Holiness

Have you ever thought about the word "holy"? It's used in a lot of different ways. For example "Holy Cow!" Or, "my old jeans have holy (holey) knees." But I don't really care about those particular usages, because they're too silly and pointless even for this blog. I want to focus on a very different usage, which is the way it's used in church.
We say things like "God is holy" all the time. The word is used in tens of thousands of worship songs. But what does it mean to be holy?
There are several simple qualifications. First of all, you have to be sinless to be holy. Anyone who is holy never sins, and never has. Not once. One sin, no matter how small, destroys the holiness in the same way that a brick destroys glass. All you've got left are a bunch of little bits of holiness.
The next qualification is perfection. This one is a lot more harsh, and seems to be mentioned less than holiness. Well, "perfection" is mentioned quite often in relation to God, but no one really seems to expound upon the theme.
Perfection is one of the things that keeps the Bible from being politically correct. In the Old Testament, along with the rest of the Law, God gives instructions on what can and cannot be sacrificed. He basically saws that He will only accept a perfect lamb--meaning that it cannot be blind, deaf, lame, etc.
Any handicap makes a person imperfect, and therefore that person is not holy. If you are reading this and you're blind, deaf or lame, don't quit reading yet. There's yet another qualification.
To be holy, a person must be clean. This excludes a pretty big portion of all the people in the world. I'll just mention a few things about cleanliness. If you want the rest you can read the book of Leviticus.
Anyone with any kind of skin disease is unclean. Sorry, this doesn't just include leprosy. It also applies to simple little things like warts and sores.
Anyone who is sick is unclean.
Anyone who has eaten an unclean animal is unclean.
Anyone who has touched an unclean thing or person.
And so on.
Basically, the point is that holiness is not an easy thing to attain. In fact, it's impossible. But God is holy. God is sinless, perfect and clean. He is absolutely holy.
So, think about holiness for a while, and tomorrow I'll talk about infinity.
Goodbye, valiant reader,
Mitchell the unholy