If everything is holy, nothing is holy
(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)
One of my Facebook friends recently shared, with approval, Minnesota folk singer Peter Mayer's song "Holy Now." The lyrics are here.
When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now
When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don't happen still
But now I can't keep track
'Cause everything's a miracle
Everything, Everything
Everything's a miracle
Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn't one
When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I'm swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now
Read a questioning child's face
And say it's not a testament
That'd be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it's not a sacrament
I tell you that it can't be done
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now
Compare them with his even more pointedly titled "Church of the Earth" lyrics linked from here.
Here's a little info.:
PETER MAYER is a well-known American singer-songwriter. His song "Holy Now" has become a beloved standard in liberal church contexts and was the title entry of the 2006 Songbook of the Association of Unity Churches. Peter's "Blue Boat Home" gained a place in the supplementary hymnal of the Unitarian Universalist Association.In 2006 Peter began collaborating with photographer/videographer Connie Barlow to render the particular songs that highlight evolutionary and ecological themes into captioned video formats ideal for contemplative viewing or sing-along in churches and spiritual centers.
I trust that is clear enough, if you didn't get it from the song lyrics themselves. (Interesting terminological note: Evidently some liberals use "liberal" as a term of approval among themselves.) If you are curious, earth worship features prominently in the above-mentioned universalist "hymn," "Blue Boat Home." Lyrics linked from here.
Why do otherwise sensible and orthodox Christian people occasionally fall for this kind of "everything is a miracle, everything is holy, nothing is any more special than anything else" universalist shtick? What is it about a kind of spiritual egalitarianism of things and events that is so attractive that blatant, in-your-face pantheism and anti-Christianity goes unnoticed in the same lyric? (Gotta love the reference to orthodox Christianity as "heaven's second-rate hand-me-down.")
It's only fair to admit that Mayer is a talented lyricist, so there's that. I think, too, that many Christians are looking for profundity and mysticism, and saying that "everything is holy" seems to answer that need. And saying that a little red-winged bird shines like a burning bush could be taken in isolation to mean that the creation manifests God's glory.
The problem is just that the sweeping, profound-sounding statement is false. Everything is not holy. A Black Mass is not holy. A demon is not holy. Methamphetamine is not holy. An instrument of torture is not holy. A murder is not holy. There is good and bad and right and wrong. Some acts are holy and some are evil. Some symbols stand for good and beautiful things while others stand for evil things. Some objects or substances have no function or point but the bad function for which they were deliberately made.
We can even take it up a notch by moving away from acts and symbols of evil to things that are neutral in themselves. If you insist on saying that every bit of dirt is holy, you should at least have the theological capacity to say that a bit of dirt is not holy in the same sense that the Blessed Sacrament is holy. The dirt is also not holy in the same sense that a saintly human being is holy. And the saintly ordinary human being, not being God Incarnate, is not holy in precisely the same sense, or at least not to the same degree, that Jesus Christ is holy. Even Christian mysticism must be held together and made coherent by hierarchical structure.
Furthermore, if there is not God, who is absolutely holy, and who is strongly Other than and separate from His Creation, then nothing can be holy at all. A radical anti-egalitarianism, a radical separation between Creator and creature, is a necessary condition for the possibility of meaningful holiness. The "holiness" of pantheism is merely everything-ness. It's a faux holiness that actually turns all theological categories into a giant egalitarian mush. Mayer, being an artist, can dress it up pretty nicely, but he can't make it other than what it is. God's presence can infuse glory into the smallest grain of sand only if God is God, if God is a real, personal Being (not "the All" or the Force), and only if the sand is part of God's creation. The omnipresence of the Judeo-Christian God is sharply different from the pantheist universalism of Peter Mayer's lyrics. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the two concepts are opposed to each other.
Now, about miracles: However sweet it may sound to say that everything that happens is a miracle, that is also false. And again, as with holiness, so here: If everything is a miracle, nothing is a miracle. The concept of a miracle is meaningful only if there is a contrast class of events that form the natural order, i.e., not miracles. (See also the discussion in this comment.) Every drop of rain that falls is not a miracle. Every flower that grows is not a miracle. Though it is true that we wouldn't have drops of rain if God had not made the heavens and the earth and all that is in the beginning by the Word of His power, and though we wouldn't have flowers if God hadn't made the first flowers, the growth of the flower now and the fall of the raindrop now are not miracles now. When Jesus rose from the dead, that was a miracle. When Peter was released by an angel from prison (today's Scripture reading for the Feast of St. Peter), that was a miracle. When Christians were martyred and their bodies decomposed and formed soil for the crops to grow, that was not a miracle.
Sometimes the only way to guard true mysticism and profundity is to seem to run in the opposite direction. I make no claim to be a mystic; far from it. But it seems to me evident that somewhere along the road to a true understanding of God, even by that way of darkness, lies clarity, not vagueness and muddle.
There are crossroads that come up in our thinking about God, and woe betide us if we take the wrong turn. If we are to honor God with our minds, we should see always at those crucial places where the ways part between truth and error an angel with a burning sword held aloft. And from his lips there comes a cry:
"Distinguo!"
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