A Metaphor for Holiness

I’m going to make a metaphor to try to help understand why holiness should not be the goal of the Christian life. In the metaphor, I’m going to liken being slender to holiness, and being overweight to being unholy.

Hear me out

This is only a metaphor mind you, and I realize this is a doubly sensitive subject: first because of the holiness issue and second because of the weight issue. Personal holiness, which is the idea of a person controlling themselves so as not to sin or sin as little as possible, is sensitive because many Christians either think that it should be the primary goal of their life or that if someone suggests that it should not be the primary goal, then it is suggesting that sin doesn’t matter and everyone should go out and sin as much as they can. People’s weight is sensitive because who likes talking about it? I personally have struggled with my weight since I was 10 and I’m presently 30 lbs over my ideal weight. I know what it’s like to have convictions about getting on a diet only to be overcome by what can only be described as addictive thoughts to eat fatty and sugar-laden foods. I also know what it’s like to be ridiculed for being overweight.

What would the world look like?

If you’re one of those lucky people who can eat anything, not exercise and still stay thin, first of all, I hate you (that’s a joke), and second of all, you’d be very lucky indeed. Really try to imagine what it would be like if this were the one and only aspect to holiness:

• It be easy-street for people who don’t struggle with their weight. They’d have no problems of insecurity with God.
• Slender preachers (likely all preachers would be thin in this scenario), could give harsh sermons on the “demons of fast food”, and could point their finger and glare at chubby parishioners.
• There would be few morbidly obese people at church as there would simply be too much condemnation. They would be like the drug addicts and prostitutes of our day.
• People who struggle with their weight, who are, say 5% to 20% overweight would dread going to church. They would feel extremely guilty whenever they gave into their cravings.
• Thin folks would disciple others who are slender but are gaining some weight.
• Practical admonishments would be given at church and at seminars telling people to drive around fast food restaurants and skip over food-oriented commercials and channels on TV (like a man might do nowadays with Victoria’s Secret commercials).
• Non-Christians who don’t struggle with their weight would have an appearance of holiness on the outside, and would be like the “good people” of today who are philanthropic or volunteer their time for the needy yet don’t believe in God.

Hopefully you’re in the right mindset now, conceptualizing what the Christian life might be like if this metaphor were true.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Self Sufficiency

The Garden of Eden scene would actually look quite similar. In this case the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would be something like the Tree of the Knowledge of Self Sufficiency. If you’ve read my article on The Symbolism of the Withered Fig Tree, you know that this is really what the real tree in the Bible represented. In the metaphor, Adam and Eve could have stayed in the garden relying on God to feed them and relating to Him through the Holy Spirit, but Satan convinced them that God was holding out on them by not revealing how to grow their own food and be self sufficient. So they ate from the tree and gained this knowledge. But God did not create them to be able to fully comprehend this knowledge. They were able to provide for themselves, but only through hard work and their produce did not have the perfect nutritional qualities that the food in the Garden had. Therefore Adam and Eve and all humanity after them would struggle to sustain their weight and nutritional health.

The Laws of Slenderness

To prove conclusively to mankind that they had made the wrong decision in the Garden, God hand-picked Abraham because he had the strongest faith and greatest obedience of all men. He created a nation from Abraham for the purpose of giving them the Law.

The laws in this metaphor would be just like the Old Covenant with its many laws which seek to codify holiness, only in this case holiness would codify thinness and healthiness.

For instance, the more overweight one is, the more unholy their lifestyle (presumably). Naturally if this metaphor were reality, God would not want people to be too thin, so let’s make a law that a male’s body fat percent must be between 6 and 13 percent and female’s must be between 14 and 20 percent. Let’s also make a law that children aren’t judged until their Bar or Bat Mitzvah at 15, and that the allowable percentages would increase with age.

Naturally there would have to be a way of measuring one’s body fat. Just as the book of Leviticus gives laws for the priests how to determine if a person has leprosy or if a house needs to be condemned because of mold, so the priests would have instructions on how measure a person’s body fat percentage. Perhaps there would be laws saying they should pinch a person’s front thigh, waistline, and back upper arm. Then maybe there would be a table that converts those measurements to body fat percentage.

Just like a law-breaking person would have to live outside the city for a period or be excommunicated altogether from God’s people, so there would be laws indicating what should happen to lawbreakers people who are gaining too much weight.

