“Holiness, holiness, it’s what I long for.
Holiness,
it’s what I need.
Holiness,
holiness is what You want from me.”
~Holiness,
Sonicflood
If you grew up in the church then you probably have heard that song before. You’ve probably stood in front of a pew, or sat in one, and sang the lyrics. You’ve probably acted on auto pilot, knowing that once you sang the song you’d be moving on to the next thing in the service lineup. But have you took time to think about those lyrics? Take a moment and look at them. Notice something? Do you notice how the word holiness is repeated five times in those three lines?
What
is holiness?
This
isn’t an easy question to answer and, for the longest time, I didn’t have an
answer to it.
I
grew up in the church. From the time I was a baby I had heard of holiness. My
mother was known to sing the song Holiness while doing housework. She’d sing it
to me to get me to fall asleep. It is one of those church hymns that have
always been present in my life.
My
friends and I would stand between our parents in church. Our eyes trained on
the hymnals one of our parents held. We’d read the words. Sing the words. We’d
sway a bit to the soft music. We never questioned their meaning. I guess it was
because, at the time, holiness was something we associated with goodness. If
you were holy then you were good. Being told to be holy was the same thing as
being told to behave. Wasn’t it? That’s what we thought. In our young years we
comprehended that eight letter word as meaning the same thing as a four letter
one. We didn’t understand the true depth of it.
As
I grew up, that word made multiple appearances in my life. I still didn’t think
about it much though. That is until I reached my teen years. The teen years are
a hard time in anyone’s life. Changing, growing, trying to figure out where you
fit in and wondering if it’s worth it to have a certain reputation if the cost
of it is yourself. It’s tough. I know. I’ve been there.
At
about fourteen is when everyone started asking questions. I have to admit, I
never really voiced my own. I felt as if I should already know the answers,
what with growing up with the parents I did. You see, my parents were the
people my friends were asking the questions to. My dad was the youth pastor and
he explained to my friends, and I considering I was listening, what certain
aspects of our belief were.
By
seventeen, my dad and one of my friend’s moms were my youth pastors. Again
people were asking questions. We had lived through three more years and wanted
more in-depth answers than the ones we had been given before. No surprise
there. As one grows they yearn for knowledge and we had reached the age where
we could fully understand the answers to our questions. I didn’t though.
I
could explain to you what entire sanctification was. I could tell you why my
denomination doesn’t use wine for communion. I would have debates with my
friends over whether or not once-saved-always-saved was legit or not. I was a
Nazarene girl who went to a Lutheran high school. I had plenty of opportunities
to talk to my friends about our different denominations’ beliefs. But every
Wednesday was when my youth group would meet. We’d all pile into the upstairs
room of our church and gather around a pool table, or chat on the sofas for a
half hour, until our leaders announced it was time for the lesson.
I
remember one night, sitting on a worn green couch. It was seriously one of the
ugliest couch ever, but it was comfy and soft. One of my friends were sitting
beside me as I leaned against the arm of the couch and our leaders sat among
us. I can’t tell you what the lesson was that night. We hardly ever finished a
lesson. We’d start talking on one subject, then someone would have a serious
question, and we’d spend the time discussing their question. This suited us.
Though not all of us were the best of friends, none of us were too afraid to
ask ‘hypothetical’ questions. We knew what was said in that room stayed among those gathered.
That
night, one of the leaders used the word holiness and one of my peers asked what
exactly holiness was. I wish I could tell you what answer was given, but I
don’t remember. That’s because it wasn’t an answer I understood. My peers
seemed to understand it. They seemed to grasp the concept and move on, but to
me the answer might as well been, “Holiness is a purple elephant that lives in
Indonesia and dances the cha-cha on the weekends.” Seriously, I didn’t
understand holiness, but I wasn’t going to ask my youth leaders for further
explanation. I never even asked my dad when we got home from the meeting. I just
dealt with it.
Holiness
wasn’t something I was that concerned with. I was curious about it’s meaning,
but not curious enough to forget that voice in my head that was telling me that
I would look like an idiot if I asked someone what it meant. So, I went on with
life. I went to school, I went to youth group, I talked about Christianity and
beliefs with my peers, but holiness wasn’t really thought about again.
“Holiness,
holiness, is what I long for. Holiness, is what I need.” I sang those words in
church on Sundays. I listened to my Sunday school teacher talk about what it
meant to live a Christian life and I asked questions on occasion. Holiness
though…that question remained on the back burner, simmering away underneath the
protective lid I had placed upon it.
A
year went by and I graduated high school. I had gotten into the college I wanted
and was ready to leave everything in Nebraska behind. I’m going to be flat out honest,
I wanted a change. I wanted to be out of my comfort zone. I was aiming for
complete and total unrecognizable surroundings. That’s why I planned on going
to California. It turned out that my decision to not go to California and stay
a little closer to home was a good thing.
I
ended up going to a university in Kansas. I’m still there and still in love
with the campus and all the friends I’ve made. It was in my second semester of
my freshman year there that I took the holiness pan off the back burner.
