evangelical 360°
A timely and relevant new podcast that dives into the contemporary issues which are impacting Christian life and witness around the world. Guests include leaders, writers, and influencers, all exploring faith from different perspectives and persuasions. Inviting lively discussion and asking tough questions, evangelical 360° is hosted by Brian Stiller, Global Ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance. Our hope is that each person listening will come away informed, encouraged, challenged and inspired!
evangelical 360°
Ep. 17 / Holiness Here: A Warm Invitation ► Karen Stiller
Ever wondered how holiness fits into the hustle and bustle of everyday life? Join me, Brian Stiller, as I sit down with the brilliant Karen Stiller to explore this profound topic. Karen, an acclaimed writer, shares her spiritual journey and insights from her latest book, "Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life." Together, we challenge the rigid stereotypes of holiness, viewing it instead as a dynamic and transformative journey. Our discussion touches on the perceptions that came with her late husband’s role as a minister and how these shaped her understanding of holiness as an ongoing process rather than an immediate state of being.
We also tackle the complex themes of blame and shame, drawing connections to the biblical story of Adam and Eve and emphasizing the power of community support in overcoming these challenges. Through personal stories, we highlight the importance of patience, vulnerability, and the transformative power of generosity. Karen’s candid reflections on writing amid personal loss reveal how suffering can deepen one's understanding of holiness and community. This episode invites you to reconsider holiness as an active, relational journey, encouraging a deeper connection with both yourself and the world around you.
Karen Stiller's book - Holiness Here
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Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. My name is Brian Stiller, global Ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance and host of this new podcast series. On Evangelical 360, I interview leaders, writers and influencers about contemporary issues which are impacting Christian life around the world. My hope is that it will not only be a global meeting place where faith is explored from different perspectives, but that each person listening will come away informed, encouraged, challenged and even inspired. Today on Evangelical 360, my guest is Karen Stiller. This talented woman has written for various magazines, the author of several books and has received many literary awards. Her most recent publication is Holiness here, searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life. Karen, your book is a treasure, rich with deep spiritual insights. Hi, karen, so nice to have you on Evangelical 360 today.
Karen Stiller:Thank you, brian, it's wonderful to be here.
Brian Stiller:Karen, I think right from the top we got to let people know why we have the last name Stiller.
Karen Stiller:Well, I married one of your wonderful nephews and became a Stiller in 1990.
Brian Stiller:It's remarkable how we come together. We meet for the first time years ago and then all of a sudden we become family.
Karen Stiller:Yeah, no, it's been wonderful to journey along with you, brian, and our work has overlapped over the years. We've spent time together at our cottages and, yeah, it's been good, it's been a nice part of the journey.
Brian Stiller:But, Karen, I gotta tell you, when I saw your book Holiness here, the word holiness reminded me of years ago, back in the 50s, when Elvis Presley was around and the word holiness seemed to resonate then. But I wondered, why in the world would you spend your time writing about holiness in today's age?
Karen Stiller:That's a great question. First of all, I need to say that Elvis Presley was before I was born. I've always been interested in the concept of holiness. The book literally came about when I was in church one Sunday and one of the pastors prayed give us grace, god, to lead a holy life. And I found myself in that very moment not praying but wondering what that meant to lead a holy life.
Karen Stiller:And you mentioned your nephew and my late husband, brent, who was a minister for you know 30-some-odd years, for you know 30 some odd years, and always I was interested by what I felt was a bit of a gap between how people saw us, which I think was they viewed us as being holier than they were, and what I felt was the reality that I knew we were people just like them. So that was another thing that always kind of captured my interest and I was curious about it and sometimes it really bothered me. So what does it mean to be holy? And obviously that's not an idea that goes out of date. I know exactly what you're implying and I mean I asked myself that question many times. Why am I writing this book about holiness?
Brian Stiller:Karen, as you know, I was raised with our family in Saskatchewan in the 40s and 50s Pentecostal minister's home and holiness seemed to be a reoccurring theme in our church. But I relate the word holiness to things I didn't do, so I wasn't allowed to swear, we couldn't go to movies, of course. What would holiness mean to me as a teenager today?
Karen Stiller:Well, it's a great question and I grew up in a very different time and a very different kind of household and a different flavor of church. So I was really trying in this book to explore holiness as an invitation from God and not a set of rules which I know it's so often associated with. You know, I don't think that rules even though part of me longed for a few help us for too long and I wanted to really push into that a little bit and explore what it meant to think of holiness as who we already are, because God has said that, and then who we can become in the world and relationally because of that.
