Christian National Socialist
“Holiness”
Blog #12 by A1488Xian
I have striven to keep my blogs mostly secular or of an interest to an audience which holds any religious view. Without feedback I don’t know if my readers want a heavier religious content or not. Given that the name of the blog is Christian National Socialist I will begin to add more religious content. If you would like a discussion on a particular subject be sure to give feedback.
A topic which is grossly misunderstood for most Christians is the concept of holiness. Many seem to think that being “holy” is some sort of mystical state or pious outward behaviour. It is often wrapped up with non Christian concepts and secular ideas. A bit of clarity can be found if we understand the language in which the Bible was written and its concepts of holy, repentance, and faith.
The word translated as holy in most Bibles is the Greek word hagios. There are different forms of the word used but to keep it simple we’ll just address hagios since the basic understanding of the word applies to all of the variations of it. In the most basic form hagios means “separate” and devoted to the gods. It did not have some mystical otherworldly meaning of piousness or what people think of today.
To understand the concept we have to understand the religious practices of the day. If someone gave an object to the gods it was separated from every day use, it was for one purpose and one purpose only- the use of the temple, the priesthood, or the gods. Think of it like being a person of modest means saving up money to buy a nice suit for church. That suit is set aside or set apart for church and is not used to goto work or to goto dinner. In the Biblical sense that suit is “holy.” In both Old Testament religion and paganism things were set apart that way. We can find precious goods thrown into bogs in Western Europe to attest to that. The Greeks had items donated to the temples for their use to keep them running. The Old Testament had things like the first fruits gifts and the articles used in the priesthood.
In a more spiritual sense we can see God as “holy” because He is separated from this world. He is separated from evil and separated from the corruption of our physical life. As in all cases, holiness is not just separation FROM but also separation TO. God is separated from evil to Himself, good. Likewise His followers are separated from evil unto Him. As the Scriptures say, be holy as God is holy. Literally it is saying to be as separate as God is. In every instance when we see the word “holy” in most Bibles we should read “separate.”
There is no more clear demonstration of this than when Scripture says, come out from among them and be separate. There is so much more in this passage as in Greek it says to cast out of our society the unfit and to mark off our boundaries. It further says to not have sex with mixed mongrels but that is a bit deeper than this blog is intended (in most English Bibles it is translated “touch not the unclean thing.” We know that is not what the passage is about since Christ made it clear that mere touching anything is not what defiles. The Greek word for “touch” is also used to imply sex and “unclean thing” in Greek very clearly indicates a mixed person). God’s continued concern is with purity, the state of being unmixed. This includes physical purity and not mixing the true Faith with lies and evil.
From here we can see more implications of the concept of “separation.” We are to separate from lies and pagan ways. Many miss the point of the Golden Calf during the exodus. It’s not just that Aaron made an idol, he made an idol and called it the same God who they had been following. He did not lead them to worship a new god, he mixed the worship of the True God with the ways of the pagans. That is not “holy,” it is the opposite of separation. As Paul said, what communion does darkness have with light? The two are to be separated. God condemns mixture, whether it is physical or spiritual.
This goes hand in hand with the meanings of “faith” and “repentance.” Faith in Greek is better understood as “persuasion.” The very best Ancient Greek lexicon is the Liddell, Scott, and Jones Greek-English Lexicon. All other Lexicons, such as the one found in the Strong’s Concordance, is based upon the LSJ. The verb form of faith, pisteuo, in the LSJ is defined as “trust, put faith in, rely upon a person, thing, or statement.” It was used to signify entertaining a belief with confidence. It also meant to believe that or feel confident that a thing is or will be or has been. It signified a sure belief. That is quite a bit different than the wish washy meaning behind the modern English word “faith.” The related form of the word, pistis, is defined by LSJ as trust in others, faith, generally persuasion of a thing, confidence. In a subjective sense it meant good faith and trustworthiness. They used the word in a legal sense like we do today of a trustee who holds property in a trust for someone else. It was also used to describe financial credit and assurances and pledges of good faith. Most importantly the word was used as the means of persuasion, argument, proof.