The Gospel

What would the Gospel be in this world? We know the actual Biblical Gospel of Jesus, right? For most Christians, the Gospel could be summarized as: the sins of those who believe Jesus was the Messiah can be forgiven by the blood that He shed on the cross.

But for people whose sins have been forgiven, the church and its members often spend enormous amounts of time and energy continuing to overcome it. As I mentioned in the introduction, for some churches, the elimination of sin from its members’ lives is its primary purpose. If not primary, it’s usually a very high priority. Why? Perhaps it’s the idea that sin, regardless of whether it is forgiven or not, separates us from God; therefore to get closer to God, one must continue to eliminate all sin from their life. Perhaps it’s because if one does not continue eliminate sin from their life, it could jeopardize their continued salvation. Perhaps it’s because God gives up on someone if they sin too much or give up trying to repent, or that people themselves will lose faith and eventually walk away from God on their own. In any event, it seems logical that even though Christians’ sins are forgiven, they should not go out of their way to keep on sinning, for sin certainly has its own natural consequences.

So in the metaphor, would the emphasis for church goers be on becoming and staying slender? Would there be an abundance of Jenny-Craig-like accountability groups? Would disciples feel an overwhelming pressure to stay fit, and after decades of weight control feel further from God than when the started?  Yes.

How can I be so confident? Because that’s exactly what most churches do presently. The very thing from which we were freed, we continue to put all of efforts towards eradicating. If we were suddenly freed from the burden of having to be slender, would everyone immediately go out and get fat? No, because it’s good to be healthy. Some may gain some weight, and some who have metabolic issues who have been starving themselves for years, will probably gain some weight—but the difference is losing weight would become like it is now versus having the added pressure of it affecting their standing with the creator of the universe. Everyone still knows that being slender is more healthy—they don’t need to be reminded of it every Sunday.

The key difference is in how someone relates to God. In the metaphor, God related to mankind in the Old Covenant through their slenderness because they chose to relate to God in that way due to their choice in the Garden. How were they meant to relate to God? I didn’t specify a parallel, so let’s just say it’s through the Holy Spirit as I believe it is in reality. We weren’t meant to have our relationship with God through obedience to laws—we were meant to do it through part of God in us. This makes sense—God in us allows us to feel His presence and speak His language so-to-speak. How is obedience to something supposed help us relate to God? He’s perfect at it, we’re terrible at it, and it doesn’t involve God relating to us (at least not directly).

It may seem unusual for me to have chosen the human struggle with weight for this, but I could have chosen any thing that we struggle with. I chose weight because it’s a real struggle for many of us in America and in other first-world countries. I also chose it because of its inherent unfairness—people’s genes and upbringing have a large affect on their body’s metabolism.

This was also true for the real Old Covenant Laws. Take for instance sexual sin: from a genetic standpoint, males struggle with this far more than females. And one’s upbringing also has a huge affect on sexual sin. People who are abused in their childhood or exposed to pornography have a much higher incidence of sexual disorders. The law is black and white, however, and things like genetics and upbringing are not taken into account whatsoever.

This is why Jesus’ sacrifice and accomplishment are so remarkable. He undid the mistake made in the Garden and made it possible for people to be reunited with the Holy Spirit. This is how we are intended to relate to God. This is what

The Real Gospel

Whether it’s the Old Covenant, weight loss and health, or some other church-defined rules, you don’t want to get caught relating to God through your ability to adhere to a checklist or rules and laws. Instead the Gospel is all about the restoration of the Holy Spirit in us. Again, this is only possible to Christ’s fulfillment of the Law, death and resurrection, which is is why Jesus said in John 14:6:

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

And in verses 15-17:

“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.

To reiterate this doesn’t mean we all throw caution to the wind and increase our sin or not treat sin seriously. It simply means we listen to God’s message in the Gospel and make our primary focus our relationship with him through the Holy Spirit.  In my experience, taking sin on directly fails, often making things worse. Even if it succeeds it is either temporary or some sort of heartless, robotic habit change.  When I became a Christian, overnight some things I’d struggled with for years disappeared, yet other things remained.  I wondered what God was up to, but now I understand:  We no longer relate to God through holiness and obedience, but through grace and the Spirit.  My aim now as a disciple is to understand and explore just what that means and entails.