We tend to think of God’s holiness in a clinical sense, as if his separateness were such that he were completely removed from every sphere of human life. The book of Leviticus reminds us that the Lord of Heaven who is utterly holy is also the creator God who is present within his creation, and more specifically, he is the covenant God who dwells among his people. Indeed, God’s presence permeates every sphere of human life, such that for the people of God, his holiness serves as a constant reminder of his utter beauty and purity.
But a God who is both immanently present, while also being transcendentally holy presents a problem for sinful humanity. Focusing specifically on God’s unique presence in the Tabernacle, Leviticus is written in part to answer the riddle, How does a holy God dwell among a sinful people? In answering that riddle, Leviticus describes not only the sacrificial system that cleanses the people of Israel from their sin, but also the ins and outs of daily life that come to make one unclean. That is why a book about God’s holiness is also about menstrual cycles, emissions, and leprosy. By presenting the stunning beauty of God’s beauty, the book must also present the sometimes crippling ugliness of humanity. When God dwells among his people, the light of his holiness casts all that is unholy in us into the harshest of lights. In that light our ways, manners, and means of being human can appear as nothing less than grotesque.
Any faithful accounting of our true nature must always consider humanity in the light of God’s holiness, otherwise we will begin to believe in our own righteousness simply because we are “better” than some other person. This sort of reasoning is like a beggar with $10 calling himself rich because he knows of another beggar with only $1. Such accounting fails to recognize the possibility of billionaires. There are several ways to reckon ourselves rightly in light of God’s holiness. Sitting under faithful preaching is one of them. Reading the Scriptures is another. Living in Gospel community is still another. And these are potent ways of not only remembering, but of also growing into our own holiness. But I would argue further that certain types of stunningly honest art can be another means by which we rightly reckon our plight. Films, music, novels can all hold a mirror up to us so that we might behold something of our own deformities and point us back to God.
Flannery O’Connor is one such writer. As Frederick Buechner writes of her, ” I suppose it is precisely because she has a mystic’s sense of what holiness truly is that she is able to depict in such a wry and sometimes uproarious way the freakish distortions that it suffers at the hands of a mad world.” In reading her work, with characters like the Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and Hazel Motes in Wise Blood, we become keenly aware not only of their freakish distortions as characters, but also of our own twisted selves. Buechner goes on, “Human life is so grotesquely distorted and distorting that the grace of God is broken to pieces by it like light through a prism and reaches us looking like everything except what it is.” And so it is. Because even the best human can only refract and bend the light of grace, we must always look to God himself to behold the depth of holiness and grace. Indeed, in the person of Jesus Christ, God has fully and finally answered the riddle, How can a holy God dwell with sinful people? Only a brilliantly creative, story-telling God would answer one mystery with another–the incarnation.