Is holy living for losers? Is the Christian life for dorks who can’t do any better anyhow, bless their poor little hearts? A popular stereotype in some quarters is that sinful living is a whole lot more fun than holy living. The image portrayed is that of the godly gingerly tiptoeing through a minefield of “thou shalt nots” while sinners carelessly romp through wide open fields. Billy Joel’s old hit, “Only The Good Die Young,” trades on this opinion:
“They say there’s a heaven for those who will wait
Some say it’s better but I say it ain’t
I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints
The sinners are much more fun”
So pervasive is this sentiment that I’ve occasionally heard young believers say, “I’m not ready to be baptized just yet; I have some things I don’t want to give up right now.” As if baptism is somehow the negation of the good things in life! This view, I believe, has completely missed the power and beauty of life in Christ. And it’s possible that we Christians haven’t done a very good job in modeling the abundant life.
But the truth is, Christians I know don’t follow Jesus because they’re ignorant of other life choices. They don’t follow Jesus because they’re pathetic losers with no other options. They don’t follow Jesus because they haven’t tasted the “good life.”
The Christians I know who are living abundantly are doing so because nothing else the world has to offer compares. Because they’ve pursued the glittering promises of sin and sin left them bruised, broken, and empty. Because holy living is far more satisfying, delightful, and meaningful over the long haul. Because they have yet to find a philosopher, poet, politician, or pundit who’s smarter than Jesus or has better life wisdom to offer.
Holy living, then, turns out to be what leads us into the fullest and richest experiences in life while sin, which acts like an insidious cancer, slowly destroys us from within. Augustine, and later Aquinas, reflected that holiness is simply the expression of love rightly ordered. Christopher Webb, the former president of Renovare USA, sums it up this way:
“This is the holiness to which we are called: a purity, certainly, but not a purity which stands aloof from a filthy and corrupted world, looking down with sanctimonious pity or judgmental horror on those still mired in vice. This is a purity of heart; a heart healed from the dreadful inward turn that maims its capacity to love well, a heart liberated from self-obsession, a heart enabled to do one thing only, and that thing well—to love.”
May God bless us as we pursue holy and humble lives.
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