The Trauma of Holiness

In a lesson on “holiness”, I read that in the works of nineteenth-century atheists, we find that they were not particularly concerned to prove that God does not exist. These atheists tacitly assumed God’s nonexistence. Instead, they said that after the Age of Enlightenment, now that we know there is no God, how can we account for the almost universal presence of religion? If God doesn’t exist and human religion is not a response to the existence of God, why is it that man seems to be incurably “homo religious” — that man in all of his cultures seems to be incurably religious? If there’s no God, why is there religion?

One of the most popular and famous answers was the argument offered by Sigmund Freud. As a psychiatrist, Freud knew that people are afraid of lots of different things. Such fears are understandable, as there are all kinds of things in our world that represent a clear and present danger to our well-being. You can talk to a human attacker, sign a peace treaty with a foreign power, or otherwise negotiate your safety with people who might threaten you, but how do you bargain with disease, storms, or earthquakes? These forces of nature are impersonal. They don’t have ears to hear. They don’t have hearts to which we can appeal. They have no emotions. So, Freud argued, religion emerged as humans personalized nature and made it something they could negotiate with.

Luke 12:5 “But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him!”

The theological professor is fascinated by Freud’s argument because it’s a reasonable explanation for how people could become religious. It is possible, theoretically, that there could still be religion even if there were no God. We know that we are capable of imagining things that don’t really exist. In fact, the Bible is replete with criticism of false religion that invents idols. Yet there’s a difference between possibility and actuality. That what Freud said is possible doesn’t mean that it actually happened that way. The major hole in his theory is this: If Freud’s theory is true, why, then, was the Almighty God of the Bible “invented”? This holy God, we see in Scripture, inspires far greater trauma in those whom He encounters than any natural disaster. Why, to redeem us from the threat of trauma, would we invent a God whose character is infinitely more threatening than anything else we fear? I can see humanity inventing a benevolent god or even a bad god who is easily appeased. But would we invent a holy God ? Where does that come from? For there is nothing in the universe more terrifying, more threatening to a person’s sense of security and well-being than the holiness of God. What we see throughout the Scriptures is that God rules over all of the threatening forces that we fear. But this same God, in and of Himself, frightens us more than any of these other things. We understand that nothing poses a greater threat to our well-being than the holiness of God. Left to ourselves, none of us would invent the God of the Bible, the being who is a threat to our sense of security more primal and more fundamental than any act of nature.

Matthew 10:28 “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”

The author explains that Martin Luther and the other Reformers understood the holy character of this God. Applied to the Supreme Being, holiness denotes perfect purity or integrity of moral character, one of His essential attributes. We have sinned against a just and holy Creator God. For them, the recovery of the gospel was such good news because they knew the trauma of holiness and that the only way to endure the presence of this holy God’s judgment is to be covered in the holiness and righteousness of Christ. Five hundred years after the Protestant Reformation, the church desperately needs men and women who understand the trauma of God’s holiness, for in understanding that holiness we see that the gospel is the only thing that can give us confidence that when we meet this God face-to-face, His holiness will embrace us and not cast us into eternal judgment. May God in His grace grant to all of us a renewed vision of His majestic holiness.