline of the word?

Almost two years ago Marnie and I were at a conference at Myrtle Beach. The kids were with us, and at the time the beach activity of choice was jumping waves. This meant little hops as the dying “wave” ebbed up on the shore line. Hardly dangerous activity. But my little ones were already exerting independence. They didn’t hesitate to venture out to ankle depth, then knee depth. My insistence on holding a hand was not well received. It was September and hurricane Isabelle was brewing out in the Atlantic and moving to the Carolina coast. You’d have never known that a storm like that was headed our way. The weather at Myrtle Beach was beautiful, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time before things got ugly. The only question was how ugly things would get. In these conditions, “wave jumping” seemed a little riskier. My favorite part was when my kids went running out of the ocean.

There were two very flawed ways to respond to my kids wave jumping adventure. On one hand, we could have just stayed in the condo. After all, we had an excellent view of the ocean. On our balcony we could feel sunlight and breeze. We could avoid the unpleasant feel of sand collecting in especially unpleasant places. Yes, the condo balcony is a safe place to be. No waves to worry about there.

Another response would be to practice X-treme parenting. Send them out to the waves and doze in the beach chair. One good lung-full of ocean water will teach them. They’ll learn.

What we’ve done with holiness seems to err in one of these directions or the other. Some well intentioned believers think that being holy means keeping a safe distance from the threats of the world and the culture. There are plenty of Christians who have settled into their place on the condo balcony. They can see the world, but they really don’t have to deal with it in all its grittiness. They are safe and they are clean – but frankly, they aren’t having much fun. All that Psalms talk about joy and gladness doesn’t seem to faze them. They are after holiness, and they find it by staying removed. Observant, but not influential.

Other followers of Jesus have lost any real sense of what holiness means and requires. They’ve thrown themselves in to the waves of culture headlong. They don’t have the foggiest idea that there is such a thing as a rip tide. There seems to be no recognition of the ocean’s power.

A truly holy life can’t stay in the balcony, and it can’t ignore the power of tides and weather. A holy life knows how to both enjoy and respect the particular conditions found in the world. Holiness gets in the water, jumps the waves – but it knows where the dangers lie, times and places when the surf isn’t friendly. In the event of a rip tide, a holy life knows what to do. It has the strength and presence of mind to swim hard along the shore line. It doesn’t panic in the current.

This sounds like what Peter had in mind when he addressed his congregations as strangers and exiles in the world. They were not at home in the culture surrounding them, but over and over again Peter calls them to a holy life, reminds them that they are a holy people. He urges them to live exemplary lives among non-believers. This is what the Jesus was after when told us to be salt and light. This kind of holiness is powerful. It puts steel in the Christian life.

So go ahead. Jump a wave.