What we see then is that Biblical faith is being persuaded by reason and facts that God is true, that His ways are correct and that faith is relying upon those truths, having confidence in them. There is nothing in the word which indicates that there is such a thing as “blind faith,” it is all based upon being persuaded by argument and proof. There are many applications of this Biblically. The primary one would be by relying upon the truthfulness of God and His Word and relying upon His Word for salvation. This goes hand in hand with repentance.
Repentance in Greek means to change one’s mind or heart, it’s the Greek word metanoia. If we are called to repent and have faith then we are to change our minds from our own opinions and ideas and actions to accept and have confidence in the opinions and ideas and actions of God, to be persuaded from our own self will to God’s will.
We’ll use two examples. For some people their self will is that Oriental women are good looking and that it is acceptable to have sex with them. God, who created sex and race, said it is forbidden to have sex with those of another race and considers it bestiality. One can infer that the Creator would know more about what is right than a person does. It can be inferred that He knows more about the issue than we do. We can also see that if we mix them our race is destroyed. If every White person mixes with an Oriental then there will no longer be any White people. Then there is the issue of eugenics and the physical limitations of the Oriental races. In short you don’t have to just take God’s Word for it blindly, you can be persuaded by the truthfulness of God. This leads to a change of the mind from thinking that race mixing is acceptable to thinking that it is not. That is repentance.
In another example we can see how it is important for salvation. Most people believe that if they do enough “good” that they will be saved from the punishment for the wrong they have done or they compare themselves to someone who is worse than they are- a turd comparing itself to another turd “Yeah, we’ll at least I don’t stink as bad or have corn!” God, however, says that anything “good” you can do is nothing special and should be done anyway. Who shouldn’t save a kid from a burning car? Who shouldn’t cut the grass for the frail widow next door? How is that special? In fact, people will condemn you if you just stand by and watch a kid get burned up. Not only that, but what bank robber gets away with robbing a bank by pointing out all the times he didn’t rob a bank? Man wants to rely upon his own works and goodness for salvation while God sees nothing noteworthy about it. Instead God said that to be saved one must rely upon the works and sacrifice of Jesus, the One who was perfect in every way (The Bible speaks of Christians being “in Christ” which means that God sees the perfection and actual good works of Jesus as ours). If we rely upon Jesus for our salvation then we have changed our minds, or repented, from relying upon our own works and goodness for salvation.
So from this we can see what it means to be “holy.” To be “holy” is to separate from the ways of the world, to reject its reasoning and failed philosophies for God’s. It is to change one’s mind from the world to having reliance upon the truthfulness of God. It has nothing to do with being pious or not cussing (in fact Paul used a literal cuss word in the Bible. In Philippians 3:8 Paul used the word skubala, which literally meant “shit” and was a crass word). The Bible is not concerned with outward trappings.
We shouldn’t allow secular uppity society try to dictate to us what is proper behaviour. “Cuss” words are called “vulgar” and “profanity.” The root meaning of both those words are “common.” That means that a vulgar word is one used by the common man which the upper crust thought was beneath them to use. (In some ways “common” is the opposite of “holy” since holy meant set apart from common use. In this instance it is a secular perversion of God’s meaning behind holy and common). Most of Jesus’ disciples were working class rough around the edges type folk. You would not imagine Peter the guy who fished naked and tried to kill temple servants speaking prim and properly. When have the working man ever spoken that way? Yet Jesus is never recorded of telling His followers to be refined. In fact, He cautioned against calling any man “common.”
There is nothing wrong with behaving in a more polite way or being refined. On the other hand there is nothing at all wrong with being rough around the edges. Both types of people can be equally holy if they have changed their minds from the flawed standards of the world to the Truth of God. We separate ourselves from filth. We keep in mind that evil company corrupts good habits (as Paul said in quoting Meander, a poet of his day). We separate racially and spiritually. Our job is to be separate in our minds and deeds and to separate as many of our people into God as we can.
