🌄 Curious Pilgrim — Part 2 – The Curious Pilgrim

God Is Love: A Different Starting Point

A Reflection on Holiness, Love, and the God I Was Taught

The God I Was Taught

In Systematic Theology and Bible Ethics at Free Will Baptist Bible College, I was taught about the attributes of God.

God is:

all-knowing
all-powerful
present everywhere
unchanging
eternal

And beyond those:

loving
just
sovereign
and holy

But among all these attributes, one stood above the rest:

God is holy.

Holiness was defined as:

set apart
pure
without sin
morally perfect

And from that foundation, everything else seemed to follow.

The Standard We Could Not Reach

We were taught from Scripture:

“Be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:16)

The implication was clear:

We were to become like God—
to the point of being without sin and morally perfect.

But in Romans, we were also taught:

“All have sinned and fall short…”
“There is none righteous…”

And so another message emerged:

We cannot meet the standard.

The Gospel I Preached

The solution we were given was this:

Humanity is sinful
The penalty is death
Jesus died to pay that penalty
If we believe, we receive eternal life

Looking back, I sometimes feel that as a pastor I became something like:

an insurance salesman

Offering:

heaven as the reward
hell as the consequence

All based on a system built from one central idea:

God is holy above all else.

When Holiness Becomes Fear

This way of thinking shaped how we interpreted the world.

After disasters like Hurricane Katrina, I heard preachers say:

this was God’s judgment
punishment for sin

In personal tragedy, I experienced it even more deeply.

After a stillbirth my wife and I endured, someone asked:

“What sin did you commit to cause this?”

That question has never left me.

The Weight of Perfection

This emphasis on holiness led to teachings like:

entire sanctification
the possibility of sinless living

It also led to strict rules—rules I experienced firsthand in Bible college—
rules that often produced the very behavior they were meant to prevent.

And alongside that came another belief:

that salvation, once received, secured eternity
that God’s plan determined who would be saved

Division in the Name of Purity

This focus also shaped how we saw truth.

Some believed:

the Bible alone was the only authority
even that one translation held ultimate purity

This contributed to division:

Catholics
Protestants
Baptists
Methodists
Presbyterians

Groups not unlike those in Jesus’ day:

Pharisees
Sadducees
Essenes

All seeking to preserve what they believed was right.

I remember one student asking a professor:

“Why are there so many denominations?”

The answer was:

“To keep the Word of God pure.”

The Tension I Could Not Resolve

All my life, I have wrestled with this:

the God who is holy
and the God who is love

I struggled with:

the image of an angry God
alongside the message of grace

I struggled when I heard:

“God hates…”

Especially when it was directed at people like me.

A Different Voice in Scripture

Then I read:

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, and self-control. (Galatians 5)

And I began to wonder:

Where does it say the Spirit produces holiness?

And then:

“God is love.” (1 John)

And another question began to grow in me:

What if love—not holiness—is the starting point?

Rethinking Holiness Through Love

I am not rejecting holiness.

But I am beginning to see it differently.

Maybe holiness is not:

distance
separation
perfection we must achieve

Maybe it is:

love in its purest form

Love that is:

whole
undivided
fully alive

The Curious Pilgrim’s Reflection

I still wrestle.

I still hold questions.

But I am learning this:

I cannot believe in a God who is love…
and then interpret everything through fear.

So I am starting here:

God is love.

And from there, I am learning—slowly, imperfectly—

what holiness might truly mean.

🌿 Closing Line

Maybe the journey of faith is not about becoming perfect…

but about becoming people who know how to love.