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The Adventure of
Relational Holiness

By Thomas Jay Oord and Michael Lodahl

Christians embrace diverse descriptions of holiness. This diversity arises in part from diverse descriptions of holiness found in Scripture. In Relational Holiness: Responding to the Call of Love, we suggest that love is the core notion uniting these diverse understandings.

Perhaps the best historical link to relational holiness is a doctrine found in the theological tradition that sustains holiness theology: Wesleyanism. According to this doctrine, God “walks ahead of us,” enabling us to choose salvation freely. The technical label for this doctrine is “prevenient grace.” God’s prevenient grace sets the context for our responses, because God acts first to offer us abundant life.

In terms of relational holiness, God relates to us by acting first in every moment to provide opportunities for action. Those opportunities arise out of God’s own actions, the actions of others, and our own previous actions. The relations we have with God and others set the context for our lives.

God’s moment-by-moment calls require our response. God calls us to love according to the multi-layered relations in which we live. Among all possible actions, God encourages us to choose that which promotes well-being.

When we choose the best to which God calls in any particular moment, we act in holiness. In that moment, we are “perfect as [our] Father in heaven is perfect.” In that moment, we love.
Relational holiness entails our responding appropriately to God’s call to love in a particular way, at a particular time, and in a particular situation. In most moments, the opportunities for love will be fairly mundane. But in others, God offers the chance to love in ways that radically affect our world.

We might think of the ongoing life of relational holiness as an adventure. Let’s call it the Adventure Model of holiness. According to the Adventure Model, each traveler sets out on an open-ended and largely unplanned adventure. The journey will inevitably include challenges, but the traveler will also encounter opportunities for great joy.

An ever-present and constantly communicating Guide calls out to the adventurer each step of the way. Prior to each step, the Guide presents the adventurer with a number of options. Without the Guide’s initiating prompting, the adventurer would be lost.

Some options the Guide presents, if chosen, produce happiness and wholeness. Other options, if chosen, lead to unjustified suffering and evil. The negative actions of others produce these negative options to our adventurer. The Guide can be trusted to show the adventurer the best paths to take.

The Guide encourages the adventurer to take the step that causes happiness and wholeness. In other words, the Guide calls travelers to love. The Guide walks alongside each adventurer and acts first to encourage travelers to choose what is loving. The Guide awaits the adventurer’s free response to the options at hand.

Occasionally, the adventurer “hears” the Guide’s tutoring rather clearly. Most of the time, the adventurer hears only a still, small Voice. Whether the Guide’s instruction seems clear or faint, the adventurer is responsible to respond appropriately.

Although the adventurer has the help of a Guide, other help is also available on this journey. No adventurer walks alone. Other adventurers form a community of fellow travelers. In fact, we might call these travelers “adventurers-in-community.”

Supportive adventurers help one another, while drawing upon the collected wisdom of those who have earlier walked similar paths. This is social holiness.

Along the way, our adventurers-in-community discover that various habits, resources, and customs make the journey better for everyone. The Guide often uses these habits, resources, and customs to encourage these wayfarers. In fact, our adventurers typically come to rely upon these helpful means so much that they cannot imagine how to navigate successfully without them.

This adventure in which the Guide calls and the travelers respond continues on. Someday, the terrain will be different, because obstacles that lead the travelers astray will no longer exist. While the thought of that day brings comfort, the greatest comfort comes in knowing that the Guide walks beside and makes the first move to inspire each step. Adventurers can live with meaning and zest knowing that appropriate responses make the journey better for everyone.

The Adventure Model of holiness differs significantly from what might be called the Slide Scenario of holiness. The Slide Scenario involves a never-ending cycle of climbing only to slip back.

In the Slide Scenario, the climber slowly ascends the face of the slide rather than scaling the stairs. This rise up the slide’s face is possible only as the climber follows various rules, avoids wrongdoing, and remains obedient. The longer one avoids sin, the higher one climbs.

Almost inevitably, however, the climber loses footing. Temptation prevails and sin is committed. A misstep erases all the progress that had been made. The climber slips and slides back to the bottom.

The fall plunges the climber to the playground sand. And no one knows if the courage to climb again will return. Like the mythical Sisyphus, who is cursed to push a rock up a mountain only to have it roll back down, the process of climbing and falling continues endlessly. It’s a game of Chutes and Ladders that can never be won.

There are many differences between the Adventure Model and the Slide Scenario. The adventurer has a Guide who calls and to whom a response is given. The adventurer relies upon that Guide, because no adventurer is able to “pull himself up by his own bootstraps.”

The adventurer also travels with companions and uses habits, resources, and customs that help on the journey. A misstep does not return the adventurer back to the journey’s beginning. Rather, the Guide offers new options in each moment based upon the adventurer’s previous actions and varying relations. Like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, every step provides new opportunities and opens new paths.

We believe the Adventure Model is more faithful to the dominant themes of the Bible. It emphasizes the all-important relations we have with God, while also stressing the importance of our relations with others. We also believe relational holiness as depicted in the Adventure Model makes sense in the postmodern world.

The ongoing life of loving God, others, and God’s creation, including ourselves, is the life of holiness. And today we need this adventure in holiness—understood in terms of relational love—more than ever.