Is our god relevant? (Hint: the small "g" is intentional.)

Over on my blog, several recent posts and comments have wrestled with the same question in different ways: what is wrong with the church? There is no single right answer to this question, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that we no longer live in the light of grace, because we have no idea what "grace" really is. By the way, lest you find me self-righteous, I do not absolve myself in this indictment.

The brutal fact is that we cannot truly grasp the amazingness of grace unless we understand the enormity and very wretchedness of our sin. This intense sin awareness also lies beyond our comprehension, however, for as long as we live and tolerate a massive underappreciation for God's holiness.

Consider Isaiah, who had every human reason to consider his understanding of God's true nature to be quite adequate. After all, he was Israel's foremost prophet--a card-carrying holy man on a godly mission. Yet, this "holy" man's response to an encounter with the "Holy Holy Holy" One seated on His throne (Isaiah 6:1-8) was supremely jarring:

"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."

Isaiah's encounter with God began with a terrifying realization: God is holy, and he was filthy. In short, he was doomed. No other outcome but instant and consuming firey judgment was imaginable when his sin came up before the unfiltered holiness of God.

Isaiah was therefore amazed when God did not mete out His justice, but rather forgave him.  His response to this was unqualified, total obedience born of fear, awe and joy: Here am I, send me!

Scripture demonstrates repeatedly that this is the way it must be--true obedience is born of a sincere experience of God's amazing grace. Yet such grace is bereft of its true amazingness absent a genuine recognition of the enormous stinking corpse that is our sin.  Even so, this idea of "sin" is just an abstract notion outside the bright white holiness--the majesty and purity--of God. 

Yet it is this sense of God's true holiness that has slipped from our collective consciousness.  Indeed, I fear this is not the God we carry to the nations or our neighbors. It is not the God we preach from our pulpits or whose songs we sing. Dare I say it is not the God most of us carry in our hearts most of the time?

In many ways, we worship a different god--one crafted after our own collective image--who inspires no fear, no trembing, no awe. The spirit of our age, the god of our choosing--well, he's nice and all, in a Mother Theresa sort of way, only a little better. Really, we're glad he's around and grateful for his kindness. We have a vague appreciation for his overlooking our "mistakes", but we feel little obligation to break out of our comfortable apathy on his account.  Here am I, don't bother me.

Isaiah teaches us that obedience springs from an authentic experience of God's amazing grace; that grace is truly meaningful when we truly recognize the wretchedness of our sin; and that our sin only becomes truly evident when illuminated by the scorching white light of God's holiness.  

If we are not relevant in the world, is it primarily because we don't understand our culture, or is it because we don't truly understand God?  Is it primarily because we don't connect with the lost, or because we don't connect with our Holy Holy Holy Lord Almighty?