Take Time to Be Holy?

Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord;


Abide in Him always, and feed on His Word.


Make friends of God’s children, help those who are weak,


Forgetting in nothing His blessing to seek.

~William Dunn Longstreet

It's time to revisit  my short-lived yet popular (with at least two or three people) series: "Not So Great Hymns of the Faith," in which I question how it is that Reformed people are able to suspend everything they've ever learned in catechism classes and heard in sermons about their confessions to sing silly hymns with bad theology and cloying tunes that date from the late 1800s. If you want to review the previous posts in the series, you can find them here.

I was recently struck by the silliness of the above hymn when we sang it during song service at our church. (Song service is a somewhat strange tradition to me since I didn't grow up Reformed. No one quite knows its purpose. In our area United Reformed churches, song service occurs for about ten minutes before the actual service begins, and the congregation sings songs from a songbook other than the Psalter Hymnal that we use for worship. It's kind of a hymn free-for-all.) I've probably sung this hymn hundreds of times in the past, but this time I realized how bizarre it actually is. Take time to be holy? I visualized my Google calendar, trying to find an hour here or there between dentist appointments, haircuts, meetings at work, and Bible studies to squeeze in some  holiness.

Of course holiness is to characterize our entire Christian walk--it's not something we take time to do as if there were starts and stops. Calvin says, "Of the many excellent recommendations, is there any better than the key principle: Be thou holy, for I am holy?" He reminds us that holiness means full obedience to Christ, and our holiness should lead us to "exhibit the character of Christ in our lives, for what can be more effective than this one stirring consideration?" Holiness, then, is not something to make time for; it is what we are to exhibit every waking moment of our lives.

While the hymnwriter encourages us to engage in the activities of someone who wants to live a life of holiness, it feels like he may have missed this point about holiness that Calvin makes: "Holiness is not a merit by which we can obtain communion with God, but a gift of Christ, which enables us to cling to him, and to follow him."

With its focus on our activities rather than God's greatness, this messy hymn has strange lyrics that definitely place it in the category of a not so great hymn of the faith. And if you want to read something really good on the theological ideas that have shaped so many of the not-so-great hymns of the faith, read Michael Horton's article in this month's Outlook.