The Renovation of "Holy"

In the sixth chapter of The Jesus Way, Eugene Peterson discusses the whole notion of what holy and holiness mean. I learned a lot from this chapter and am trying to figure out how to use what I have learned.

The word holy has a lot of baggage with it. It's actually not a word that I am likely to use, especially in a nonchurch setting. But even in church I don't use the word much. I think one of the reasons for its disuse is the past misuse of the word. When I think of holy, I must confess that words like moralistic, joyless, and legalistic jump to mind. Peterson puts it this way:

Holy is never a pious abstraction...It is something lived. It is the life of God breathed into and invigorating our lives...but in our culture it is the fate of holiness to be banalized. Holiness is reduced to blandness, the specialty of sectarian groups who reduce life to behaviors and cliches that can be certified as safe: goodness in a straightjacket, truth drained of mystery, beauty emasculated into ceramic knickknacks. Whenever I run up against this, I remember Ellen Glasgow's wonderful line in her autobiography. Of her father, a Presbyterian elder full of rectitude and rigid with duty, she wrote, "He was entirely unselfish, and in his long life never committed a pleasure" (127-128).

But after reading this chapter, I have a renewed understanding of the meaning. It has a rich meaning that helps us to keep focused on the fact that God is not our "gofer" or our genie-in-the-bottle, but the One who is Other and yet loves us eternally. Again, Peterson captures this well:

Holiness does not make God smaller so that he can be used in convenient and manageable projects; it makes us larger so that God can give out life through us, extravagantly, spontaneously. The holy is an interior fire, a passion for living in and for God, a capacity for exuberance in the presence of God. There are springs deep within and around us from which we can drink and sing God (128).