[sunday meditations]

1 PETER 1.14-16

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

A focused hope leads to a focused life. The result is that hope-filled living looks markedly different from the pattern of living so common in the present evil age. Although history has been marked by different epochs and ages since the inauguration of God’s kingdom, God’s kingdom has not yet been fully consummated, and many people live out-of-tune with God’s in-breaking kingdom, conforming their lives to the present evil age. Christians are to be the salt of the earth and lights in the darkness, pointing forward to a different way of being human, a way marked by genuine human living and by embracing in the present the future reality of the cosmos.

Henry David Thoreau, in his book Walden, writes that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” What Thoreau noticed is what countless psychologists and sociologists haven’t missed: there’s something amiss in human living. This is, as we’ve seen, nothing new; the ancient philosophers sought to resolve this problem, sought to pave the way to genuine human living (over against living lives of quiet desperation). The philosophers sought eudaimonia, the fully-flourishing human life; and Christians teach that eudaimonia is found only in Christ, only in what God is doing and will do in the world. Though eudaimonia cannot be wholly experienced in the present (due to the tension between Easter and Consummation) Christians are to live as is fitting for renewed human beings. This manner of living consists of bringing the future, God’s fully-realized kingdom, into the present, and this involves conforming our thinking and behaviors around that. By this point, this statement should be nothing new. But perhaps now we can observe the contrast between what a hope-filled, focused life looks like over against the caricature of a desperate life (as Thoreau identified the mass of men living).

While a focused life is diligent and self-controlled, an unfocused life is loose and wandering. One whose life is focused can prioritize one’s habits and activities accordingly; when there is no focus, the result is a chaotic cesspool of frantic, desperate living. The focused life is a life with clear goals (that is, our future inheritance) and the manner of working towards those goals is clear (ethical living); an unfocused life is subject to countless shifting and changing goals, resulting in a life characterized by anxiety, restlessness, and worry. The focused life is a life centered upon a sure hope; an unfocused life clutches at every hope that seems to pass by.

The contrast goes deeper than mere externalities. Someone can be focused on something that is undeserving of focus; one can have clear goals, clear steps towards those goals, and yet be missing the mark entirely. At the heart of it all is the human heart. Conforming to the pattern of this world involves making oneself a slave to oneself; it’s making oneself King and, even worse, making oneself out to be God. Selfishness, greed, self-indulgence, indifference to men and to God: that is what a heart looks like in conformation to the present evil age. This fleshes itself out in pursuing the “passions”: the selfish desires of the heart. The gods of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud are worshipped all over the globe: money, power, and sex are the focus of the world’s attention. The marked difference between God’s people and those enslaved to the present evil age goes deeper than mere “habits of desperation”; it cuts straight to the heart. God’s people are to shine as lights in the darkness, to be salt of the earth, and not just by the things that they do or don’t do (though that’s involved, of course) but, primarily, by the kind of people they are.

In a world dominated by selfishness, God’s people are to be selfless.

In a world dominated by greed, God’s people are to be self-giving.

In a world dominated by self-indulgence, God’s people are to be self-controlled.

In a world dominated by indifference, God’s people are to be filled with love.

In a world dominated by the lust for power, God’s people are to be humble.

In a world dominated by the lust for money, God’s people are to be generous.

In a world dominated by lust, God’s people are to treat sex as a sacrament rather than as a toy.

“Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,” St. Peter says. In other words: “You didn’t know any better back then. But now you do. So live like it!” Many of the Christians in Asia Minor, if not most of them, came from pagan backgrounds. The pagan worldview wildly differed from the Christian worldview; and the pagan perspective of the future—a perspective Nietzsche’s nihilism would embrace, where after death comes nothingness—stood as black against white to the Christian perspective of the future. Having converted to Christianity, having put their faith in Messiah, having repented of their former devotions, having been baptized into God’s household, the Christians in Asia Minor were to live according to a different “code of ethics,” a different manner of living. And this manner of living can be summed up in one word: holiness.

