new set of pics

Just a couple of pictures of family life, Ella's first Birthday, and her present--Labrador puppy, Samwise the Brave.

Thoughts on Holiness #3

So I was thinking today about the Kingdom themes listed above and if they adequately encompass what holiness is. Of course, being a good Wesleyan, I couldn't keep from listing all of the don'ts that we traditionally rally against, and I came to sexual purity. I looked on my list and it didn't seem like that area of our life--or the idea of purity in general--easily fit into these themes.

So as I am wondering why I left out such a central idea of tradtional Wesleyan holiness, I was hit with this epiphany: There is an paradigm or interpretive grid in which holiness in the last hundred years has been understood and articulated. It is the paradigm of purity. We have borrowed it from the Old Testament, attached the values of the early 1900's (in the last couple decades we have updated to the values of the 1950's), and that is how we define holiness. That God is Holy means he is pure and sinless and blameless and without blemish--like the sacrificial lamb.

That idea is true, but it is not necessarily "right"--as in the only understanding of God's Holiness. I think holiness for this generation requires a new paradigm. Rather than holiness as purity, I suggest we consider holiness as fidelity or faithfulness as our new dominant paradigm.

Here is what I like about understanding holiness in light of fidelity instead of purity:

* While purity is individualistic in nature, fidelity is relational in nature. You cannot be "faithful" by yourself. There has to be someone or something we are faithful to.

* While purity is a static state of being, fidelity is a dynamic state, much more context-dependant. Theoretically, one can be pure outside of context. Faithfulness must be re-determined in each moment--not just as an action, but as a belief. It allows for a holiness of the will. It isn't simply that you do it or don't do it--it is also why you do it or don't do it. The consequence, I believe, is that local communities will determine what holiness (as faithfulness) looks like in that context--and as that context changes, so can holiness.

* Purity focuses inward while fidelity gets our minds off of our selves and onto God and others. I am firmly convinced one key to holiness is self-forgetfulness. Learning that this life is not all about you--good or bad. You become more like God not by looking at yourself, but by looking at God.

* Fidelity would shape discussions on alcohol & tobacco in thier proper context--how do they affect our faithfulness to God, home, church, and society. That somehow gets lost in the purity paradigm and A&T becomes about what it does to "me" or what it says about "me" rather than what it does to "us." We would also finally be able to talk about moderation and addiction seperately. I believe addiction would actually take a higher place on our holiness priorities under a faithfulness paradigm because we could distinquish it from simple consumption and see it for the Lordship issue that it actually is.

* Finally, I think that holiness as fidelity is closer to a New Testament understanding of how God is holy. It is his faithfulness that is exemplified more than his purity. And we are called to be a faithful people. I am not suggesting that the idea of purity is not present, but it is not the interpretive grid through which holiness is understood in the NT.

This idea is less than a day old in my mind, so I hold to it tenatively for now.

Thoughts on Holiness #2

In the Wesleyan church there are about a half dozen or so defacto rules that become our benchmarks for both membership and holiness.

I think there are two big reasons: one, the hijacking of Evangelicalism by the Republican Party and the Religious Right. Really though, I think they seized a trend that was present long before Pat Robertson ever opened his mouth. The combination of an Ardent Natoinalism in the 19th century (all over the western world) exemplified by European colonialism and the US's manifest destiny, and later the evangelical emphasis on personal salvation as being primarily about heaven and hell. When we stopped talking about the Kingdom of God on this earth, it is no wonder that Evangelical loyalties shifted to another kingdom, the laissez-faire, conservative one.

The other reason I think this happens, and has happened throughout church history--though with different issues--is that we have used these issues as boundary markers for who is in and who is out. The thing about markers is that there cannot be too many or it is too hard to sort the "ins" and the "outs." That is why the Sneetches were only concerned about stars on their bellies--they had to keep it simple to keep it straight. So that is what we do, we pick a couple positions that are "non-negotiables" in our minds and use those. This is nothing new since Constantine. What has changed are the issues. And this is where I am calling for a shift in the tone of the conversation.

I am no longer interested in arguing that my set of boundary markers are better suited than anothers. The Pharisees spent all of their time talking about boundary markers; Jesus just kept saying, "walk with me." I like that.

