Breaking Holy

Recently, there's been a phrase that has been going around that I despise. I'm not going to tell you the phrase, because I don't want to seem as if I'm judging anyone, cause I'm not (my sister brought this to my attention when I was ranting at her). But I'll tell you why - because it glosses over the significance of who God is. 

What do I mean by that? I mean that the significance of everything that is most important about our God - His Holiness.

And as I was thinking about this, I realized. We have no cultural concept of "holy." What does it mean in Revelation 4 when the creatures around God's throne cry out that He is "Holy, Holy, Holy!"? Our culture has no idea.

Holiness is an idea of being set apart. Being special. Being special because of being touched by the divine. In a culture that denies holiness, we deny the Divine. We deny that He touches us, that He uses us, and that He - is.

Everything that was once holy is no longer. Take sex as the classic example. Sex was something so pure, so special, so celebrated in the context God designed for - its holy context. It is a holy metaphor: The longing for one another, the connection, the feeling of joy and being love no matter what, the feeling of being enough and of being essential and of being whole - it all points to how God wants to be with us, how He wants us to be with Him. It was holy in its context of being set apart. And then it stopped being set apart for two people. With the assault of porn, it became something other people could take part in. With orgies and multiple partners, sex lost its mystery and its "set apartness". Then it started being included i movies, in tv, in commercials, in music, on billboards. And now, sex is for everyone. it means nothing except physical pleasure. Sex has ceased to be holy. And this is just the easiest example. I could show you so many things that used to be holy - the cross, music, the Bible - that no longer are holy.

The consequence of breaking down barriers setting things apart is that we no longer see barriers at all.

Back to my point - the phrase that I am objecting to. I object to it because it glosses over something so holy, so special, so integral to our understanding of who God is:

HIS NAME.