Hidden Face of Japan (part 2)

Here's a few more quotes from the Hidden face of Japan. Scroll down if you want part 3 of my series on holiness (hopefully, part 4 will be up soon!).

At least a  third of the Japanese population in some areas have visited a Christian church at some time in their lives, if only to attend a wedding or funeral. between a quarter and a third of the population possess Christian literature in their homes, and at some time in their lives have read it either regularly or occasionally. However, official statistics, based on church membership figures, show that less than two percent of the Japanese population are Christians. Sociological surveys, on the other hand, consistently show a rather higher percentage who call themselves Christians. This is because many of those who have attended a Christian school or university feel more identified with Christianity than with any other religion. They therefore call themselves 'Christians.'
 I can testify that there is a lot of Christian literature that has been distributed throughout Japan. In most of Japan, if people want to hear the gospel, there is some way to. However, there is no salt and light in their lives. There are no Christian witnesses, just perhaps the occasional literature.

Finally, a fascinating paragraph about Father Organitino, a Roman Catholic missionary to Japan in the mid-sixteenth century: 

He [Father Organitino] had a feeling that spirits lurking in the mountains, woods and houses were always intent on preventing the spread of the gospel in Japan. Then he had a vision of the indigenous gods of the country. One of them, a minor deity, told him how they absorb but change the foreign gods out of all recognition into Japanese ones. This spirit concluded by commenting: 'Perhaps in the long run, your Christian God will be changed into an indigenous god of this country. As Chinese and Indian gods were once changed, the Western god must likewise be changed. We spirits of the land are always haunting you in the trees, in the wind that passes over a rose, or even in the twilight which lingers on the walls of temples. We are here everywhere and always. Beware of us, beware of us.

Holiness, part 3

Sept. 14, 2009

Qadowsh

Holiness, part 3

Using Blue Letter Bible, I've begun to do a little research into the word holy. My first question is: is it the same as the word “sacred?” Is there a difference between the two concepts? Doing a quick search, I've found three words: qadash (172 appeareances in the Hebrew OT), qadowsh (116 appeareances), and qodesh (468 appearances). Qadash seems to be used more for sanctify and it is a verb, and qadowsh is used more for holy, and it is an adjective. Qodesh is a noun with a variety of meanings.

The three words

Qadash (sanctify) seems to be used in terms of “sanctify something or another,” as it is a verb. It is used for sanctifying priests, a firstborn, or the sabbath day. It seems to me that the meaning of this word (or the English sanctify) is to make something holy.

Qadowsh (holy) seems to be used in terms of a holy place (in the temple), God as being Holy (Isaiah 6), Israel as a holy people, more or less as an adjective. It also describes God (in English) as the Holy One of Israel and is used for OT references to “Saints.” Interestingly, Exodus 29:37, the people are ordered to qadash the alter to make it qadowsh. Sanctify it to make it holy. So, from a quick reading, it seems that sanctifying is the process of making something holy. Therefore, a sanctified thing, like the alter, is a holy thing.

Qodesh is our noun. It's used to describe holy gifts or holy things (which are literally, “qodesh”, or “holies”). It's used as a word that we translate sometimes into sanctuary in the English (when referring to the tabernacle or temple), meaning that the sanctuary was literally the “holy” of God. There's also another word used about half the time for sanctuary which seems more literally to mean “sanctuary.” As near as I can tell, when something in the Bible in English is “most Holy” (like the holy of holies), it's qodesh qodesh (holy holy). I suppose this makes the holy holy holy of God (despite being three Qadowshes) rather significant: even one more level of holy.

I believe it's interesting to point out that God is often described as qadowsh, but He is never quadashed. God has no need of sancifying (being made holy), because He is inherently holy. Because He is holy, nothing can be done to make Him more holy. However, things that are sanctified are sanctified TO HIM.

In short, in the Hebrew, I think that these are all different forms of the same word: holy, holiness, and to holy (adjective, noun, and verb).

But what does it mean?

These words have a strong nuance of seperateness. This makes sense: when you make something holy, you seperate it to a god. So, the meaning of holy itself implies seperateness. Perhaps this is even the root meaning of it... not sure, gotta research that one some more.

However, I'm going to place a theory that all true holiness is derived from the holiness of God. All seperateness is derived from the separateness of God. Hmm... interesting when you put it that way. Because there's lots of other serparateness in this world. Separate tubes of toothepaste for married couples; doors that separate different rooms. A very big wall to separate the US and Mexico. There are all kinds of separateness in this world. However, I wouldn't describe the wall between the US and Mexico as a sanctifying wall. It's just a separating wall. I wouldn't describe my shoes as holy because I'm the only one who wears them. They're just separated to me. So, there is a difference between separateness and holiness.

