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| To clarify, I found the image on the internet. Not the pipe cleaners. Image source. |
I've heard people say that "awesome" is a word originally used to describe God (don't know if that's true or not, but whatever) or it should be specifically reserved for God. Don't say other things are awesome because that takes away from the meaning of "God is awesome."
Totally disagree. Because if "God is awesome" is the only context in which we heard the word "awesome", we wouldn't have any idea what it even meant.
We already HAVE a word like that. Holy. What is the definition of "holy"? The standard Christian answer for this is "set apart." Well what does that mean? I guess "set apart" as in "special." Not "set apart" as in "the bags of dog poop have been set apart from the other trash so they don't stink up the trash can."
God is "set apart"? What does that mean? Err wait, does the "set apart" definition only apply to a context like "God wants his people to be holy", and not "God is holy"?
Okay Perfectnumber, you don't like the "set apart" definition, so how do you define "holy"?
Well, it's like... God is bigger than anything else, orders of magnitude more powerful... something like that...?
Or, it's like, God is perfect, he never does anything wrong, although, how do you really define right and wrong when you're talking about God... er... he's pure (what does that mean? homogeneous?), he can't tolerate sin, he can't look at sin... he's going to someday bring justice for everyone... is that what "holy" means?
Or maybe, for me it kind of has this majestic feel to it, like God is the king of everything, sovereign over everything, complete authority, no worries- is that what "holy" means?
I really don't know what "holy" means.
But I know what "awesome" means! I know how excited I get when I find some really cool computer game, or when I learn some interesting fact about an obscure animal, or write code to do some silly math thing, or how much I appreciate my awesome friends when they help me out with something- and God is like that! God is the inventor of all things awesome. He made science! So cool! I wish I could make science!
So I fully support the use of the term "awesome" to describe things traditionally thought of as unrelated to God (though, they're not really- as I just said, God invented everything awesome).
Agree/disagree? Anyone out there have a better definition of "holy"? Are there other words like that, that we only use to talk about God, so no one really gets what they mean? (I'm looking at you, "hallowed"...)