Holy: Understanding it Better Through Amateurs and Professionals

Do you want to know what holy means?  Do you want the popular answer or do you want a real answer?  The facts are that there is more then one viable definition for holy.  It most likely means one of three major options: "set apart", "pure", or "whole" (in reverse alphabetical order to avoid prejudice).  The most popular at present is "set apart".  I want to take this status of where there is more than one viable or plausible definition a step further by discussing the distinction between amateurs and professionals.

To begin, let's recall a few famous quotes on the difference:

"If you think it is expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur."  Red Adair

I would add to this quote the following, due to my recent experience with car trouble in 2012:

"If you think it is expensive to hire an amateur to do the job, wait until you hire a supposed professional."

Another quote is:

"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit."  Richard Bach

"By the time I was 22, I was a professional.  A young and flawed professional, but not an amateur."  Stephen Sondheim

I'll introduce a few more valuable quotes on the difference, as I write more.  The point of these quotes is that there is a clear difference between an amateur and a professional.  I want to suggest that there is a way to distinguish the two and also to value the two (not just one!)   As I read through a series of these quotes on  "Brainy Quote", I noticed two things; 1) that the distinction between professional and amateur is important and 2) that most of the quotes prefer professional over amateur with a lesser amount of preference for amateur over professional.

I want to agree that the distinction is important, but I want to also say that it is likely dangerous to prefer professional over amateur in one sense.  It is more true to life that we all have to value being an amateur, because that is where we all begin before we go on to being professionals in some occupation.  Here I would fall back on a close parallel in Dr. Donald N. Larson's distinction between knower and teacher.  Amateurs can be very advanced knowers, but that does not mean that they can also be teachers.  But likewise some professionals lack the desire or interest of the knower that is sense in some amateurs.  That is why some professionals like Sergei Bubka say: "Even now I want to keep my amateur spirit, to spend my time, to be in the sport with all my heart".   But even as some professionals say that about themselves, speaking of the need for balance, an amateur like Bill Bruford have this to say about themselves in a recognition of balance:  "So I have the classic amateur's technique; I know some very tricky bits and I have large gaping holes".

So let's look at where I think my writing on holiness is in terms of a balance of both amateur and professional.  Let me begin with a quote from Alan Greenspan: "I was a good amateur, but only an average professional.  I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled in New York University".   If I examine my early blog posts, most of what I had to say came out of being a knower and an amateur, not a professional.  It does not mean it does not have value.  I am far from saying that.  But I think it had a "limit" to use Greenspan's word snd "large gaping holes" like Bruford says.  I was a very well-intentioned amateur with a lot of great discoveries that really make little difference to many of the professionals.

That all changed, when I decided I need more education (to get a good balance) and I enrolled at Nashotah House (Seminary) in Delafield, WI.  I was lacking some of the professional side of studying word meanings up to that point.  Since then I have been growing on the professional side and I hope I am also not letting go of the amateur side that just loves the thrill of discovery and hates to let go of the sheer curiosity to learn and to become a knower.  This knower aspect needs to remain alongside my becoming someone who can teach what holy means.

Robert Graves once said: "In love as in sport, the amateur status must be strictly maintained".  In other words, we lose something when we are only professionals who spend time on the clock not knowing why we do what we do.  There is no passion for it and there is a sick kind of snobbery in professionalism and teaching alone that puts down the one who knows.  I want to forever remain an amateur and a professional, so that I never become an academic snob.

Before enrolling at Nashotah House, I could feel that " ... disadvantage of not having acquired some technical profession", as Henry Bessemer once said.  Now I see my professionalism growing, as I write my thesis paper.  I am becoming more than a knower, I also am becoming a teacher.  I love having both together.  I still have that sense, as Simon van der Meer, once said that: " ... to a certain extent my slightly amateur approach ..., combined with practical experience was an asset".  I don't want to ever loose that common sense approach.

Howard Hawks, a film director is quoted as once saying: "I'd rather have flawed professionals than well-meaning amateurs".  But he also is famous for telling the story of a tennis pro who lost his ability to serve well, when he wrote a book about it, so sometimes all you can say is that you like something and that is how you know.  I am convinced that good experiential knowledge and good scholarship need to work alongside one another, not against each other.  So quoting Hawks on either side of the balance is not fair to him.  He was a combination of both.

You will find sometimes "flawed professionals" writing about the meanings or definitions of words in the biblical text.  You will also find "well-intentioned amateurs at times as well.  I want to talk about one specific example that is away from defining holy and might help us then be more objective because it is also from the past.

That specifc example is Martin Luther.  I believe, he was a "flawed professional" as well as a "well-intentioned amateur.  He once had a very simple or amateur question, "How much is enough [to satisfy this God]?  He found his answer in the biblical text in the words "righteousness of God".  These words worked, because he overlapped the meanings of righteousness and justification.  Justice is the answer to his question.  Righteousness is actually a flaw, because some (not all) professionals today realize that in the Hebrew text there is a distinction between righteousness and justice.  They are both amounts, but they are not the same answer to the same question.  Righteousness is the answer to "How many?  (ex. One God)."  Justice is the answer to "How much?" (ex. love your neighbor as yourself).  So Luther was a "flawed professional" but still a professional.  He was also a well-intentioned amateur, but sill a knower with a down to earth real question.  He was advised by some of the best professionals of his day like Erasmus' Greek text and Reuchlin's knowledge of Hebrew.

Let's hope we can be judged the same way as Luther or even better, when it comes to defining holy as it was originally understood in the biblical text in our time.  Let's take being professional to a new level without losing the spirit of the amateur.  Let's be like James Whistler who once said:  "I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three or the cry of the [professional] critic for five."  Let's keep our balance!  Let's define holy as both an amateur and a professional!

In Christ,

Jon