{"id":22430,"date":"2023-05-10T08:28:32","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T12:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22430"},"modified":"2023-05-10T08:33:07","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T12:33:07","slug":"22430","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22430","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Natalie Grant - You Will Be Found feat. Cory Asbury (Official Lyric Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eHC7P4YJ9KY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Purity Is Not Holiness<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Pastor and public theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber describes how emphasizing \u201cpurity\u201d leads us away from holiness: &nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our purity systems, even those established with the best of intentions, do not make us holy. <strong>They only create insiders and outsiders<\/strong>. They are mechanisms for <strong>delivering our drug of choice: self-righteousness, <\/strong>as juice from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil runs down our chins. And these purity systems affect far more than our relationship to sex and booze: they show up in political ideology, in the way people shame each other on social media, in the way we obsess about \u201ceating clean.\u201d Purity most often leads to pride or to despair, not holiness. Because <strong>holiness is about union\u00a0<em>with<\/em>, and purity is about separation\u00a0<em>from<\/em>\u2026. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To connect to the holy is to access the deepest, juiciest part of our spirits. Perhaps this is why we set up so many boundaries, protections, and rules around both sex and religion\u2026. But when the boundaries, protections, and rules become more important than the sacred thing they are intended to protect, casualties ensue. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But no matter how much we strive for purity in our minds, bodies, spirits, or ideologies, <strong>purity is not the same as holiness. It\u2019s just easier to define what is pure than what is holy, so we pretend they are interchangeable. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Bolz-Weber points to Jesus\u2019 actions to encourage seeking holiness over purity:&nbsp;<\/em><br><br>Jesus seemed to want connection with those around him, not separation. He touched human bodies deemed unclean as if they were themselves holy: dead little girls, lepers, menstruating women. People of his day were disgusted that Jesus\u2019 disciples would eat with unwashed hands, and they tried to shame him for it. But he responded, \u201cIt is not what enters the mouth that makes one unclean but what comes out of it that defiles\u201d [Matthew 15:11]. He was loyal to the law, just not at the expense of the people. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus kept violating boundaries of decency to get to the people on the other side of that boundary, those who\u2019d been wounded by it, those who were separated from the others: the motherless, the sex workers, the victims, and the victimizers. <strong>He cared about real holiness, the connection of things human and divine, the unity of sinners, the coming together of that which was formerly set apart. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I think of holiness, the kind that is sensual and embodied and free from shame and deeply present in the moment and comes from union with God, I think of a particular scene in the Gospels when, right in the middle of a dinner party, a woman cracks open a jar of myrrh and pours it over Jesus\u2019 feet [Luke 7:37\u201338]. She then takes her unbound hair and wipes his feet, mixing her mane, her tears, and her offering on the feet of God. Her separateness, from herself and her God, is alleviated in that moment. Holiness braided the strands of her being into their original and divine integrated configuration. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>[20] No Comparing <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here there is no room for ambition. Ambition is the desire to be above one\u2019s neighbor; and here there is no possibility of comparison with one\u2019s neighbor: no one knows what the white stone contains except the man who receives it\u2026. Relative worth is not only unknown\u2014to the children of the Kingdom it is unknowable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lewis, C. S.. George MacDonald (pp. 11-12). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Purity Is Not Holiness Pastor and public theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber describes how emphasizing \u201cpurity\u201d leads us away from holiness: &nbsp; Our purity systems, even those established with the best of intentions, do not make us holy. They only create insiders and outsiders. They are mechanisms for delivering our drug of choice: self-righteousness, as juice from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22430"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22430"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22435,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22430\/revisions\/22435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}