The Idea of the Holy

This is the name of a 1917 book by Rudolf Otto, a famous German Lutheran theologian. I was encouraged to read it in the seminary. I didn’t understand it then, and I’m sure I wouldn’t now. So what I write here in no way reflects Otto’s famous book; I’m simply borrowing the title.

I like the title because I believe “the idea of the holy” summarizes what I believe is a big problem for contemporary Americans, especially the young. For many, the word “holy” is an enigma. It’s not in our vocabulary. We don’t know exactly what it means, and seldom use the word.

It’s one of those churchy words that make little sense to most contemporary people. I often think of this when singing, “Holy, holy, holy…” at Mass. As a believer, I can make the words my own, but are those words, and the whole vocabulary of religion, meaningful to the majority of young (and many older) people today? I don’t think so.

Here is a bunch of other words, common in church circles, that may cause some head scratching among many people: salvation; transcendence; sin; redemption; Eucharist; sacrament; virtue; trinity; bless and blessing; spirit and spirituality; discipleship; soul; the sacred; and the word “church” itself. (I’m not going to mention that puzzling word, “consubstantial,” with which we Catholics are assaulted in the new translation of the creed at Mass.)

The eyes-glaze-over button
When many people, including the young, hear these words, it’s like pushing a button that makes their eyes glaze over. The words are not part of our daily lives. They’re words that the clergy uses. They have nothing to do with me or my life. The vocabulary of religion, I believe, is one of the things that make religion seem irrelevant. And many ask why religious people don’t speak plainly about God and the faith.

Some of these words and phrases are simply from a previous era. They’re verbal antiques. Others are more than that.

Here’s the problem. How do you use everyday language to describe something that is, or someone who is, indescribable? The experience of mystics and religious people through the ages could not be adequately expressed in everyday language. So, words and phrases were invented that the inventors believed better express the experience.

The word “holy,” for instance, has meant for religious people the idea that God eludes comprehension. He/she just doesn’t fit into our rational categories. For most religious people, God is so unlike us (except for Jesus, believed by most Christians to be God and human) and so unlike anything we have experienced, we don’t have an adequate vocabulary to describe him/her. Holy, in whatever language it was first used, was the best they could come up with.

The word may be archaic, but the idea isn’t
The word “holy” may be archaic, but the idea is not. If any of those extraordinary happenings in the Bible are true, all you can say is, “Wow!” And because of what we now know about the inconceivable, expanding universe, the idea of the holy is more meaningful than ever. If there is a God behind creation – and I believe there’s good reason to believe there is – how awesome must he/she be? “Incredible!” And yeh, “Holy!”

For many searchers of God, however, the problem remains. Can you continue searching without adopting all those churchy words? I think so. What if you find God; do you have to adopt the vocabulary? It depends on the form. If you adopt a religion, it’s convenient to adopt the religion’s vocabulary.


Meanwhile, I believe that for the sake of searchers, religious people should back off their heavy dependence on churchy words and phrases. You can convey the idea of the holy without using the word.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Gospel of The Little Prince

Image
  Attention all those concerned only with “matters of great consequence:” Is it possible that you’ve become someone you didn’t want to be, having strayed far from the innocence and simplicity of childhood? That’s the main question asked in The Little Prince, which Netflix, the streaming video service, has added to its repertoire of movies and TV shows. Though not a big fan of animated flicks, I was a big fan of the book, The Little Prince, back in the 1970s when it became extremely popular in the U.S. It was first published in French and English in New York in 1943 as a novella by French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery , who disappeared while piloting a Free French Army plane the following year over the Mediterranean Sea. Nearly Two Million Copies “The novella is the fourth most-translated book in the world and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France,” says Wikipedia. “Translated into more than 250 language...
Read more

‘Spiritual but Not Religious,’ Revisited

Image
Google Image I’ve expressed several times in these blogs my skepticism about declarations by some of our contemporaries that they are “spiritual but not religious.” Much of the skepticism results from the false dichotomy this entails, as if the spiritual and religious are mutually exclusive. Spirituality, after all, is the whole point of being religious. With the exception of some forms of Buddhism, all the major religions aim to bring people closer to God, who is “spiritual.” St. Paul, among the earliest leaders of Christianity, wrote that he is imparting a teaching “not taught by human wisdom but taught by the spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit.” But Daniel Horan, Franciscan priest, theologian and author, wrote in a recent edition of the National Catholic Reporter: “What if our starting point in thinking about what it means to be a person in communion with God, oneself and the world was not reduced to external expressions of institutional belo...
Read more

Clinging to Archie Bunker's God

Image
Google Image Archie Bunker, the character masterfully played by the late Carroll O’Conner in the 1970s TV comedy “All in the Family,” had his own take on the traditional Christian doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible. “God don’t make no mistakes,” declared Archie. “That’s how he got to be God.” For those too young to remember Archie, who in 2005 was listed as number 1 on Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters, Wikipedia says Bunker was characterized by his bigotry towards “… blacks, Hispanics, "Commies," gays, hippies, Jews, Asians, Catholics, "women's libbers," and Polish-Americans….” Bunker was presented as a Christian, however, and “… often misquotes the Bible. He takes pride in being religious, although he rarely attends church services ….” An Anonymous Contributor Sister Mary Matilda, my eighth grade teacher, would accuse me of being uncharitable but I imagine that an anonymous contributor to a recent newspaper column is an “Archie Bunke...
Read more