Churchgoers, be honest. Doesn’t your mind start to wander during the songs that use the word holy a lot? I’m not talking about the 7-11 worship songs, the ones that repeat 7 words 11 times, although those also send my train of thought off the tracks. I’m talking about praise songs emphasizing the quality of God’s holiness. If they’re highly repetitive too, my mental grocery list grows in a hurry.
For me, worship is about slowing my thoughts to appreciate the voices around me expressing words we collectively believe. When I hear holy for the umpteenth time, I start to wonder “what does that even mean?” It must be important because not one, but two depictions of heaven in the Bible feature angels singing “Holy, holy, holy” around God’s throne. Not quite 7-11 but it’s on the way. If God’s holiness is so exceptional, so powerful that heaven declares it “day and night,” there must be more to it than “I’m better than you.”
Holy means “pure, separate, set apart,” which lacks luster at first glance. It’s a definition by negation - being holy is about NOT being something else. The Greek root hagios literally means “different.” Call me a heathen, but “different” doesn’t seem worth proclaiming in heaven for all eternity. Training my voice, ears, mind, & heart on “different” for an entire 3 minutes every other Sunday is…challenging. I must be missing something, something in addition to the basic Christian reverence I clearly lack.
Maybe what I lack is the frame of reference. Take pizza, for example. Pizza is undeniably good. But have you ever tasted pizza after a 6-week strict diet? That first bite is rapturous. So what is the basis for comparison from which God is different? I think we do it a disservice by making the basis 99% goodness compared to God’s 100%. Summa cum laude vs. magna cum laude hardly warrants cosmic worship, regardless of what universities say.
I missed the basis of comparison Ephesians has to offer when I firstsped through its famous command about holiness in my studies -
Not very illuminating on its own. The verse suggests righteousness as a component of holiness, but there’s another $5 church word. It smacks of perfectionistic GPA obsession if taken alone. Zoom out from the verse, though, and the basis of comparison lies eons away from magna cum laude.
So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians 4:17-24 NIV
Futile thinking, dark understanding, hardened ignorance, insensitive indulgence, pervasive greed, deceitful corruption. We’re not talking about salutatorian here. Read further to learn what lies at the other end of the spectrum - truthful speech, healthy anger, honest work, selfless generosity, constructive words, complete kindness, total compassion, and humble forgiveness. The difference is not subtle.
I overuse the word “spectrum” in my writing, but the habit paid off this time. Spectrum is the perfect word here because its meaning derives from light, an attribute of God found throughout scripture -
How much of the color spectrum can you see in total darkness? None. Zip, zilch. Were it not for God’s light, His holiness, we wouldn’t even know a spectrum exists. We would wander around in the dark harming ourselves and each other wondering why our natural inclinations cause so much pain and suffering. God switches the light on. He is the light! Thanks to His being different, we can see there is a difference.
The notion of being lost in selfish darkness with no guiding light to follow is a horror. Like the thought of being buried alive beneath suffocating, shrinking blackness, it’s enough to make me tremble & sweat. God turns on the light. He is the light! He is holy. His difference inspires angels to declare it day & night. It has inspired artists of word, music, color, and shape through the ages. It inspires my voice to agree with others’ on a Sunday morning singing “holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”
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