Being wholly holy

On a scale of one to ten, how holy are you?

Maybe the answer to that question is pretty much the same as my stepdaughter’s answer to the question, “How cool are you?” If you think you are, she’ll tell you, then you’re not.

Pastor John Cleghorn at Caldwell Memorial Presbyterian Church spoke recently on what it is to be holy. While that’s pretty much unattainable for me, I found it a refreshing switch from all the talk about being sinners. It’s one thing to admit I’ve sinned, another thing entirely to lug around the label ”sinner” and use it to define myself. What I feed will grow; regularly reminding myself that I’m a sinner is, I believe, asking myself for more of the same.

But what exactly does it mean to think about being holy? 

It is “the everyday business of character transformation.” It is aiming to live a  functional life in this dysfunctional world. Being holy is to live the human virtues of Christ as nearly as possible; it means to look into our hearts, because that is the wellspring from which our actions and our relationships flow. You may want to read Pastor John’s message yourself because I probably have this all wrong; I often hear what I need or want to hear instead of what was actually said. But here’s what stuck in my heart: To live a holy life is to strive to be wholly what God made us to be.

Which, in the end, may be harder than giving up sin.

No matter how one defines holiness, I believe I’ll be a lot better off if I try living up to being holy instead of living down to being a sinner.

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