Chapter 5

God’s Holiness as a Reason for Joy

What does it mean to say that God is holy? At its simplest level it means that God is different from, he is other than, us as humans. And secondly, that his “otherness” is of such a quality that when we encounter him, it gives us a sense of his power and significance compared with our mere human-ness.

Let’s dig into this a little bit before we see how this can be a pathway to joy.

Have you ever been disappointed by the world in general? I’m often disturbed and even angry at some things. I get annoyed when I see or read in the newspaper of parents ruining a potentially good child by bad parenting.

Sometimes I get really annoyed people’s shallowness, at hypocrisy or injustice. I get cross with stupidity and carelessness. I go for a walk most mornings around the streets where I live. There is one point at the top of a hill which has a fine view, and young people in cars often come there on Friday and Saturday nights and park there. When I come there early on the next morning, almost invariably there will be piles of fast food papers, drink cans, and those “kid alcohol” bottles (the ones with vodka or rum plus cordial to make them suitable for kiddie palates brought up on sweet drinks and lollies).

Sometimes I am really ticked off by seeing people apparently promoting Christianity on early morning TV but really promoting money-making schemes, and using the Gospel to fleece people of their excess cash. I am affronted and appalled by people who hide behind the cloak of religion, whether it be Christianity or Islam or Hinduism, in order to carry out murderous, hate-filled crimes.

There’s a lot to be cranky about in this world. It is a disappointing, tragic, fallen world. Of course, this must be read in the context of the previous chapter where we talked about all the good that is in the world also.

But over against this ugly side of our world, stands the otherness of God. A reason for joy is precisely the presence of this otherness. Over against all that is ugly and disappointing in this world stands God’s otherness, his “significant point of difference”.

This otherness is what we call his holiness.

The word holiness derives from Old English, and is related to our words “whole”, and “hale” as in “hale and hearty”. It has to do with robust health and wholeness. In this way it speaks to us of God’s purity and goodness and wholesomeness. There is something refreshingly, welcomingly healthy about God that strikes us as being attractive. It is this quality which attracts people at that point where they are in despair at the ugliness of life.

To come to God is to come to the source of living water. This water washes us clean, it fills us from the inside out with health.

There are many passages in the Bible which talk about this quality of health that comes from knowing God. This should not be confused with just physical health, although that may be a part of it. The quality of health being referred to goes much deeper than that.

We live in an age when we are obsessed with our physical bodies almost to the point of pathological disorder. We fantasise about the perfect body, we spend amounts greater than the annual output of many small nations on creams, lotions, products of all kinds to make our bodies more beautiful. How vain we are to spend so much time on something that, when we pass from this world, our relatives will put either in a box in the ground or in an incinerator.

The things that our relatives and friends will remember with pleasure and value will be those things that have very little to do with our physical bodies and much to do with our character and actions.

A good understanding of what the Bible says about health and happiness will take us down a very different road indeed. Read these passages:

Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. Proverbs 3:8.

Keep [my words] within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to a man’s whole body. Proverbs 4: 21-22.

The very last chapter of the Old Testament carries this promise: But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will arise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. Micah 4: 2

God’s holiness is of such a character that it initially repels us, because we are not clean enough, not healthy enough. It fills us with awe, with a sense of fear that puts us to flight. He is not instantly attractive to us. There are many passages in the Bible which talk about this aspect of God’s character.

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah saw a vision of God in all his splendour, and described the angels around the throne of God, who constantly worshipped the King on his throne singing aloud:
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.

Instead of being attracted to him, Isaiah fell down on his face and said, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

This describes the sense of awe which characterises the personage of God, and our reaction to him when we really encounter him. A German, Rudolf Otto, wrote a book over a century ago on the holiness of God.

He said that as humans we have a capacity to perceive something that he called the “numinous”. By this he meant that sense of deep, unfathomable, mysterious Something or Someone. He calls it by the Latin words Mysterium Tremendum. We would call it an awesome mystery.

