Fear of wrath vs. faith in lovingkindness.

July 21, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Novelist and teacher Don Belton, in the anthology “Wrestling with the Angel” [Brian Bouldrey, ed.; New York: Riverhead Books, 1995] writes of growing up under the holiness requirements of his father’s faith. Modern Pharisaism seems to have sprouted continually in many places in the Christian world, even though the New Testament makes it clear that Jesus put all that stuff to rest. Belton tells of his experiences and impressions, not theological arguments or doctrines, as his father’s rigid views came down to the family level.

“There was a way to speak to adults, my father taught me. A way to ask. A way to speak on the telephone. A way to eat. To be excused from the table. To stand. To sit. To behave when company came. A way to play so as not to disrupt the entire house. So as not to get my clothes dirty. Not a right and wrong way. There was one way: the way my father taught me. I was constantly corrected and reproved. I was rehearsed in his rules. I was policed and inspected. This color socks only goes with that color trousers. Use this fork for salad and that fork for meat. Only girls laugh: tee hee. Boys must laugh: ha ha. I took my rest at my precise bedtime, and my day began at exactly the same hour each morning. My evening and morning prayers were meticulously recited like incantations for an easy sentence in the prison of my father’s house. I was not allowed to break a ruler—ever. There was always something to say I was sorry for, something for which I knew I would never be entirely forgiven. Even at an early age, I learned to keep my sins secret.”

People who believe they have reached perfection through keeping rules will also likely believe they have attained holiness or righteousness the same way. How easy it is to transfer this rigid obsession with control and perfection to or from the world of religion. “My father’s house” could as well be the house of the heavenly God, in which, if we even hope to live there, we may not break any rule—ever.

Belton implies this transference.

“As far back as I can remember, I was carried back and forth to church, by my father and various other relatives. I was taken back and forth as though I were receiving treatments for a persistent ailment. During my childhood, we attended various churches, all of them Black and all of them Sanctified Holiness.”

I can’t speak for this particular denomination (a useful essay by Harold Raser’s can be found here), but its history can apparently be traced to the years before and after the Civil War among Christians for whom “sanctification” and “holiness” became not merely an obsession but a defining doctrine. These would be the polar opposite of my own heritage in faith, in which God’s grace, not our perfection, is the defining doctrine. For the one, the fear of God’s wrath tips the scale in favor of strict human obedience. For the other, faith in God’s lovingkindness tips the scale the other direction. Each view can find supporting verses in Scripture. Any of us could say “My Bible can beat up your Bible.”

Last week someone was telling me about a similar sanctified strain of Christian belief where a very pious and faithful father was kicked out of the congregation because his son had gotten into some kind of trouble. The father was not fit for the kingdom of God, it was reasoned, if he can’t control his own son. But I can’t help thinking about the Prodigal Father in Luke 15 who waited for his delinquent son to come home. What did the neighbors think about him? Would they have kicked him out of the synagogue?

Belton goes on to recount his own growing spiritual and carnal awareness as a gay man, but he neglects to say if he ran from the Sanctified Holiness church or if they expelled him. Since I have experience with that—I too have been expelled from a church (for pastoring while gay)—I find myself now playing the role of the waiting father for other LGBT people.

Sanctification and holiness are seductive doctrines. “Be perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect.” The Sermon on the Mount sets the bar high. But when a church defines itself by holiness, it attracts people who tend to be extremists and perfectionists, who look down on everyone else as not being the genuine article, the true Christian. But is it not also the genuine article to pray with simplicity and reliance upon grace, “God be merciful to me, a sinner”?

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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