Holiness Not As Hammer, Litmus Test or Target - But Embrace

On Sunday Brenna Rubio shared a new way of looking at holiness - not as a hammer to beat down the unworthy, not as a litmus test to judge the impure, and not as a target to compete for high score - but as the embrace of a deep friendship. Instead of either the conquest or curse associated with purity, connection is the currency of holiness. As Nadia Boltz-Weber put it in her book Shameless: A Sexual Reformation,

“Purity most often leads to pride or to despair, not to holiness. Because holiness is about union with, and purity is about separation from.”

No wonder that when the veil is pulled back on truest reality in both the Old Testament and New Testament scriptures, those who behold God sing out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty” (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8). Perhaps they are not merely repeatedly commenting on God’s moral purity but instead excitedly noticing the relational wholeness and interconnectivity of the three persons of the Trinity (plenty of theologians through the ages have made that case!).

How might rethinking holiness shift your experience of God? What might you lose? What might you gain?