“We have too often been content with zeal for orthodoxy, and have neglected the sober realities of practical daily godliness.”JC Ryle, Holiness
"I'd rather be famous than righteous or holy, any day, any day, any day."
Morrissey, The Smiths' Frankly Mr Shankly
Been taking a break from blogging (and from the internet in general over Christmas) but partly thanks to a new smartphone I have been thrust right back into my online universe!
My reading for this term's teaching for one of my groups is on the theme of Holiness. So I decided to read what is apparently a bit of a classic, JC Ryle's book on that topic which he wrote in 1879 (!) It has been great reading it and drawing parallels and contrasts with Brian McLaren's Naked Spirituality which I'm almost finished. (Both, though I'm reading critically, are rather wonderful.)
Anyway, there are a number of fascinating insights - not least the distinction and relationship between justification and sanctification. Another post perhaps. But the quote I began this post with jumped out as being a sympathetic voice to the post I tried to write a while back on orthodoxy. It chimes with a number of things in me, in reference to the place of church in society:
1) While the church argues over dogma, people (Christians included) are going to hell in a handcart;
2) an emphasis on experiencing spiritual practices as opposed to simply holding right beliefs is one of the most welcome movements of our time;
3) the radical idea that personal (and interpersonal) holiness and societal change (ie the Kingdom coming) are more closely linked than either our strategising or our piety usually suggest;
4) and finally that I do really need to ask myself: do I WANT to be holy?
Morrissey has often struck me as a saint-in-waiting. The honesty in the quote above is followed by the lines "But sometimes I feel more fulfilled, making Christmas cards with the mentally ill. I want to live and I want to love - I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of!"
It's a confusing picture of a man looking for direction and fulfillment and feeling that fight within him. Ultimately he plumps for relationship - "I want to live and I want to love" is surely one of the deepest cries of the human heart. That he tries to shrug it off with the quip about STD's is typical of his attempt at sexy aloofness, but to me the deed is done - the heart is laid bare, and there's no going back.
And this is perhaps what true holiness is all about. It's the finding of that fulfillment in the one relationship that can really bring it. It's not about isolated acts of kindness, experimenting with altriusm as a philosophy. It's about the Spring of Life which can only flow from a heart that knows Love and Life themselves to be not words or or disembodied forces, but a Person who is all these things and more than them. It's living out the love that is within - a love which is not the all-too-often selfish love of human fallenness, but the perfect, all-conquering love of the Saviour of the World.
A prayer: Jesus make me holy, if for no other reason than because you are holy!
