It's an older book. I can't imagine millennials would go for it, but it was a gift, so we started it and now it's become a staple nightly for dinner devotions. The poems are old--John Milton-level old. When they've been put to music, as many have, the hymns they've become are classics to my generation, or else people who grew up in churches too stubborn to change.
A couple nights ago, we hit this darling oldie.
Take time to be holy,
The world rushes on;
Much time spend in secret
With Jesus alone;
The life of William Dunn Longstaff, who wrote those lines, spanned most of the 19th century. His friends included the Reverend revivalist Dwight L. Moody, who preached to overflow crowds in Longstaff's native England. When Longstaff heard Moody repeat a line from the I Peter: "Be holy because I am holy," he penned the poem that was sometime later set it to music. It's an oldie.
"We are called upon to emulate him in partaking of his divine nature and expressing his holiness (2 Peter 1:3-4)," or so the devotional accompanying the poem directs us. "The first stanza tells some of the things we can do to attain this holiness," it says. "We can spend time with the Lord is prayer, abide in his presence, feed on his word, fellowship with other Christians, and do good to others."
Sounds like "old classic" stuff, right? "Holiness," we read, "means to be completely separate from all that is common." I've heard that for years. So have you.
But there in Honduras, the Association for a Just Society takes some liberties with such groundwork biblical principle, and it does so, in part, because thinkers like Nicholas Wolterstorff make a convincing case that when the Bible uses words like "holiness" and "righteousness," it is just as surely talking about what we think of as justice: "He leadeth me in paths of righteousness," says Psalm 23; but it could just as easily say it this way: "He leadeth me in paths of justice."
And if it did, we'd probably read that famous line differently.
As we would 2 Peter 1:3-4. Instead of "be holy because I am holy," people like Wolterstorff make the claim that we might say: "Be just because I am just," and harvest therefore a decidedly different takeaway, a meaning and intent different from the classic definition -- "Holiness means to be completely separate from all that is common" doesn't work anymore because justice doesn't walk away from all that is "common," it embraces it.
That kind of reading invites--well, directs--believers into areas some good Christians think off-target. Take a societal problem like street crime. A 12-year old girl is raped. She's poor, and she's not been the only victim. Her life is shattered; she threatens to harm herself. No Christian I know would withhold mercy or aid. Anyone I worshiped with last Sunday would do what he or she could to help that little girl. Money?--no problem. "Does she need to move?"--we can help.
But if one of the reasons for that child's continuing suffering rises from police inaction and a dysfunctional court system, then ministries like AJS not only find the victim the kind of counseling she's going to need to deal with what happened, they also go after the police and the courts to determine how it is that helpless victims of street crime don't receive the justice a functioning society should be offering.
Think of it this way: That 12-year old has nothing to eat. We offer her a fishing pole, but the water in the river is rancid. Someone has to investigate why there are no fish. Someone has to do something about it. Someone has to make a claim for justice.
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Next: Some ways in which AJS is working for justice in Honduras.
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