Brian Stiller:You use this very interesting metaphor from Slug to Songbird, as if holiness is transitional and only full when we eventually die.
Karen Stiller:I am more comfortable with the mystery and all that I do not know, so I will preface everything I say with that. There's so much that we don't understand about the fullness and beauty and, you know, majesty of God there has to be. I mean, we're just people, but when I think about what holy is, I believe that we are so made holy through what Jesus accomplished on the cross and the new life he's inviting us into our new identity in Christ. We use language like that, so I use the phrase holy is and holy does, because it's not only who we are, but it's who we get to be in the world. And it's not about perfection and it is about a journey.
Karen Stiller:But I think it's a journey in which we do get to change. We have the opportunity to participate in our own transformation because of how much God loves us and invites us to change, to push out into the world. I think holiness is deeply relational. We find out about ourselves and we are formed and have the opportunity to go deeper, to go higher in our formation. As we are living out our holiness in the world and in those moments where our outer action might not align perfectly with our inner self, that is also an opportunity to be curious and to grow and to repent, if that fits, and just be curious and mindful about who and how we are in the world.
Brian Stiller:Karen, we often refer to the metaphor that Jesus used with Nicodemus the rabbi the new birth, or birth from above. And I'm wondering is holiness and the new birth synonymous, or is the new birth a gateway into holiness? How do the two relate?
Karen Stiller:I think it's both. And In that moment of new birth we do become holy. But you know, if we pull that metaphor further, no one stays a baby. You know you have the new birth and then you grow, and so I think our holiness is and it will become, and I do believe that we are always being converted. You know, we never reach the place of all we can be because of who and how God made us to be, but we always have the opportunity before us to explore that deeper. So I really believe that.
Brian Stiller:We were in our Pentecostal holiness world and interesting. The church community out of which I came found its roots in the late 19th century, early 20th century holiness movements, methodism, nazarene and so forth, and so holiness seemed to be very much associated with what we should do and we shouldn't do. But that gave me a sense that I was at the bottom and holiness was kind of working my way up, layer by layer, until I would get to the place where I saw some of the people who I thought were holy or at least holier than me. Is it to be progressive? Is it something that I already am and yet hope to be?
Karen Stiller:In some of my reading for this book. In one book I came upon basically an upward, almost graph graph plotting an upward, you know, growth pattern which is, I think, describes what you're getting at, and my picture of it is more like a squiggly line and a spirally circle on a piece of paper where, yeah, we may deepen into our holiness a little bit and then we go two steps back. It may be more that kind of organic, natural way of living. But I do think we change over time, like I've seen you become, if I may say so, more patient and tender over the years, maybe more willing to be vulnerable, and I think that is you growing in holiness.
Karen Stiller:And I have seen in my own life I don't get as angry as quickly as I used to. And I believe that if we actually believe that God is working in our lives, that the Holy Spirit is changing us, that we should actually expect to see a little more peace and contentment and a little more loving and gentleness toward the people with whom we share a life. Otherwise it just doesn't make sense to me that our faith wouldn't change us. And that doesn't mean we're not still predisposed to sin and wrongdoing, of course not. We just need to spend five minutes with ourselves, and we know that that's not the case. But we do get to change and God beckons us forward, and so it's. It's never going to be a straight line. I mean, that would be a lot easier, but I don't think that's how it is.
Brian Stiller:Let's move up to a larger look at our world and this subject matter within it. This generation, this age, social media, sports betting, media, conversations and debates on a variety of social political issues. But it just seems to me that, almost within the hedonism of our age, I'm wondering if the idea of holiness gets lost.
Karen Stiller:I think that you know I say in the book and we've been talking about this that it doesn't get talked about very much anymore, like even in church, in church circles, and we do have this idea that it has to do with missing out or, you know, being boring or following rules or being so unpopular or being canceled, whatever all those negative things.
Karen Stiller:We are told that we are holy already, so we just are that because God is holy and he's invited us to be holy. And then how we live that out in the world can be done in so many creative, beautiful ways. And we know that when things happen like disasters or tragedies around the world, often it is people of faith who are the first on scene. Often Christians are the first there because they're compelled and they've been shaped by their faith to respond with love and generosity and compassion. And hopefully we are that way in all of our places, in all our contexts, in all our workplaces, how we treat each other, how we quote unquote behave, but that behavior is shaped by belief and belonging, so it becomes less of a straitjacket and more of a sinking into freedom. I think.
Brian Stiller:Karen, I'm wondering with a 17-year-old son sitting watching Netflix, how do you unwrap holiness as being of value to him or her, holiness as being something that's achievable, and it has value to their ambitions and to their hopes and dreams.
