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I hear the words pure and purity used by Christians quite often, especially when talking about sexual interactions. However, I'm convinced many do not have a firm grasp on what these words actually mean.
Mary Douglas, in her book Purity and Danger, states, "The process of ordering a sociocultural system was called 'purity', in contrast to 'pollution,' which stands for the violation of the classification system, its lines, and boundaries. The term 'purity' became a jargon word for the general principle that all peoples tend to structure their worlds according to some system of order and classification."
In the Gospels, Jesus appears out of place - dealing with people he should avoid, doing unconventional things, and not observing customs. He openly challenges the Jewish purity system and appears to reform, and even reverse it, in favor of His own system (the Law of Christ).
So, what is purity?
Purity is best understood in terms of its binary opposite - pollution or dirt. When something is out of place or when it violates the classification system in which it is set, it becomes 'dirt'. A farmer working in his field is covered with dust and chaff, his shoes caked with mud and dung. This is appropriate to the outdoors work of farming during the day; it is what is expected of fields and barns. But should that farmer come inside after the day's work, wearing those same dirt-covered overalls and those same dung-covered shoes, and sit in his wife's living room, his farm dirtiness, so appropriate outside, is impurity inside. The wrong thing appears in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We all draw lines in our world relative to things, persons, places, activities, and times. These lines tell us what and who belong when and where. The old saying stands true: "A place for everything and everything in its place." Because these lines help us to classify and arrange our world according to some dominant principle, they convey through their structural arrangement the abstract values of the social world of which we are a part. The Jews had their own purity maps concerning all aspects of life. I'll argue later that Jesus reversed these external-based maps and made them all internally-based (heart) instead.
If purity means clear lines and firm borders, then pollution refers to what crosses those boundaries or what resides in the margins and has no clear place in the system. A person begins in a given state of purity, but that can be lost either because they crossed a boundary and entered space more holy than they are permitted to enter or because something else less holy crossed over and entered their space. Crossing of boundaries, then, means 'dirt'.
The appropriate strategy in this type of world is defensive. What is called for is: avoidance of contact with what is either too holy or marginal or unclean (see Luke 10:31-32; Acts 10:14,28) or reinforcement of boundaries and purity concerns (see Mark 7:1-4 and the rabbis' "fences" around the Mosaic Law).
However, this is NOT what Jesus did. In the Gospels, people with ostensibly excellent purity ratings are Jesus' most dogged critics. They see Jesus crossing lines he ought not to cross and allowing people to cross into his space who ought to be kept at a distance.
Why didn't Jesus observe any of the purity rules so important to the Jews of his day?
A few examples of Jesus disregarding the Jewish purity rules in Mark's gospel:
1. Jesus came in contact with unclean people: he voluntarily touched a leper (Mark 1:41); he took a corpse by the hand (Mark 5:41).
2. He was touched by a menstruating woman (Mark 5:24-28).
3. Jesus called a public sinner to be an intimate follower (Mark 2:13-14).
4. Jesus traveled extensively in Gentile territory, crossing boundaries he ought not to cross and exposing himself to pollution on every side (Mark 7:31).
5. Jesus regularly was in contact with the possessed, the blind, the lame, and the deaf - all figures who are unclean in some way according to Leviticus 21:16-24.
7. Jesus seems not to have guarded his bodily orifices or their emissions in ways that befit purity-minded people. He applied spit to the eyes on a blind man (Mark 8:23) and to the tongue of a mute (Mark 7:33)!
8. He broke one of the strictest purity laws in Israel as he disregarded all dietary restrictions (Mark 7:19).
9. Jesus didn't observe the purity rules of time which structured Jewish life. His disciples plucked grain on the Sabbath, "doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath" (Mark 2:24) and Jesus himself healed on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1-6).
It is no wonder the Pharisees regraded Jesus the way they did. They saw him with a very low purity rating.
However, Jesus is vindicated as a supremely pure and holy figure in God's eyes:
1. In touching the leper, Jesus is not made unclean; rather he proclaims cleanness: "'Be clean.' And immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean" (Mark 1:41).