Indeed, there is a different Hebrew word used for “separate” when it's used in the plain sense (not holiness). This is parad and comes out 26 times in the OT. It's used for rivers that part in Genesis 2. It's used for nations dividing and covering the earth in Genesis 10. Abram and Lot parad. And the like. In my very quick survey, I find a suspicious lack of the word from Exodus to Deuteronomy, where holiness and sacredness are used all over the place. So, in short, there is a separate word for separate, so holiness, despite being separateness, means something far, far more.

Back to the point

Anyways, about all holiness in the world being derived from God's holiness. I'm going to use “separate-plus” as a running definition for holiness. This separate-plusness exists as a primary atribute of God. And things, such as those in the temple, are called holy. In this case, I think what's being said is that when a person is made holy (like a priest), they are pulled out from unholy things (things that are unified, not separate) and united with God in his holiness.

In other words, picture a line. To the left of the line is everything. To the right of the line is God and only God. When something is sanctified, is is taken from the everything-side and put on the God-side (separated). A holy thing is something that is on the God-side of the line, meaning that it is cut off or separated from all other things.

Conclusion

So, where have I come?

I've come to the conclusion that sacredness and holiness are the same thing but different parts of speech.

Holiness is separate-plusness.

However, I don't understand what that “plus” is. What is it that makes holiness different from separateness? I believe that as I find that, I will get to the point where no word (in any language) can accurately describe holiness. That “plus” is what I'm seeking more than anything and where I believe a great blessing lies.

My working theory is that holiness is inherent to God and that all holy things are holy because they are separated to Him from other things. This will probably have some significant meaning when it comes to Christian sanctification the command that we should be holy.

One of the next things that I plan to do is to do a similar word search to this of holiness as it appears in the New Testament.

Until then...

A diversion

Taking a brief diversion on my writing on holiness, I want to give some insights on a question I am often asked. Why is Japan so closed to the gospel? Why are there so few Christians here?

I want to throw up some quotes from a book I recently finished called The Unseen Face of Japan by David C. Lewis. It's a book about Japanese culture, specifically Japanese religious practices.

At first [1870s] the Christians were drawn primarily from among the sons of the former Samurai class who studied in the mission schools and were most easily accessible to the missionaries. The samurai had lost the privileges which they had enjoyed under the Tokugawa regime [for over 250 years], so that, in comparison with other classes, the younger samurai became less attached to traditional social norms... For the most part, Japanese Christians were drawn from the educated, urban population.

However, the social characteristics of these early Christian converts 'have sown seeds of such highbrow nature in Japanese Christianity that they have erected a barrier against the broad propagation  if Christianity among the common people.'Because the early Protestant converts came from the bureaucrats of the samurai class who had served under feudal domains which had been affiliated with a deposed shogunate, there developed in Japanese Christianity a 'certain aloofness from the establishment... Once a body of believers had been drawn from the urban middle class, and once these people had organized and established churches, they promptly made their churches miniature closed societies. People of other classes, coming into contact with these cliques, felt shut out and rejected... Several studies by different scholars have shown how in subsequent decades there continued to be a conspicuous tendency for Christianity to be confined largely to the urban, educated, white-collar classes.

The next paragraph is about one of the biggest barriers to Christianity taking root in Japan. It also describes the late 1800s and hasn't changed much:

To a large extent, evangelism was left to the professional clergy. Yamamori suggests that this could be a cultural legacy of the Buddhist and Shinto services in which the lay people are passive recipients. Missionaries and pastors were regarded as the trained specialists on Christianity. For the predominantly white-collar Japanese Christians, the heavy emphasis places on learning meant that many of them had a view of Christianity which was psychologically colored by traditional Japanese attitudes towards the 'master-disciple' (sensei-seito) relationship. This reinforced the monolithic leadership structure of most Japanese churches.

Holiness in Exodus

Sept. 9, 2009 (9-9-9)

Exodus

Holiness, part 2

Today, I finished Exodus, and I want to look at one or two things.

First of all, as I read through the descriptions of the temple, I can't help but be amazed at all the gold that was used in it. As I picture this thing, it was magnificant, and the magnificance was meant to be a physical display of God's glory. God has an inherent beauty and majesty, something far more beautiful and majestic than anything we could picture or imagine, and that's what His glory is (simplistically). I feel like there's a relation to holiness there, like His glory is the displaying of His holiness, or something like that. Not yet sure.