When I was a child, I had an uncle whose name was August. (My mother’s family was German.) I never met Uncle August, but I always had a sense of him as being someone distant and holy and magnificent. Even as a child I had a dim understanding of this meaning of the word “august”, meaning serious and foreboding. We talk about a famous or important person being “an august personage”.

This is what we mean when we say something is “awesome”. It fills us with a holy dread. The word “awful” now has the meaning of unpleasant. This is an interesting change that has come in over time.

When Sir Christopher Wren built the huge dome of St Paul’s cathedral in London, King Charles II was reported to have described it as being “awful, artificial and amusing”. He wasn’t criticising the building; it was a compliment. “Amusing” at that time, meant “astonishing”, “artificial” meant “cleverly made” and “awful” meant “awe-inspiring”.

God, as the Holy Father, is a distant, awesome, august person to most of us. And that is OK. We tend to see Jesus as our friend, as our companion, but it is right and proper to hold an image of God as being awesome. When we don’t do this – and I have to say that I think that many contemporary churches make this mistake – we lose an important sense of God’s holiness.

But God’s otherness need not be an occasion for misery.

We can actually find joy in his otherness, in his holiness, when we realise that this holy God has chosen to engage me in his presence. The Bible says that “In his presence is fullness of joy”.

We can only understand this when we realise that we will find joy when we get past the first reaction of our unworthiness. Our entry into joy comes when we are enabled to go beyond that first reaction into the magnificent pleasure of his presence. We are actually welcomed by this holy person.

We are like a little puppy who meets a new person for the first time. He sniffs at you, recoils at your touch, and then after he has seen that you will do him no harm, he throws himself upon you in trust and ever-growing love. So it is with us and God.

Our joy consists not just in the fact that we have a new friend.

Not just in the knowledge that our sins are forgiven, wondrous though that is.

Not just in the knowledge that I can worship God.

It consists in the fact that the Maker of the Universe, the Great High King is calling me into his presence.

The Holy God before whom Moses had to take off his sandals, is saying to me, “Come to me. I won’t hurt you. I love you. I know that you find the world appalling and life a mystery. But here in my presence is fullness of joy. Here with me you may finally rest and find deep comfort of soul. Here there is no longer anything to fear. Here is only love. Come and sit with me.

Some time ago I was on a plane to Canberra, and had taken off after an afternoon storm. We were flying through the storm clouds, when suddenly the entire plane was filled with a gentle rosy glow of light as the clouds around us reflected the setting sun. I couldn’t help but put pen to paper as we flew.

This poem shows perhaps better than all the words earlier just how I think we may find joy in the presence of the Holy and Separate One, who is also my Father who loves me.

A Story before Sleep

I’m in a plane en route to Canberra.
It’s been raining in Sydney,
and the plane is surrounded with cloud.
But in a breath –
almost as quick as it took my mother to pass from this world to the next;
from her last morning’s light to the new holy light of her tomorrows –
in a breath, I say,
the cloud had turned pink.

We couldn’t see the setting sun.
Only our wristwatches
which tell our local version of time
could confirm that this day was ending.
The pink gave the secret away;
the first and final rose of sunset.

How thoughtful of God to prepare us for the dark
by showing us the beauty of dying light;
a Last Supper in the upper room.

I wonder if, just before the dark sleep of death,
the Great Father will bathe me in the last-warm-light,
and, just before he tucks me in,
he will cuddle me on his knee,
and say...
“Now, let’s hear a story you haven’t ever heard before...”

Family JoyFinder

Ask the members of your family around a meal table how they think about God.
Do any of you have a particular sense of God as being “other”?
How does this make you feel?
What words could you use to describe how you feel about God’s “otherness”?

Set up some activity that might help you see God in his majestic holiness. Perhaps you might set up a candle on the table and turn out the room lights and each of you pray aloud to him. Try to build a sense of his holiness, rather than easy familiarity.

Think back to some relative or friend who has died, and who you are fairly confident would be in heaven. Try to imagine what they might be doing, and how different they might see things now that they have left this earth and all of its concerns. Does this help to shift your concerns and anxieties away from this moment?

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