* * *

If you’re anything like me, the word “holiness” makes you squirm. It invokes images of deadness: a withered, naked tree with drooping and gnarled limbs and peeling bark. This poetic caricature is due to stereotypes that have been reinforced by countless well-meaning (but ill-sighted) Christians over the decades. Holiness doesn’t mean no smoking, no drinking, and no dancing (as some would have you believe). Nor does it mean profaning the very word “fun” and spending all day pouring over the Bible and reciting ancient prayers. The word itself literally means “to be separate,” and St. Peter quotes an Old Testament text—Leviticus 11.44—to echo an important narrative. In Leviticus 11.44, God calls Israel to be holy and to live differently from her pagan neighbors. It was Torah’s aim to keep Israel distinct and separate from the pagan nations. Now, with the coming of Messiah and his enthronement over the world, Israel has been reworked around Jesus, so that the church is Israel, the people of God. But God’s command to his people hasn’t changed; it’s the same as it was since the beginning: “Be Holy.”

The church is to be holy—distinct and separate—from her pagan neighbors, not in the sense of adhering to the Mosaic Law but living as is fitting for genuine human beings. Holiness—being “set apart”—is all about living as genuine human beings in a world that is filled with dehumanized human beings in need of rescue and renewal. Indeed, St. Peter’s identification of the Christians in this verse—“obedient children”—is both preceded and followed by mention of regeneration (1.3, 1.23). Christians are precisely God’s children because they have been born again, regenerated as genuine human beings, freed from the dehumanizing affects of sin on their human nature. Here’s the rub: Those who live in ignorance, outside of God’s covenant family, live dehumanized lives; those who are in God’s covenant family, those who are God’s children, have been born again and are to live accordingly, living-out their new identities as God’s renewed humanity; and this involves being separate (read: holy). On the metaphysical level, the level of our truest identities, we ARE holy, both individually and corporately, and we need to LIVE LIKE IT.

* * *

“If holiness means separateness,” you might ask, “then how is God holy? How is he separate?” When we speak of God being holy, we often speak of it as if it is one of his character traits. Indeed, in a sense, it is. But the term itself doesn’t denote any specific aspect of his character—either goodness, gentleness, love, or even wrath—but, rather, speaks to an over-arching reality regarding God:

He is separate and distinct, set apart. The question remains: how is he set apart? We can take the anthropological route: “He’s God, and we are not.” If that doesn’t satisfy, try the philosopher’s answer: “God’s separate from evil.” While these two answers remain the most popular, in the sense of being the most widely-held, I think a more adequate answer takes into account the historical context of Leviticus 11.44: “God is holy in the sense that he is separate and distinct from the pagan gods.”

After defeating a myriad of Egyptian gods in the Exodus narrative (each plague, and even the Red Sea crossing, attacked and defeated various Egyptian deities), and prior to delivering his people into the Promised Land where even more malicious gods dwelt (characters such as Dagon, Molech, and Ba’al were waiting to be tangled with), God identified himself as holy and set apart from these pagan gods, markedly distinct from the uncaring, capricious, and temperamental gods who characterized pagan theology. The God of the Exodus is loving, benevolent, patient, and just; and thus he’s wildly different than the gods whom he defeated in Egypt and whom he’d defeat in the Promised Land. And just as God was distinct from the pagan gods, so his people needed to be likewise distinct from the these gods’ pagan worshippers.

While it’s rare nowadays to find people worshipping these ancient gods (though it’s become popular, in some New Age movements, to resurrect such pagan worship), the call to holiness hasn’t been tossed aside. Those who haven’t responded to the gospel and turned to Messiah are conformed to the patterns of this present age, living “in tune” with a world marked by sin and death, decay and corruption. These modes of living court the present evil age with all its trademarks, and fallen humanity lives like animals rather than as human beings. Christians, renewed after the image of their creator, conforming to Christ, having been made and becoming genuinely human, are to live genuinely human lives, and such living will be (by its very nature) distinct from the patterns of living resplendent with those who haven’t experienced the rescue and renewal found in Christ. The benchmarks of Christian ethics (faith, hope, and love in 1 Corinthians 13 and the “fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5) are signposts to what genuine human living looks like. Just read any newspaper and see how much human beings have fallen from genuine human living, and may we as God’s people, as God’s rescued and renewed humanity, strive to live as is appropriate for his image-bearing creatures.