What is holiness and can only the religious people be holy?

Answer 1

Holiness is generally defined as conformity to the will of God. We try to become Holy with the help of the Holy Spirit, to sanctify ourselves and remove all impurities in thought and deed from ourselves. We do this because we want to be close to God and nothing impure can be close to Him. If by religious you mean in religious orders then no you don't have to be religious to be holy. A lay person may sometimes conform more closely to the will of God than many religious. If, however, you mean do you have to follow the revelations God gave his Church in order to be holy then yes you do because you cannot ignore what God has revealed.

To be holy is to be pious, which is to live in reverence of that which you believe to be the higher power(s) or the supreme being. No, not only religious people can be holy. For example, there are very many monks in Tibet, china, and India who do not pertain to any religion at all, and are some of the holiest people alive. In their minds it is not an outside entity which is the supreme being (of course, nothing stops them from thinking this, and they can maintain their lifestyle along with any religion as well) but rather a life force that contains many parts of the whole. Whether you worship the life force, the holy spirit, The Judea/Christian deity, Krishna, or hullabulump the great purple hippo, you can be a holy/pious person. You actually don't have to worship anything, you just have to be pious, which again means to live with respect to that which you feel is better than yourself (perhaps your chi, your ki, or the transcendental commune of souls, whatever the case may be).

There was a "holiness movement" in American Christianity. I was brought up in the Nazarene denomination and they considered themselves a "Holiness" church.

These folks believe in two "works of grace", salvation and sanctification. Through many years of prayer and Bible study I have come to believe that religion has contaminated the original teachings of Yeshua, the Hebrew rabbi that Christians call "Christ". I believe that Yeshua did teach his followers that they needed to be "born again" in Spirit, but that he didn't mean anything religious by it at all. I believe he simply wanted us to recognize that we are connected to God and begin to live like that is the most important thing in life. Religion is how the culture and society says you are supposed to think and act toward the metaphysical or things of Spirit. I believe that each one of us has a part in our Soul that knows, loves, and recognizes God. You are the only one who can say if you are nurturing that part within you as best you can.