2. In dealing with the paralytic, Jesus cleansed the man of his sins ("Your sins are forgiven," Mark 2:5), as well as his paralysis (Mark 2:11). Jesus made him both whole and pure.
3. In calling Levi as a disciple and in eating with sinners, Jesus acts precisely as one who restores wholeness and cleanness to God's people - he is their "physician": "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mark 2:17).
4. In transgressing Sabbath laws, he provided food for the hungry (Mark 2:23-28) and wholeness for a man with a withered limb (Mark 3:1-6).
5. The menstruating woman who touched Jesus is healed of her hemorrhage.
6. The corpses which Jesus touched are made alive again.
7. The blind man and the mute man upon whom Jesus put his spit are restored to sight and speech respectively.
Whereas the Jews concern is with externals and surfaces (washing of hands, pot, cups, and vessels, Mark 7:2-4), Jesus' concern is with the internal and the heart:
Mark 7:15
There is nothing which by going into a man can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.
Conclusion:
According to Jesus, purity does not reside on the lips or hands, but in the heart; purity is measured by the keeping of the Law of Christ (Mark 12:29-31), not the traditional "fences" of men. Alternately, pollution (or dirt) comes not by violation of washing or dietary rules, which deal only with surfaces, but with sin and vice which come from within - from the heart. "All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man" (Mark 7:23).
Jesus is not abrogating the idea of purity when he violates the rules of Jewish purity. On the contrary, Jesus is reforming the rules of purity current in his day, offering his interpretation of what God wants and what makes one truly whole, clean, and holy. The final irony is that death, the ultimate pollution to Jews, serves as the very source of purity for Jesus' followers!
Without this purity reversal, the Great Commission would never be possible. This new inclusiveness is evident in the parable of the sower in Mark 4:3-9, where the sower throws seed in the most improbable places: on the path, on the rocks, and among thorns. No pre-judgment is made on potential membership in God’s covenant community on the basis of ethnic status or purity rating.
As Christians, we must stop making purity "fences" like the Pharisees and labeling external actions and behaviors as dirty or impure. We must instead embrace the purity reform of Jesus and start seeing purity as a matter of the heart. The Law of Christ (loving others as our self) is our new purity boundary!
Mary Douglas, in her book Purity and Danger, states, "The process of ordering a sociocultural system was called 'purity', in contrast to 'pollution,' which stands for the violation of the classification system, its lines, and boundaries. The term 'purity' became a jargon word for the general principle that all peoples tend to structure their worlds according to some system of order and classification."
In the Gospels, Jesus appears out of place - dealing with people he should avoid, doing unconventional things, and not observing customs. He openly challenges the Jewish purity system and appears to reform, and even reverse it, in favor of His own system (the Law of Christ).
So, what is purity?
Purity is best understood in terms of its binary opposite - pollution or dirt. When something is out of place or when it violates the classification system in which it is set, it becomes 'dirt'. A farmer working in his field is covered with dust and chaff, his shoes caked with mud and dung. This is appropriate to the outdoors work of farming during the day; it is what is expected of fields and barns. But should that farmer come inside after the day's work, wearing those same dirt-covered overalls and those same dung-covered shoes, and sit in his wife's living room, his farm dirtiness, so appropriate outside, is impurity inside. The wrong thing appears in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We all draw lines in our world relative to things, persons, places, activities, and times. These lines tell us what and who belong when and where. The old saying stands true: "A place for everything and everything in its place." Because these lines help us to classify and arrange our world according to some dominant principle, they convey through their structural arrangement the abstract values of the social world of which we are a part. The Jews had their own purity maps concerning all aspects of life. I'll argue later that Jesus reversed these external-based maps and made them all internally-based (heart) instead.
If purity means clear lines and firm borders, then pollution refers to what crosses those boundaries or what resides in the margins and has no clear place in the system. A person begins in a given state of purity, but that can be lost either because they crossed a boundary and entered space more holy than they are permitted to enter or because something else less holy crossed over and entered their space. Crossing of boundaries, then, means 'dirt'.
The appropriate strategy in this type of world is defensive. What is called for is: avoidance of contact with what is either too holy or marginal or unclean (see Luke 10:31-32; Acts 10:14,28) or reinforcement of boundaries and purity concerns (see Mark 7:1-4 and the rabbis' "fences" around the Mosaic Law).