"But how do we know who is in and who is out?" the unified holiness voice screams! I don't know--and they don't really know either. So they create boundaries that make sense to them, all the while Jesus seems to think we are spending too much time thinking about it. That is my problem with "membership requirements" or holiness as we currently understand it--it seems that there are only three options: either throw everything in including the kitchen sink (Pharisees) and overburden everyone, or only use things that would be common to all believers (then whats the point of membership?), or arbitrarily pick certain boundaries and leave others out. When this option is chosen the boundaries that are picked are based on the Bible and Tradition, but perhaps as much as anything they are picked because of the culture in which they are written.

That is why we don't have a membership requirement in the Wesleyan church that prohibits owning slaves--it isn't an issue in our culture anymore. But then cultures change, and the boundaries do not change quickly enough to speak relavently to the new culture. So now we have boundaries that no longer make sense to most of the culture (dancing, cards, etc), and we don't have boundaries in places that would really speak to our culture (ie internet abuse and coffee drinking ).

The mistake we have made is that these "principles" have become absolutes(not for salvation, we would say, but belonging)--and in so have become our Lords. They have become so important to us that questioning them becomes the spiritual equivalent of treason.

That is why re-thinking the way we see and talk about holiness is so important right now. Not so we simply replace these principles with new and improved ones, but so we can step out of this cycle of boundary making and spend that time and energy working on and living in the kingdom themes I mentioned above.

Thoughts on Holiness #1

(W)holy Living- A Preliminary Note about Context
Holiness happens in the context of four interrelated spheres of Christian living (self, home, church, and society). They are inseparable yet distinguishable. Contextualizing our holiness, then, not only means understanding the relationship between the decision/action and its place in time and space, but also the relationship between the decision/action and the various spheres of our Christian life. We cannot understand self, home, church or society apart from the other spheres, so it would follow that our understanding of holiness would be incomplete without considering each sphere that our decisions/actions affect.

This holistic understanding of the Christian life hopes to broaden our often over-personalized and compartmentalized understanding into something that, though untidy and fuzzy, better represents the complexity and interconnected nature of our Christian Life, while retaining values that have been central to the Wesleyan Holiness tradition.

Paradoxical Holiness

Sabbath --------------- Worship
Justice ----------------- Mercy
Grace ------------------- Truth
Home ------------------- Mission
Freedom ---------------- Deference

Holiness is simply the practice of embracing the “Kingdom of God” way of life that was demonstrated by Jesus Christ and submitting to his Lordship and the guidance of the Holy Spirit in every sphere of our lives. This Kingdom way has certain themes that are represented by the words listed above. By pairing these sets of words together we can see an inherent tension between them. Every relationship, every conversation, every decision and action of consequence must survive these tensions. The tensions offer a paradox. Each word on the left cannot be understood without the word on the right, yet they are neither wholly the same nor are they opposites. Further, holiness requires us to fully embrace each idea without solely embracing that idea at the expense of the other. We are to reside somewhere within the tension of the two.

These themes, however, do not exist in a vacuum, but in the context of the interrelated spheres of our lives. So one cannot take a static position on the continuum and expect that all actions will be holy in all contexts. Let me take one set, define the terms and explore their relationships:


Sabbath & Worship
Sabbath is not so much a day as it is a state of being. It is setting aside time and space to remember, reflect, listen, and rest. God created Sabbath, and Jesus says it is created for people. Because we are created as a Body, I believe that Sabbath should happen at an agreed upon period of time by a community, though Sabbath can be happening at any given moment of our lives. Your physical body parts do not get their primary rest independent of each other, likewise there seems to be wisdom in the Body of Christ resting together. Though, of course, there are times when the feet or eyes (or mouth) may need a rest while the rest of the body continues to work.

I use worship in its broader understanding, that Romans 12:1 “offer your bodies as living sacrifices . . . this is your spiritual act of worship” understanding. So everything you do, if it consecrated unto God, is worship—thought, word, & deed. What we do in a “worship service” is also worship—but it is different. It is worship intended to aid our state of Sabbath. It helps us remember, it celebrates God’s victory, it draws us to God’s character, and it quiets our hearts. Every worship service is a dramatic expression of God’s and our story, encapsulated in word and art to be used as a memory tool while we are go out and worship with the sacrifice of our lives. That kind of dramatic worship takes place in Sabbath moments.

Here is the tension: Without Rom12:1 worship our Sabbath becomes a vacuum, and worship without Sabbath eventually lacks orientation—Sabbath is what helps us remember what (Who) we are worshiping. Holiness is when both of these realities are present in the experience and understanding of our lives, and when we are successfully navigating the change in tension that each new context brings.