Karen Stiller:We did raise three kids. You know our kids are 27, 25 and 24 right now, so that's not that long ago, it's not that far away in my experience, and I think that we tried to encourage our kids to kind of remember who they were. I remember us saying that remember who you are. As they left on a Friday night, which I'm sure it was just such a burden to them to hear.
Karen Stiller:But within that there was meaning you don't have to get pulled into peer pressure. You can have a strong sense of who you are as a person. You can say no to things that could hurt you and say yes to things that are healthy and good for you and within that we love you, no matter what you do. And that's, you know, a part of how we reflect holiness to our children by loving them. You know unconditionally, which I think parents do, loving them unconditionally, which I think parents do. We do that, saying that, making a safe space for our children to share with us who they are and what their questions and challenges are, and then just really encouraging them to act that out in their world, we enact our beliefs, we move out of our comfort zone and we have the courage to do that because of what we believe. So I would try, and we did try with our kids, to not show faith and faithful living as some kind of a prison but, more you know, an open door to an adventurous life.
Brian Stiller:So is holiness episodic or is it being in place?
Karen Stiller:I believe that that is what it could be. I was talking with someone the other day about, you know, the great saints of our faith who do amazing things that none of us, you know, think we could do, for example, and I mean, on one hand, I believe I couldn't do what that person did, or maybe I could. You know, I think we will have big episodes of big moments, big things that happen where we choose or to sink into our holiness, you know, in terms of our response to things. So I think it is and it does, and it is and it will be, and it's just not so concretely nailed down as we might like.
Brian Stiller:Okay, let me recycle back into the actual Word. There is a biblical command be holy as I am holy. And I think, oh my goodness sakes, that's an impossibility. So do I give up before I begin?
Karen Stiller:I would say you're right, you're right, there's no chance. But I would ask you to hear that not in the dad voice. Be holy as I'm holy, go clean your room. The dad voice. Be holy as I'm holy, go clean your room. But be holy as I am holy as an invitation. I include this in the book.
Karen Stiller:A little conversation I had with Brent about this very thing where I said I think that that could be viewed as a warm invitation instead of a stern command, and his response to me was well, that's a very contemporary way of looking at it and I thought oh okay, you don't fully agree.
Karen Stiller:You know, I'm just like one tiny little voice in this long, long conversation about holiness, pulling up my chair to the table and exploring maybe a softer, invitational, more welcoming way of thinking about how we are holy and how we can lean into that and live out of it in a way that you know represents how loved we are by God.
Karen Stiller:You know God loves us. We believe that as the, you know that's sort of our foundational belief that God loves us. You know that's sort of our foundational belief that God loves us and therefore that does make a difference, and holiness is the name I would give to that experience of being loved, being made new and then getting to be new. It's not, hopefully, a burden, it's an opportunity, it's an invitation and, yeah, we will never arrive there. You know, we have this sort of productivity view of life and getting things done and checking things off our list, and holiness can be about doing things, but it is also about being and the balance will shift sometimes and I'm sure we'll get it wrong. I know I get it wrong all the time.
Brian Stiller:Theologically, we have this notion that God gives to us forgiveness, he removes guilt from us, and that's something he gives to us. So I'm wondering is holiness also something that God gives to us, or is it something that we aspire to experience and be?
Karen Stiller:No, I think it is given to us. We're told that God sees us as holy because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross. So we are a holy people.
Brian Stiller:Karen, as I was reading your book the other day, the Genesis story came to me of Adam who sinned and he was shamed when God said where are you? And then he blamed his wife Eve. So I was looking at that blame-shame scenario and I'm wondering how that plays into my aspiration for holiness into my aspiration for holiness?
Karen Stiller:That's a great question and I think blame and shame are so human and those examples you give are externally put upon us, but we blame and shame ourselves all the time. I mean, just yesterday I went into a little blame-shame. You know, self-condemnation cycle with. You know something that happened like I forgot, something I can't even remember now, but I remember the feeling, the feeling of you know, oh, not being good enough and feeling crushed. And then you know I think about well, how do I speak with someone else when they're experiencing that? And often I say you know, remember who you are. That's not who you are and you're beautiful and you're capable and you're loved and you're forgiven.
Karen Stiller:So we don't need to be in a blame-shame place. But it takes work to crawl out of that sometimes and we need each other and blame and shame do not have a place in holiness, but they pop up and I think so much of this life is lived better together, you know, in church, because that's often where we find a group of Christians who we will journey with, but in friendship, through transparency, through vulnerability, and I'm trying to model that in my book, generally speaking and this is not always true, because I know some people find me very annoying, I'm sure, but the more honest I am, the more loved I feel by the people in my life and by the people in my church, and I think that's really important. And that's about being honest with my struggles, my questions, my failures, my in your life, in your searching for and being taken over by holiness.
