Inward Holiness

The difference between Jesus' holiness ethic and that of the Pharisees is this: the Pharisees refuse to touch any unclean thing. Jesus aims to make the unclean holy.
Mark Galli, Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God (Baker, 2006), p. 44.

Even our beloved pets do it when they believe no one is looking, that is, “no one” that really matters to them. I’ve watched my dog gleefully chewing on items he knows wouldn’t be permissible chewing objects if he knew his master were in the room. But, since he believed he was alone, free of my watchful eye, he gnawed away, with no care for the eventual discovery of the evidence of the crime. He was lost in the moment, enraptured by the pleasure of his sin. His suppressed guilt only became obvious when, after I ever-so-gently made my presence known, he cowered and his body language spoke volumes of his canine culpability. Just like we humans, he acts so holy when the master’s watching. This is the epitome of external holiness.

External holiness is not just reserved for the master, or in our case, The Master. We tend to act holy around those about whom we care, in terms of their observing our relative spirituality. When at church, we want our family on their best behavior, not the way we act around the house. We think twice about the movie we’re about to see when we run into a fellow parishioner at the theater, especially if it happens to be the pastor. Of course, we want to know which film he’s about to view just in case our comparative holiness needs justification. Our external standards of holiness are legion.

Just in case you think this theory of holiness in the face of watchful eyes is something blown out-of-proportion, or made up, a couple of studies were done a few years ago with undeniable results showing our propensity to improve behavior when being watched. Here’s one of them:

How would your behavior change if you thought someone was watching you? Two recent studies suggest that you might start acting more honestly. A 2006 study at a university faculty lounge offered coffee and tea to professors that for years had used an unsupervised honor system. The rules were clear: serve yourself and then put the money you owed into a box. For ten weeks, though, the experimenters put a hard-to-miss poster near the box. One version of the poster featured pretty flowers; the other version had a pair of eyes glaring out at the viewer. The image alternated between flowers and eyes each week. People paid almost three times more on "eyes" weeks than on "flowers" weeks.
Matt Woodley, managing editor, PreachignToday.com; sources: Priceonomics blog, "How Honest Are You When No One Is Watching You?" (1-30-14)

A similar “watchful eye” experiment was done in an area known for a high rate of bicycle thefts. Interestingly, during the time the eyes with a sign reading, “Cycle thieves: we are watching you” were present, thefts dropped by 62 percent over a two-year period! One interesting side-effect of the experiment was that bicycle thefts increased by the same percentage down the street from the usually high theft area. Obviously the thieves’ hearts weren’t changed, just their external behavior, when they thought they were being watched, even when reminded by fake eyes!

As you’ve guessed by now, the difference is, God doesn’t look at the external and His eyes aren’t fake! He’s interested in what is on the inside. Yes, what you watch, eat, drink, etc., can have an effect on what comes from within, but ultimately God is looking for pure hearts, reflected in outer actions. We can fool a lot of people with outward holiness, man’s traditions, rituals and religiosity, but we can’t fool God. Nobody’s perfect, but He still calls us to stop faking it and “…be holy for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16).

“‘It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.’” —MATTHEW 15:11 NASB