Exodus 40 is fascinating. It is the completion of the tabernacle and the descending of the glory of God on it. I think that Exodus 40 is where the articles of the tabernacle (the ark, alter, incense alter, table, etc) become holy. Before then, they were gold artifacts, but not holy unto God. Before then, the workmen could touch them freely to work on them. After then, it would be death to touch them.

Moses annointed each artifact and the tabernacle itself with annointing oil, and they became holy (40:9). It's almost like God was saying, “this is now the official tabernacle. These aren't just fine gold things, these are the articles of the tabernacle.” That seal of approval from God that these things were holy is what was going on as Moses annointed them. Then Aaron and the his sons were washed and annointed, and Aaron was clothed in the holy garments. In other words, they became holy to the service of God. This whole chapter is about everything being made holy (artifacts and people).

In verses 18-30, Moses sets up the tabernacle, annoints the stuff, etc. He is a mere man, but at his touch, things become holy. And he is the one doing all the work: He raised the tabernacle, he spread the tent, he put the Testimony into the ark and put the mercy seat on top of the ark and inserted the poles into the ark so that others could carry it in the future. He put the lampstands in the tabernacle and lit the lamps and burned incense. And more. In short, he did everything the priests would do in future generations, only he set it up and did it for the first time.

I feel like this is a foreshadowing of Christ, as Moses stood halfway between man and God setting up the means for forgiveness of sins to be made and for worship to take place. At Moses' annointing, things became holy, just as through Christ's annointing (in the Spirit), we become holy.

And then in verses 34-38, the cloud descended on the tabernacle, and the glory of God filled it: yes indeed, this place was holy. No doubt about it. God confirmed the holiness and the appropriateness of this place of worship.

I must say, this is interesting to look at. And I need to do my etymology research, but this idea of things being separated for God's service is captured by the word “sanctified.” I'm not sure what relation this has to holiness, or if “sanctify” is simply a verb that means “to make holy.” They may be the same word in the original, for all I know.

However, this separateness is a significant part of holiness, I think. It is a part of God: that He is utterly untouchable by us. He is far above and separate, and the best way to express this to us humans was to give us the tabernacle, where everything was holy, and to touch something holy meant death.

I think that for our holiness, it means that we should avoid being touched by defiled things (sin). If in this physical expression of His holiness it was wrong that the unholy should touch the holy, then we imitate God's holiness by keeping free of the touch of sin. However, none of us can do this as we ought, so Jesus came and died in our place and forgave us, declared us holy, and now we learn to walk out in actuality our declared position of holiness (our sanctification).

There's a significant thing about holiness to learn from Exodus 40. And for once, I'm excited to get into Leviticus.

Holiness, holiness is what I long for...

September 8, 2009

God's Holiness

In the last few days, there is a topic that has captured my heart and is building in interest and passion: what is holiness? What does it mean? At first, it was just a wondering at what the word “Holiness” means. I mean, it's everywhere: Be thee holy; Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty; Holy to the Lord (hung on a big gold plate on the front of the High Priest's turban); the Holy Bible; holiness, holiness is what I long for; his holiness the Pope; the Holy Roman Empire; etc. It's not just in the Bible; the word has seeped its way into “Christian” cultures, as well. The words holy/holiness appears 654 times in the KJV Bible. That's more times than the word sin/sinned/sinner (588 times). So it must be an important concept.

However, when I think of holiness, I get a vague image of white light combined with incomplete explanations from various sermons and books over the years. For a subject that appears throughout the pages of scripture constantly, we in the modern, Western church do not talk of holiness much.

So, what does it mean?

That's what I started wondering. But I realized that there was a deeper thing to ponder, and that is the essence of holiness. Not only “What does the word 'holy' mean,” but “What is holiness?” I believe these are two different questions. In the Bible, there are some words for holy in Greek and Hebrew, but those are still words in human languages. As I begin to ponder this question, I suddenly find myself wondering: can you even describe holiness in a human tongue? I suddenly find myself believing that human words are things that God has hijacked to give us His revelation in the scripture, but that they are wholly inadequate to even begin to describe this radical quality called holiness. It's like trying to show the full beauty of a sunset in a photograph, or trying to give the impression of the awesome terror of being caught in a thunderstorm through a recording: both are impossible.

So, realizing that deeper than the definition of the Greek and Hebrew words for holiness, there is an underlying reality that cannot be expressed in language, I want to embark on a quest to explore what holiness is. In the last few days, I've begun asking that question, and I've started requesting of God, “Help me to understand what holiness is; what 'holy' means.” “Show me your holiness.” My reasons are many.