Brian Stiller:How does that interface with the actual congregational life that you seek to be a part of?
Karen Stiller:I think it's really important. I mean at church, if the literal doing of church you know, on a weekly basis. Usually we are taught about holiness, we are reminded of holiness. Like to me, church is often about being reminded of something I already know. But I need that reminder and I need the mutual encouragement that I find there, that I find there and you know, and sometimes churches like in my first book, the Minister's Wife, I talk about.
Karen Stiller:You know, church being sometimes a very hard place. But what I encounter often is my own impatience, my own judgment, my own cynicism, my desire to flee. I don't want to hear someone else's sad story again, I don't want to hear about their aunt's operation, and then what I have learned to do is say why am I feeling that way? And maybe sometimes I do need to just step out of something and I can't be everything that everybody wants me to be. But sometimes I can try a little harder and then actually I do become a little nicer and more patient.
Karen Stiller:So churches can be an experience of God's holiness as a group with other failures like me, and it's also an opportunity to practice a lot of the practices of holiness that we might say things like being patient, carrying each other's burdens, showing up for each other. I have found church really hard lately, you know, because my husband was a pastor and he was my pastor and so church has changed for me. But I'm trying, I am trying to lean back into it when I can because I know it's important. And there's not a perfect church we know that there are no perfect pastors but you find a place where you can grow and where you can give and, you know, stick it out and I do think good things happen.
Brian Stiller:Karen, you open up the idea of holiness with a window of generosity, and it seems in your writing that generosity both enables holiness and is an expression of holiness. But talk to me a bit about that.
Karen Stiller:Thankfully, you read me exactly right, I think so. For me, learning to give, and specifically money, you know, was a challenge. Like I married a man who was really good at that, definitely wanted that to be part of our household life and our faith life together. And we did do that. And I've thought often about the idea that God loves a cheerful giver and thinking well, sometimes I'm not a cheerful giver. Now I am a cheerful giver, but it took me years, years of practice to get to that point.
Karen Stiller:But when I was a reluctant giver or an unhappy giver, I didn't feel less loved by God. In fact, I think I felt like, yeah, god's saying good for you, good for you for doing it. Anyway, I'm proud of you. That's what I hope God was thinking. There's something in there that it's an example of what I'm trying to get at in different places in the book, of practicing, of pushing out past your comfort zone a little bit, stepping into that invitation to give generously, to be a generous person in the world, which you know, of course we know results in usually being a happier person as well, because it is good for our souls. It loosens my grip on money when I can give it away, but it's okay that it can be hard, that's okay.
Brian Stiller:Is holiness an amalgam of good things, or is it something singular?
Karen Stiller:We have the idea of holiness meaning set apart, right, and when we look at Jesus's life, he was set apart, distinct of course, but he was also fully engaged. So I think, when we think about our own holiness, if we look at that, for example, set apart element, it is so set apart in order to make the world better. Set apart in order to fully re-engage, set apart in order to love our neighbors. You know we have a high calling and we will never quite meet it, but in that invitation to stretch to meet it, we do get to do a whole bunch of things. Like it is lived out through practicality. I use the phrase, you know, the spiritual is practical, the practical is spiritual and I really think that's true. There's not much in our lives of holiness that doesn't involve other people. That isn't very practical in the end. And in that working out of it, we get to grow spiritually. We really do. It's a beautiful experiment.
Brian Stiller:In my work with the World Evangelical Alliance. One of the themes of this global network is unity, and we often espouse John 17, the prayer of Jesus to the Father. I will that they be one, and that seems to be something that's hard to grasp. What is unity? And it occurred to me the other day that Jesus is the friend of God, is the friend of the Father. And unity may be best experienced in friendship. And as I was reading your chapter on friendship, it seemed to be a kind of a golden moment in my mind of understanding that if Jesus is a friend of the Father, that friendship that I have with others becomes the means by which the friendship within the Trinity is expressed in my own life.
Karen Stiller:That's beautiful. It's beautiful, I think. You know we are built for relationship and the Holy Trinity is the first and primary relationship and we learn a lot from that and I think that's incredibly beautiful and important.
Brian Stiller:But is there a danger? When I think of myself as being holy, I'm just filled with my own hubris.
