There are a few words that seem to be purely religious. To use them in secular settings and conversations is awkward. They make people feel uncomfortable. I speak from personal experience, knowing what it is to be on the receiving end and also as the one trying to explain something about life from a religious perspective.
They are almost opposites in my mind. The two words are Sin and Holiness.
The secular world doesn’t use these words, at least in any serious ways, because people can’t relate to holiness personally and do their best to ignore the concept of sin.
This is too bad because these two words are keys that can open to us a saner way of seeing the world as it truly is.
Let’s take sin first.
Sin is a lie. That we live in sin, by my definition here, means we live within a lie. The lie is so big, so universal in fact, that we don’t see it. It is woven into all the systems of the world and lives within our own hearts from our moment of conception on. I’m not saying the chair I am sitting on is sin, I am saying that this chair is existing in a fallen world, a world damaged constantly by the lies of people and spiritual forces of darkness. The lack or limitation of truth makes truth appear strange as well. Who would tell the truth knowing that lying is so much easier? We fall back on white lies in order not to hurt people’s feeling. I’m not advocating being cruelly honest instead. I am simply making the observation that our world is so messed up and distorted we find even good people avoiding telling the honest truth.
There are a number of major or universal lies that move sin forward in life on this planet. The first lie is about the trustworthiness of God. It implies that God is anything other than who he is. There is also a lie about sin. It is to convince us that sin doesn’t exist and that anyone who talks about life the way I am right now, in terms of sin, is wrong and a crackpot.
Holiness
Holiness is the absence of sin. We can’t imagine a place where this might be true, thanks to the atmosphere of sin we breath.
One final thought today.
Because holiness is, at least in part, the absence of sin, to move sinful people out of a sinful world into a holy sin-free one, requires Resurrection Power.