At
my university, everyone has to take Bible classes. Two of those required are
Old Testament and New Testament. It was a couple weeks into my old testament
class that my professor walked in and said that he heard a song on the radio
that he thought we should all hear. The song turned out to be an Addison Road
song, called What do I know of Holy.
My
professor, who I won’t tell you the name of because I don’t have his permission
to use it, played the song for us all to hear. As I sat there, watching the
video and listening to the lyrics, that old question resurfaced. The song had a
point. What did I know of holy? What
was holiness? I still didn’t voice these questions however, and my professor
never brought them up.
Almost
every class, my professor played that song. He taught us our lesson, show us
clips from the brick Bible (it’s a pretty cool thing, actually. It’s the Bible,
using Legos) and prepare us for our quizzes. After every class, he’d dismiss us
with a four word phase. He didn’t say goodbye, or you’re dismissed. He didn’t
tell us the class was done and to remember to study. He’d do all his quiz
reminders than look at us, his eyes scanning over the full desks, and say, “Go
and be holy.” Every time. Every single time, he’d say the same thing. “Go and
be holy.”
I
found myself thinking about holiness more and more. I ended up buying Addison
Road’s song from Itunes and listening to it on my daily walks. I became entranced by the song. There was something about it that had me captured. I
realize now what it was. That song was saying, asking, the very thing I had
been for years. It didn’t really give an answer to what holiness was. It didn’t
say to be holy is to….it just asked, and that’s why I liked it. I spent an
entire semester listening to that song, learning that song. I felt the need to
learn it, to memorize it, to engrave it on my soul. I listened to it in class,
on my walks, and thought about my professor’s words. Still, I asked, what is
this holy you speak of? And still I never voiced that question.
Finals
rolled around and between packing, working, and finals I didn’t take as much
time to ponder over holiness. I cared more about passing classes. People kept
freaking me out. Freshman year, I was new, upperclassmen thought it was fun to
terrify us of our finals. “You need to study really hard. His finals are super
tough.” Just so you know, they were all lying. So far, I’ve only had one time
that someone has told me a teacher was a living nightmare and I ended up
agreeing with them.
On
the day of my Old Testament final, I was tired. I had stayed up all night the
night before, working on an extra credit assignment for the same class because
I didn’t know how well I’d end up doing on the final and I wanted to make sure
I had some cushioning. Don’t call me an over achiever. I see you snickering. I
don’t do extra credit often. I usually spend any extra time I have writing or
hanging out with friends. As it turned out, I didn’t really have to fret over
that final.
I
remember walking into the class, sitting my stuff down, pulling out a pencil
and staring down at a piece of paper in front of me. The test was turned over,
I couldn’t see it, what the Professor said instantly had me nervous.
“You’re
going to have an essay.”
“Oh
crap. Oh crap. Oh crap.” That’s what was going through my mind. A first year
English student and I already dreaded essays. Why? Because when you’re an
English student your essays are practically papers. I’m not talking your normal
two paragraph writing explaining a subject. I’m talking full on introduction,
body, and conclusion. If you really wanted a good grade on an essay you shot
for three or four paragraphs. I was worried that I’d run out of things to talk
about the subject given, but when I turned over that paper, my professor started
playing that Addison Road song again.
At
the top of the paper, typed out in black Times New Roman font, was this
question, “What does it mean to be holy?”
Now,
with as much as I asked that question without coming up with an answer, you’d
think I’d be freaking out even more at that point. I wasn’t though. I was calm.
I was actually relieved. As the song played I picked up my pencil and kind of
stared around me for a bit, gathering my thoughts. There were a couple Ministry
majors writing away in front of me. Their hands were working quickly over their
page. Then there were a few people staring blankly down at their pages, and
those writing at a relatively normal pace. I set the tip of my pencil to the
paper, allowing myself to soak in the lyrics of the song filling the room,
and I began to write.
I
won’t tell you all I wrote, for I ended up writing one and a half pages worth
of an answer, but all I wrote could be summed up in the first sentence of my
essay….
To
be holy is to be all you can be for Christ.
You
may disagree with me. You may think I’m a crack, that I don’t know what I’m
talking about, but to me that was the first time I grasped that concept. I’m
still young. I’m only in my twenty-first year of life, and the things I experience
and learn from this point on could end up shaping my view of holiness. I might
come back to this writing in five years and think, holiness is also about….or
to be holy you have to…I really don’t know, but right here, right now, to be
holy means to be all I can be for Christ. To be myself, and nothing but myself,
and to use all that He has given me (my likes, my dislikes, my talents, and my
weaknesses) for Him.
After
nineteen years of wondering what holiness actually was, I grasped onto a part
of it. All thanks to a professor and a song. I’m going to leave you now, and I
may be leaving you even more confused than when you started reading. If I am,
I’m sorry. If you disagree with my thoughts, anything that I’ve said, than good
for you. I’m not asking you to accept my views. I’m not asking you to say that
my definition of being holy is right, but I am asking you to think about
holiness. I want to ask you something. One, simple, six worded question….
What
does it mean to be holy?
And
I am giving to you the same challenge my professor gave to my class each and
every time we met….
Go
and be holy.