Karen Stiller:I don't think so. I really don't think so. I really don't Like. I think that's the you know if I can say well, that's your Elvis Presley view of holiness. I really don't. I can't imagine a person who really knows themselves being too caught up in the idea of their own goodness Not, if you're anything like me. I really can't. So I think the again you brought up friendship and I was talking about vulnerability and transparency I think the more we're able to share our truest selves with you know a safe circle, and sometimes the we will risk sharing it, you know, in a more public way, like which I definitely have done with this book and my other book, the Minister's Wife. They're both pretty honest. I think we will find that we have good fellow pilgrims with us on the journey and we can help each other and I don't think we're going to be too swept away by our own grandeur.
Brian Stiller:Let's go back to Sunday morning. You're preaching the morning service or you're pastor, or you're in the congregation. What would you advise pastors to think about as they look at this aspect of God and His call to be holy as he is holy? How would you unwrap that as a kind of an ammo for living today as a disciple of Christ?
Karen Stiller:Well, I love the opportunity to tell pastors what to do. So thank you for that, I mean. Again, I come back to the idea of invitation, that we are invited to be disciples in the world, and that that is not a boring, drudgery thing, that is an opportunity to step into the guts of other people's lives, even Like when I think of my experience as a pastor's wife over the years, even though there was some loneliness. There were lots of things I would have changed if I could have. But what I would not change is the ability or the invitation again I use that word to enter into people's lives when they needed us the most, and we were, you know, part of the saddest, hardest times, but also the great celebrations of people's lives.
Karen Stiller:So to be a disciple out in the world today and to be able to really love our neighbors, you know, live out the Beatitudes, be present in our communities and our neighborhoods, that's not boring, that's exciting, it will be hard, but there are, you know, beautiful moments to be had and beautiful friendships to be made and love to be shared, and I would say that a pastor could, you know, just focus on those things for a bit. And a church is so wonderfully positioned to really serve their community. And in my work in Faith Today magazine, like we focus on those churches when we hear those stories and often it's just ordinary stuff, like it's serving pizza to teenagers, it's, you know, a meal for seniors. There's not a lot of fancy required, it's just loving people.
Brian Stiller:Karen, as we come to the end of our conversation, let me just remind our viewers and listeners Karen Stiller is who I'm talking to today. Her latest book is Holiness here, published by NAV Press. Karen, you've referred to the loss of your husband, Brent, my nephew and after that you wrote this book, Holiness here, as you were working your way through the subject matter. Do you know more about what that word means now, in these months of living without Brent and feeling the sorrow and the suffering of his passing?
Karen Stiller:So I had written eight out of I think 11 or 12 chapters when Brent went into the hospital and then I set the project aside, then eventually picked it up again, went into the hospital and then I set the project aside, then eventually picked it up again and I found that the writing of it, the finishing of it, the rewriting of it gave me purpose and some meaning in those really dark months and it helped me.
Karen Stiller:I think that I definitely understand suffering more now, watching him suffer and our family suffering in grief, and that darkness of grief and sorrow. And what I think that I've come to understand more, maybe just a tiny little bit, is the suffering of Christ. I am aware of the sadness of the world now in a way I wasn't before. I would have said I was a person who was aware of that before, but now I think I'm beginning to understand it in a deeper way and exploring what it means to believe that, because of what we see in Jesus's life, that God is present in our sorrow and that he cares, and that, yeah, jesus knows what it means to hurt profoundly and to grieve. Yeah, jesus knows what it means to hurt profoundly and to grieve, and that means a lot to me, and so I'm believing that, and I am trying to believe that at the same time.
Brian Stiller:Karen, it's been so wonderful to have you today on Evangelical 360. Thanks again for being with us. Thank you, Brian, and thank you all for taking time to listen to my conversation with Karen Stiller in this episode of Evangelical 360. After reading Karen's book and taking time to listen, I come away with a fresh understanding of what holiness is, one that doesn't induce guilt when I feel as though I've missed the mark. For me, it was both inspiring and encouraging.
Brian Stiller:If you have found this valuable, please take a moment to give Evangelical 360 a review or a thumbs up. We would appreciate it if you would share it with your friends and colleagues as well. You will also find links in the show notes of this episode for anything we've discussed today and if you haven't already signed up to receive my free dispatches from the Global Village, it's an opportunity to join me and meet leaders from many different countries around the world. It's also a wonderful way to stay in touch with upcoming episodes and guests on Evangelical 360. Guests on Evangelical 360. Just go to brianstillercom. Thank you for listening and until next time. I'm Brian Stiller. Don't miss the next interview. Be sure to subscribe to Evangelical 360 on YouTube.
Karen Stiller:See you there.