Wrestling with Holiness

The Renovare group which I joined a few weeks ago studied the Holiness Tradition last week. We were asked to pick an exercise and practice it this week and report on it tomorrow night. The question, then, will be, What did you learn about yourself and God as a result of this exercise?

I realized that the Holiness Tradition is the one I was brought up with. My grandparents were Methodists, and that was the church I was baptized in. My grandmother worried some about sin, and was unhappy that my grandfather very occasionally smoked a pipe or a cigar, and that he sometimes played cards on Sunday. She was a great card lover herself, but had been taught that to do so on Sunday was a sin.

My mother must have railed against that tradition, at least a little bit. She told me about tent meetings she had to attend as a child, and how disgusting she thought it was to turn around and kneel facing the seat cushion she’d just sat on, or someone else had.

Even though she did not believe the Bible to be literally true, (and I don’t know what my grandparents believed about that,) she was a stickler for rules. We didn’t talk about sin though. She did consult Emily Post’s and Amy Vanderbilt’s books of etiquette for the proper ways to behave, but she was strangely quiet about the Bible. The Book of Common Prayer was in her hands every morning when I got up though, so I know she was grounded in the goodness, and forgiveness, of God.

Back to the Renovare question, what I learned, on reflection, was that it wasn’t at all easy to separate the “shoulds” and “oughts” that came to me in Mother’s voice from the true meaning, to me, of God’s commandments. I’m certain I frequently sent my mother to the end of her wits and patience by saying, “Yes, but….” I had, and still have, a burning desire to think things out for myself and to find my own understanding of what is true.

Is that “sin,” wanting to understand and make sense of what I read on my own terms? Instead of accepting God’s word in faith? Maybe so. Maybe not.

If I want to think that my desires are God’s, then yes. If I’m puzzling about it, hunting for what God wants for me, with a willingness to entertain his will for me at least, before I actually choose…that seems okay to me. In fact, it seems important to do so, to believe that God cares for me and wants the best for me before I commit.