You’ve been told your whole life that God is perfect. Sunday school teachers said it. Preachers said it. “Be holy as I am holy” became “be perfect as God is perfect.” And for many pastors, that misunderstanding of holiness is a direct contributor to depression and burnout.
There’s just one problem. That’s not what holy means.
What Holy Actually Means
Holy means set apart. Totally different. Fundamentally other.
When Christian theologians unpack the holiness of God, they’re not talking about a moral report card. Instead, they’re talking about two things that exist in perfect, unbreakable tension in the character of God: his love and his justice.
God loves with a love that is complete, unconditional, and inexhaustible. At the same time, God is just, meaning he will account for every wrong and one day make every injustice right. He holds both of these things simultaneously, without compromise and without contradiction.
That combination exists nowhere else. Not in any human being. Not in any government. Not in any religion ever invented by human hands.
That is what makes him holy. Set apart. Different.
The Term That Stuck With Me
Rudolf Otto, a German theologian and philosopher, wrote about this in his foundational 1917 work “The Idea of the Holy.” He described God’s holiness as the “awesome otherness” of God. The numinous. The sense that you are standing before something so unlike anything else in existence that words fail you.
When one of my seminary professors quoted that phrase, I never forgot it.
Awesome otherness. Not “God gets an A+ in every category.” Not “God passes every test.” Something far bigger than that. Something that makes you stop, step back, and say, “there is nothing like this being anywhere.”
Why This Matters for You Specifically
Here’s where I want to talk directly to you, pastor.
You are exhausted. You’ve been carrying the weight of your church, your family, your calling, and your own private struggles, often in silence. You’ve been trying to live up to a standard that you quietly believe is perfection. And you have been falling short of it, daily, and hating yourself for it.
I want to suggest that the theology you absorbed may be working against you.
If holiness is perfection, then it is an impossible standard. A measuring stick you can never reach. And ministry becomes a life of perpetual inadequacy, where every sermon that could have been better, every pastoral conversation you handled imperfectly, every personal failure, becomes evidence that you are not what God needs you to be.
But if holiness is otherness, then the command to “be holy as I am holy” is an invitation to be different. To live in such a way that the people around you see something they do not see anywhere else. Love without condition. Justice without cruelty. Forgiveness that does not make sense by the world’s standards.
You are not called to be God. You are called to reflect him.
A Loan Illustration
Think about this. Someone borrows money from you. They agree to pay you back monthly. Then they stop. You could take them to court. You could demand every cent plus penalties. But in a radical act of love, you choose to pay off their debt yourself and absorb every penalty they owed.
From a purely transactional standpoint, that looks like foolishness. Paul said the gospel looks like foolishness to the world. That is exactly his point.
That small financial story is the massive spiritual story of all human history. From Eden to the cross to the resurrection to the end of time, God looked at a debt he did not owe and chose to pay it. He did not have to. He chose to. Because of his awesome otherness. Because he is fundamentally, irreducibly different from anything else that exists.
The Good News You May Have Missed
The standard God gave you is not perfection. It is holiness.
It is not “never fail.” It is “be different.” It is “live in such a way that people see something they cannot explain and are drawn toward the Christ you are imitating.”
You are going to fall short of that too, as a human. But when you understand holiness correctly, there is grace for that. Because the God of awesome otherness, the one who absorbed the penalty you owed, did not stop being gracious when you became a pastor.
You are not a machine required to perform at divine levels. You are an image-bearer, cracked and imperfect, trying to reflect something unimaginably greater than yourself.
That is not a crisis of inadequacy. That is the calling.
There is still so much ahead of you in this work, and the God who called you into it has not changed his assessment of your value, your capacity, or your future. His awesome otherness includes a love that does not quit, and a justice that will one day make everything right, including the things that have been done to you.
If you need help navigating your depression, please reach out today.
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