544 Christianity Has No Holy Places Published in Plain Truth Magazine (See ptm.org)
The objective was to liberate our holy place – a tree house which had been overrun by two rival families in our secluded north Idaho village. The tree house didn’t technically belong to anyone because it was on Forest Service land; however, for the past year my four siblings and I had repaired it, placed our name plate over the doorway and stocked it with sacred items such as a deck of cards, eating utensils, a tiny stove, a few cans of soup and some battered Hardy Boys paperbacks.
Though I was merely a scrappy six year old with a butch hair cut, I was handy in battle because I was amazingly accurate with my homemade sling-shot.
After our initial surge the holy war quickly bogged down. For half an hour we fired stones, pinecones and stick spears harmlessly against the outer walls of the tree house while our enemy rained mocking taunts down upon us. But then Jeff Perish made a critical mistake; he poked his head out the doorway of the tree house requesting a short truce to go to the bathroom. Mercilessly, I quickly launched a stone from my slingshot directly into Jeff’s forehead. Blood and tears immediately began to cover his face and a hanky of surrender was soon displayed. The holy war was over and once again we had possession of our sacred place.
You might think it irreverent to call that tree house in a remote Idaho forest a holy place; I would have agreed before writing this column. However, have you thought at length about what makes a place holy or what a holy place really is?
My research couldn’t locate a standardized meaning of holy place any place. The best definition I found was “a sacred place of pilgrimage” (www.thefreedictionary.com). Not exactly specific.
Though a definition might be hard to find, holy places certainly aren’t; they’re everywhere. Religions tend to declare many of their landmarks and buildings to be holy. Judaism has several in addition to Jerusalem such as Hebron where Abraham was buried and Mt. Sinai where Moses got the 10 Commandments. Some of Islam’s holy places include where Mohammad was born, where he ascended into heaven in order to receive God’s commandments and other cool places like that. Buddhism has the place where Buddha was born, where he delivered his first sermon and where he was cremated. Hindus have The Ganges, Mormons have their temples, etc., etc.
Christians are no exception. In addition to Judaism’s holy places Christian pilgrims add several more stops to Holy Land bus tours such as Bethlehem where Jesus was born and The Mount of Olives where he ascended into heaven. Then there are specific holy places for most Christian sub-movements such as the Vatican for Catholics and Istanbul (Constantinople) for the Eastern Orthodox.
But if we take the broad “sacred place of pilgrimage” definition seriously, the list of holy places really goes ballistic! There’s Canton, OH for football fans, Daytona for NASCAR fanatics, Graceland for Elvis lovers, Mt. Everest for mountaineers, the Roman Coliseum for historians, the Louvre Museum for artists, Roswell, NM for UFO’ers and a tree house in north Idaho for Glen Moyer.
Which of these holy places are truly holy and which are not? Many Christians would say that only their holy places are indeed holy. From their perspective other religions’ “holy places” may be meaningful to their followers but in reality they aren’t holy because other religions aren’t true. Obviously, other religions think only their holy places are truly holy.
It would be nice if this tit-for-tat posturing over holy places remained benign; however, over the course of human history untold millions have been killed and countless more displaced and abused as a result of holy wars over holy places. Once a piece of land or real estate becomes holy to a group or religion its followers will do just about anything to protect and preserve it as their own. These bloodied pages of history have to be some of the most tragic and ironic ever written; people dying because of holiness.
But aren’t places holy only when specific people or religions declare them to be so? Without such a declaration wouldn’t a holy place simply be a place? That’s not to say that such places can’t be sacred or special, but holy? Let’s consider the Big Hole Battlefield located just south of where I live.
In 1877 roughly 100 Nez Perce men, women and children along with 28 men from the U.S. Calvary died at the Big Hole Battlefield in a heartbreaking and completely unnecessary battle. I am always silenced as I walk across this sacred site. However, someone who had no knowledge of what occurred there would think the same walk was just a beautiful nature hike. The soil itself isn’t inherently or obviously sacred; what happened there, or more precisely the knowledge of what happened there, leads others to declare that it is sacred …holy.
