What you’re after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new true life. Psalm 51:6 TM
The Methodist Church has placed great emphasis on John Wesley’s teaching on holiness. As I grew up the life style of the members in the Methodist Church in the village made a deep impression on me. They radiated a quality of character and caring which attracted me as a better, cleaner, more satisfying way of living. Their secret, I discovered as I grew among them, was how they understood and practiced holiness. The teaching I received from them together with my reading and conversation with others on the subject convinced me holiness took the Christian believer into a different experience of life, a separate, higher level of living. This separation, which required strict disciplines and abstinences, was the door to saintliness – something for the very few, or so it seemed.
Holiness remains a central tenet in Methodist doctrine. Different interpretations have been proposed. As social, political and economic development took place many have moved from the ‘personal’ emphasis to a more whole ‘social’ one. Holiness without the pursuit of social justice being seen as a contradiction. Pursuing personal spiritual development without concern for others subject to injustices, trapped in poverty and discrimination depriving them of human rights being regarded as a distorted concept of discipleship and a failure to apply basic biblical tenets and the teaching of Jesus who gave priority to relief for the poor and marginalized.
In its attempt to balance action and contemplation divisions have split the church into conservative and liberal. These differences combined with the pressures which today swirl around us taking us in different directions has resulted in us being divided within ourselves. We get persuaded to move in one direction and then another. We act in contravention of what we have previously observed and know to be right. We choose the convenient way in preference to the correct way. We are torn between the comfortable and the unpleasant responsible action. We get fragmented in our soul. St. Paul recognized these divisions within himself, ‘I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge’ Rom.7:24 TM. Our crying need, and one which we repeatedly long for, is wholeness of being.
Eugene Peterson was a reformed pastor who promoted wholeness of living as a correct interpretation of Christian discipleship, holiness and saintliness. He was relentless in his search for a holiness, or wholeness based on an authentic relationship with God, nature and people. Earth and heaven, body and spirit, divine and human combined. His ministry and teaching were stamped with an earthiness which grounded his congregation into recognizing the contribution each one could make to the whole and their value as a creation of God regardless of their limitations, size, colour, job and imperfections. He found holiness in the raw beauty of nature, the quietness of the chancel, the business of a shopping mall, the study of the scriptures and in the company of the ordinary people he met at the gas station, or super market.
The dictionary defines holiness simply as ‘a state or quality’, whereas wholeness is ‘containing all the component parts necessary to form something complete, or healthy, undivided or unbroken’. These conditions are pertinent to the desperate needs of the world with its divisions, conflicts and tensions and to a society torn and broken by stress, brutality, crime and greed. Holy is a word we retain for God, saints and sacraments, whereas wholeness speaks to us of health of body, mind and spirit.
Henri Nouwen a Dutch, catholic priest, writer and theologian, left Harvard University to find wholeness, a sense of belonging and restoration in L’ Arche, a loving community for the care of people with developmental disabilities. In his books he writes of his own dividedness and then addresses the absence of wholeness, the fragmentation and wounded brokenness many of us are painfully conscious of within ourselves, but hide from others.
The most saintly people I have met had a winsome wholeness about them. Their view of life, positive conversation, inclusiveness, humour, kindness, love of people and appreciation of nature gave them a radiant earthiness which made their character attractive, their company contagious and their presence in society a healthy, sanitizing influence.
Jesus lived an undivided life possessing a wholeness (holiness) which drew the crowds, the sick, the unfulfilled and the hungry to him. Jesus was a ‘wholemaker’ of human relations and health. His holiness was formed by his love for God, for people, for nature, for life in all its variety, imperfection and beauty. That is the holiness to seek. ‘Religion’s main goal is to reconnect us to the Whole, to ourselves, and to one another – and thus heal us’ Fr Rohr.