It seems like there's this tension in the bible between the holiness and love of God and Christians have always tended to camp out on one end of the continuum or the other. Either God is glorious and distant, or he’s a big teddy bear who hopes we’ll do our best and follow our hearts.
I’ve traversed the spectrum for 10 years from John Piper’s reformed passion to Jack Frost’s bathe-in-the-love-of-God sentimentality. These days, I know I err on the love side (seems harder to go wrong there). But then I’ve found myself recently in Isaiah and Ezekiel:
“It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations.”
“Do not be afraid, you worm Jacob, little Israel, do not fear, for I myself will help you,” declares the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.”
I think the miracle of the Christian faith is that God’s presence with us is both Holy and Intimate and that makes us ridiculously uncomfortable. We either want an unknowable God we can passively acknowledge and go on with our lives, or we want a super nice God that grades on a curve and just wants us to be happy. The problem in the bible is that He’s neither of those things.
Let me bring it out of the stratosphere: when I’m sitting here in the morning, God’s presence often shows up. Or at least I become aware of it. It’s hard to explain but it feels both warm and chilling. The first feeling is electric. Then comes a flood of guilt. I’m a failure, a worm, a love miser. I think of my impatience with my family, my resource-clinging, my failure to care. Suddenly, there’s warmth. Wave after wave of undeserved acceptance come with words like “son, beloved, accepted, My Own.” As my heart sheds the crust of self-interest and self-righteousness and settles into the warmth of the God we insanely call “Father”, He begins to say things that nobody else could get away with: strong, honest words of correction, rebuke, and direction. Exquisite, tough love.
I know that His passion is for me, but ultimately, His passion is for himself, the Source, the triune Lover, the Unmoved Mover. It’s not because I’m just so good or have so much potential. I know He loves me for His own sake, because that’s just who He is.
Ultimately in my faith tradition (I say tradition, but to me it’s a breathing daily reality), Jesus plays the role of ultimate mediator, making the exquisite tension of God’s Holy Intimacy possible on a personal level.
Every religion I’ve met seeks to navigate our relationship with the transcendent through some kind of mediator (whether it’s sacrafices, good deeds, lesser gods, ancestors, a book, or a priest). Agnosticism is an exception, but as a former agnostic, I can say it’s more of a spiritual in-between (a purgatory of sorts) than an actual position and there’s very little hope there unless your “ultimate” is temporal. In the Christian tradition, Jesus plays the role of mediator and priest. And because He himself is Transcendent, you don’t have to go to a church, make a sacrifice, or commune with the ancestors to relate to God. You can go directly to Him. Heck He invites you to call him “Papa”! So in the end, this is how it works out in the Jesus Kingdom:
“Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.” (Hebrews 4:14-16)
Because of that, we find Presence and Transcendence, Love and Holiness occupying the same space. It’s not a continuum. It’s a tension: living, breathing, electric.
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