Time to be Holy: On the Nature of Piety

As an undergraduate student, I took an course titled "Introduction to Ethics." The opening reading assignment for the course was Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, in which Socrates questions Euthyphro concerning the nature of piety, as Socrates prepares for his trial. True to form, Socrates pulls apart Euthyphro's understanding of piety and demonstrates that Euthyphro--the self-proclaimed expert on such matters--cannot give a clear, cogent definition of piety, holiness, or goodness. Socrates, through Plato's pen, further demonstrates that to say piety or holiness is simply that which is pleasing to God provides an unsatisfactory definition, for we have not answered whether it is holy because it pleases God, or it pleases God because it is holy. In other words, such a definition describes a characteristic of holiness--that is pleases God--but not its essence. 

Upon my first reading of this dialogue, I was troubled. It made the problem of ethics appear more real, more complex than implied by the Biblical Preacher: "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." (Ecclesiastes 12:13) While I was happy to follow this mandate in my personal conduct, I felt that if I wanted not just to be good, but to become good, to be a "partaker of the Divine Nature," as the Apostle Peter invites, I needed to go further, to dig deeper. I needed not just to do holy things, but to comprehend the nature of Holiness. The ethics of divine mandate were not satisfying to either Socrates or Plato because the "divine" beings to which they had been exposed were often portrayed as selfish, quarrelsome, lustful, and deceitful beings. I at least have the benefit of having been taught of a perfect Heavenly Father and a sinless Savior in whom I can trust for direction. However, if my goal is not just to obey Them, but truly to know Them (John 17:3), to see my Savior as He is because I have become like Him (1 John 3:2), I need to understand what it is about Their commandments that leads to holiness. I need to understand the essence of holiness. 

Pondering this question recently, I re-read Plato's Euthyphro, and I found a key difference between my understanding of the Divine and that of Plato. Near the end of the dialogue, Socrates demands of Euthyphro,

"I wish, however, that you would tell me what benefit accrues to the gods from our gifts [of piety]. That they are the givers of every good to us is clear; but how we can give any good thing to them in return is far from being equally clear." (Plato, "Euthyphro," from The Trial and Death of Socrates, Dover Thrift Edition, Dover Publications, Inc., New York: 1992). 

Plato pictured the gods sitting atop Olympus, possessors of all, simply enjoying their power. The gods of Olympus, possessing all, but having no ultimate goal or mission, would have seen no value in human worship or any other human attempts to please them. 

However, the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ reveals a very different God with a clear and distinct purpose and mission: "For behold, this is my work and my glory--to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." (Moses 1:39) Understanding the phrase "eternal life" to mean living not only in the presence of God, but becoming as He is, a partaker of the Divine Nature, this statement makes the nature of piety much clearer. Socrates implied that an all-powerful being who already possessed all things could not possibly want anything from us. However, the God of Restored Christianity does not simply sit atop a throne gazing down on His creation--He is actively engaged in the very real work described in the above citation from Moses. Thus, any contribution, meager though it may be, that I might make to bringing about God's clearly stated purpose, would in fact be a meaningful offering to God, a manifestation of piety. 

Thus, piety, or holiness, is anything that tends toward bringing about the Eternal life of any of Father in Heaven's children, cultivating the image of Christ within our own character, or the character of others. In his second Epistle to the ancient church, Peter taught that charity was the crowning virtue of the attributes of the Divine nature. According to President Ezra Taft Benson, "Charity never seeks selfish gratification. The pure love of Christ seeks only the eternal growth and joy of others." ("Godly Characteristics of the Master," Ensign, November 1986) Thus, piety is at its essence other-oriented. Pious actions are never self-focused, but rather are focused, as President Benson says, on others' growth and joy.