First, and foremost, it is a desire to know God deeper. In my understanding of holiness up to this point, influenced greatly from The Knowledge of the Holy, by A.W. Tozer (one of the few books I've read says anything meaningful about the topic), I believe that holiness is the central most defining aspect of God. I base this primarily on Isaiah 6, where God is called, “Holy, holy, holy.” There is no statement like this anywhere else in scripture (the triple holy), which leads me to believe that God's holiness, whatever it is, is what makes Him Him. Without it, more than any other attribute of God, He would not be the God He is. It is, in other words, the primary aspect of God. I see love as lagging just behind holiness, because of statements like I John's “God is Love.”

However, if this is the primary aspect of God, the very core of His essence (so much as his essence is revealed to us), and I do not understand it, then I do not know God very well, and I'm missing out on some of the greatest delights and pleasures and ecstasy of knowing Him. Therefore, I want to understand His holiness that I may know Him more and fall deeper in love with Him.

Understanding God's holiness also gives me another lens through which to understand the Cross. I believe that as I understand holiness deeper, I will come up with an understanding of the Cross that goes something like this: Jesus left the perfect holiness of heaven and came into this defiled world to take our unholiness and sin upon Himself and bury it, so that we could be holy again and know and be with a holy God (because part of holiness is that it must not come into contact with unholy things, lest it be defiled). On the third day, He rose from the dead, taking back His holiness from the clutches of Satan and offering us imputed holiness in Himself.” I believe that will be a powerful thing once I flesh it out a little more.

There are also some very practical reasons for this pursuit. First, is that I think the Japanese have a greater cultural awareness of holiness... sort of. They have an awareness of cleanness and uncleanness and separating things for specific uses. The most obvious example of this is not wearing your shoes in the house: the house is, in a sense, “holy” for this reason. So, though this, I hope to come up with a way to more effectively share the gospel with the Japanese (like the above-mentioned).

In addition, I hope to find a way to better explain to the Japanese, or anyone, who God is. If holiness is His most defining characteristic, and I want to explain to someone who God is, then I must know holiness backwards and forwards, inside and out, so that I can explain it, especially if I'm doing it in freaking Japanese. This is especially true for Japanese people, to whom a proper understanding of God is perhaps the hardest step in understanding Christianity. It's not just that I must know God more, but I want to be able to explain who He is better to others.

That's God's holiness. Thanks to Tozer, I see (though this may change with time), our holiness as being different. When we talk about God as holy, it is the awe-inspiring, majestic, other-worldliness of Him we speak of. When we speak of our holiness, it's often righteous actions we're speaking of. So, I want to understand that holiness, too, that thing I'm pursuing in actions and that I believe is imputed to us at the moment of salvation.

So, there it is. My latest quest. And somehow I'm going to carry it on whilst getting ready to move to Tokyo, take a furlough, and without giving up studying Japanese. Amazing.

And while I'd love to jump out and read a book on the subject by someone who lived at least 300 years ago (as per John Piper's advice), I'm going to refrain from that for the moment. I recently re-started reading the Old Testament, and I'm in Exodus. Wow! I'm reading through a description of the temple, right now. The temple is basically about separating the holy from the unholy, climaxing in the holy of holies, where the Holy God dwells. The fact that I can use the word “holy” so many times in one sentence means that there's a lot about holiness to be understood from Exodus! What a great place to be. So, I'm going to try to search the scriptures myself, for a time.

That being said, something I hope to do soon is to look at the meaning of holiness, the word, in the original Greek and Hebrew languages. If I'm going to grasp its essence, I must first try to figure out what in the world the word that we use to describe it actually means. I'm specifically really interested in the relationship between “holy” and “sanctified.” Do they mean the same thing? Something even close? We shall see, yes indeed.

If you can't tell from this, I'm passionate about this little (maybe big) project. I feel like there is an infinite world of light, pleasure, and resounding glory to be found out there in God's holiness, and up till now, I've barely dabbled my feet in the endless depths of the ocean of who He is. I honestly just want to take a day and fast and pray about this, because I feel like that's about the most exciting thing I could do right now. I really think that this is something big that God is doing in my heart. And that's where it must end up. Understanding His holiness is not just a mental exercise, but one that will pierce to the very deepest parts of my heart with unquenchable light. This is a heart exercise, because that's where the knowledge has to penetrate once I've figured out the facts. This is a truly exciting endeavor.