David Wells writes of five realities that are lost when we lose sight of the holiness of God, or as Wells puts it, the “outside God”: There Is a Law, There Is Sin, There Is a Cross, There Is Conquest, and finally, There Is Obligation. God’s holiness calls us to a life of holiness. Yet, Wells writes, according to Barna, “. . . even among [those who claim to be] born-again, fewer than half have any idea what holiness means.”

When asked to describe what holiness is, only 7 percent of Americans rooted this in the character of God. Although 72 percent said they had made a commitment to Christ, and 71 percent said their faith was “very important” to them, and 60 percent said they were “deeply spiritual,” only 16 percent said their faith was the highest priority in their lives. Barna’s conclusion was that most American like the security of being able to call themselves “Christian,” but most also resist the biblical responsibilities that go along with that claim. For the great majority, he says, being identified as a Christian is more about image than substance. It is a cultural thing. It is all about creating a pleasing self-image.
. . . where this state of affairs is most scandalous is in the churches that imagine themselves on the cutting edge of advancing Christian faith. What many of them are producing are so-called followers of Christ who are in it for their own spiritual comfort but are at sea when it comes to understanding the significance of God’s holiness for their Christian lives. And the reason for that, quite simply, is that many churches, obsessed with their own success, have made Chritianity light and easy so that they can market it successfully. what are the consequences, then, of losing sight of the holiness of God, this aspect of the outside God? And, just as important, what are the consequences of seeing the holiness of God?
   Our situation is not that different from what pertained in much of Israel’s history. The Old Testament people of God were religious, but often their religion made little difference. This, apparently, is what we have in the [professing] born-again sector in America today. The ancient Israelites’ religion was not an impediment to idol worship or to a whole assortment of pagan practices. They had the written law and temple worship. They had the prophets. They had all they needed to please God, but so often they would not listen. They would not reckon with his holy will. They became careless, living as if he were not there . . . The problem was that, again and again, with monotonous repetition, they lost sight of the holiness of God. And they paid the painful consequences for this, again and again.
   Is this really so different from what we have now in the West? We have Bibles enough for every household in America a couple of times over. We have churches galore . . . All too often we don’t have what the Old Testament people didn’t have. A due and weighty sense of the greatness and holiness of God, a sense that will reach into our lives, wrench them around, lift our vision, fill our hearts, make us courageous for what is right, and over time leave its beautiful residue of Christlike character. . . .

   So what do we need to do? Quite simply, we need to find the outside God.

—David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Eerdmans, 2008), 131–133.