Another example is the Mormon temples I have visited. While these facilities are holy to Mormons they are just cool buildings to me. In the same way, I doubt that a Buddhist will experience anything deeply spiritual in the Vatican. If a place truly is holy, shouldn’t it be holy for everyone? Yet, holy places are only holy for those who think they are holy.
Our tree house may not compare with Mecca or Jerusalem in size and scope but basically there isn’t any difference between them. Frankly, of the many holy places I have visited in my life, the one that impacts me the most is that tree house …even though decades of time have left it old and dilapidated.
Here’s an even crazier discovery for me, Christianity doesn’t have, and never has had, holy places. Despite all those Holy Land tour bus stops, the truth is no one knows exactly where Jesus was born; we just know it was near Bethlehem. Neither does anyone know exactly where Jesus ascended, where he performed his first miracle, where he preached any of his sermons or where he was crucified. We don’t even know where he was buried, although that’s understandable since he was only there for three days. With no real site there is no real holy place.
What’s more, Jesus foretold at length the complete destruction of the one holy place that Christians (and Jews) could have legitimately claimed – the Holy Place in Herod’s Temple. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down” (Matthew 2:2, see all of Matthew 24 and 25). As we all know, Jesus’ prophecy was fulfilled by the total destruction of Herod’s Temple, including the Holy Place, when the Roman Army conquered Jerusalem in 70AD.
Why didn’t Jesus leave us with even just one specific landmark that we could make into a holy place? Didn’t he know that with no holy places Christians could end up being the laughing stock of world religions? Its embarrassing. Perhaps that’s why Christians have tried to hard to manufacture holy places on our own. I’m as guilty of this as anyone.
I’ve stood in front of congregations with hands raised fighting back tears of emotion as we sang worship songs like the popular “Holy Ground.” Its lyrics say: “This is Holy Ground, we’re standing on Holy Ground; for the Lord is present and where He is, is Holy.” I’d often follow up such songs with a prayer asking God to come and make our place of worship holy ground. My assumption was that our songs and prayers would mystically transform our gathering and building into a holy place.
I didn’t think about the theological implications of what I was saying. Like why it takes all this effort to attract the presence of a God who is inherently omnipresent? Or why would God’s presence at our church make it a holy place any more than his presence at the churches down the street, or at a hockey game or with the homeless folks down by the river?
Christians have countless buildings around the globe but they are ordinary structures erected upon tracts of land that have absolutely no innate holiness. Yes, God is present with at a Christian worship service but no more than with the folks talking over coffee at Starbucks or the single mother who stays home Sunday mornings because it is the only time she has to sleep-in and rest.
Why would God go to great lengths to insure that there are no holy places for Christians (or any other religion for that matter)? I believe he did it because he didn’t send Jesus to this third rock from the sun to establish yet another religion – he sent him here to establish relationships.
Religions are characterized by holy sites, holy monuments, holy shrines and holy priests who serve at all those holy places. Relationships are characterized by love, trust, faith and hope. These commodities, though valuable beyond material wealth, cannot be fashioned into structures by human hands. They are not visible, so it is impossible to reduce them to a landmark or holy place.
Make no mistake, the historical and archeological evidence for Jesus and Christianity is substantial. However, the real landmarks of Christianity are neither physical nor geographical. No, they are living, breathing landmarks. They are the Christians themselves. This is why the Bible says, “You realize don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? …God’s temple is sacred – and you, remember, are the temple” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
How I wish Christians could have understood this theology of holy places before we marched in all those bloody Crusades or extracted enormous amounts of human wealth and life from ill-informed followers of Christ so as to erect and defend places which never were, and never could be, holy.
Even now, as Christianity is in the throws of a massive shift from what was to what will be, I pray that we finally acknowledge that are no holy places in our faith. The only temples in Christianity are living temples; people …people who are in relationship with God. For Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship and there are no holy places; only people who have been made holy by the grace of God.
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