However, this is NOT what Jesus did. In the Gospels, people with ostensibly excellent purity ratings are Jesus' most dogged critics. They see Jesus crossing lines he ought not to cross and allowing people to cross into his space who ought to be kept at a distance.
Why didn't Jesus observe any of the purity rules so important to the Jews of his day?
A few examples of Jesus disregarding the Jewish purity rules in Mark's gospel:
1. Jesus came in contact with unclean people: he voluntarily touched a leper (Mark 1:41); he took a corpse by the hand (Mark 5:41).
2. He was touched by a menstruating woman (Mark 5:24-28).
3. Jesus called a public sinner to be an intimate follower (Mark 2:13-14).
4. Jesus traveled extensively in Gentile territory, crossing boundaries he ought not to cross and exposing himself to pollution on every side (Mark 7:31).
5. Jesus regularly was in contact with the possessed, the blind, the lame, and the deaf - all figures who are unclean in some way according to Leviticus 21:16-24.
7. Jesus seems not to have guarded his bodily orifices or their emissions in ways that befit purity-minded people. He applied spit to the eyes on a blind man (Mark 8:23) and to the tongue of a mute (Mark 7:33)!
8. He broke one of the strictest purity laws in Israel as he disregarded all dietary restrictions (Mark 7:19).
9. Jesus didn't observe the purity rules of time which structured Jewish life. His disciples plucked grain on the Sabbath, "doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath" (Mark 2:24) and Jesus himself healed on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1-6).
It is no wonder the Pharisees regraded Jesus the way they did. They saw him with a very low purity rating.
However, Jesus is vindicated as a supremely pure and holy figure in God's eyes:
1. In touching the leper, Jesus is not made unclean; rather he proclaims cleanness: "'Be clean.' And immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean" (Mark 1:41).
2. In dealing with the paralytic, Jesus cleansed the man of his sins ("Your sins are forgiven," Mark 2:5), as well as his paralysis (Mark 2:11). Jesus made him both whole and pure.
3. In calling Levi as a disciple and in eating with sinners, Jesus acts precisely as one who restores wholeness and cleanness to God's people - he is their "physician": "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mark 2:17).
4. In transgressing Sabbath laws, he provided food for the hungry (Mark 2:23-28) and wholeness for a man with a withered limb (Mark 3:1-6).
5. The menstruating woman who touched Jesus is healed of her hemorrhage.
6. The corpses which Jesus touched are made alive again.
7. The blind man and the mute man upon whom Jesus put his spit are restored to sight and speech respectively.
Whereas the Jews concern is with externals and surfaces (washing of hands, pot, cups, and vessels, Mark 7:2-4), Jesus' concern is with the internal and the heart:
Mark 7:15
There is nothing which by going into a man can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.
Conclusion:
According to Jesus, purity does not reside on the lips or hands, but in the heart; purity is measured by the keeping of the Law of Christ (Mark 12:29-31), not the traditional "fences" of men. Alternately, pollution (or dirt) comes not by violation of washing or dietary rules, which deal only with surfaces, but with sin and vice which come from within - from the heart. "All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man" (Mark 7:23).
Jesus is not abrogating the idea of purity when he violates the rules of Jewish purity. On the contrary, Jesus is reforming the rules of purity current in his day, offering his interpretation of what God wants and what makes one truly whole, clean, and holy. The final irony is that death, the ultimate pollution to Jews, serves as the very source of purity for Jesus' followers!
Without this purity reversal, the Great Commission would never be possible. This new inclusiveness is evident in the parable of the sower in Mark 4:3-9, where the sower throws seed in the most improbable places: on the path, on the rocks, and among thorns. No pre-judgment is made on potential membership in God’s covenant community on the basis of ethnic status or purity rating.
As Christians, we must stop making purity "fences" like the Pharisees and labeling external actions and behaviors as dirty or impure. We must instead embrace the purity reform of Jesus and start seeing purity as a matter of the heart. The Law of Christ (loving others as our self) is our new purity boundary!
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