Summarized here is the quandary. Our culture and much of our daily living is done with little to no sense of the transcendent (God). This is the working out of the thoughts and ideas that came out of the Enlightenment and the Reformation. As Charles Taylor highlights in his book The Secular Age we have gone from an enchanted world to a disenchanted one. In a disenchanted world the vertical connection to the transcendent (God) has collapsed onto our horizontal daily life.
The implications of this means that the way to please God/have a good life is found mostly in the political pursuits of justice and peace. Many of the squabbles that liberals and conservatives get into centering on peace and justice touch on five areas: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, purity/sanctity (see Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind). Conservative type folks will appeal to all five areas, especially authority, while liberal type folks will appeal mostly to harm/care. Thus when there are “moral” issues to be debated there is much that a conservative will fume over while a liberal will mostly appeal to “Is anyone being harmed?”. This often leads to all kinds of frustrating experiences for Christians especially in the life of the church. It is just darn hard to agree on just about anything. Should a Christian smoke? Drink? Cuss? What about rated R movies or engaging in sex before marriage? What about more difficult issues such as masturbation, gay marriage or homosexuality? Be ye liberal or conservative one of the modes of operation at work in figuring out the “moral” wrongness or rightness of such activities all center around disgust. Disgust plays a major role in our daily lives. We will or won’t eat certain foods, go to certain places in town, associate with certain people, touch certain things, have certain attitudes about certain body parts all based on our ideas of disgust. You might have only eaten half of the apple yet as soon as you place it in the trash it is now disgusting. We swallow our own saliva all day long. Yet as soon as we split our saliva out, even into a clean cup, it becomes something that is disgusting. Basically whatever and whoever isn’t us or outside of our tribe - it is viewed with disgust.
A similar “reasoning” happens when it comes to all kinds of moral questions that get wrapped up in issues of what is holy, divine or scared. If a preacher were to use a cuss word during a Sunday morning worship service that would be considered disgusting by some. We might not have any reason for why it is disgusting other than to say we are offended. What was said in some way or another tainted a sacred or holy space and thus it is disgusting. It is a case of reasoning following emotion. Something similar is happening in Matthew 9. The Pharisees issue with Jesus eating with sinners centers around disgust. In order to maintain one's personal purity you don’t eat with sinners. What kind of a Jewish rabbi would do this? By associating with sinners the Pharisees make the judgement that Jesus has become something less than a good right and holy rabbi. Jesus has done something disgusting and thus he is disgusting. What the Pharisees couldn’t get past is viewing people as carriers of some kind of pollution nor could they see that Jesus’ presence brought restoration. Jesus wasn’t being contaminated. He was a cleansing presence. The Pharisees thought they were able to hold onto some kind of moral high ground and look down their nose at Jesus’ behavior. They couldn’t see how in their attempt to avoid something disgusting they were denying God’s call to love mercy not sacrifice.
We might not fully understand the issues of “clean” and “unclean” in Jesus’ day yet we do know the disgust that has come our way from people “looking down their nose at us” or us doing that to others. Being “looked down on” is to view others as inferior to ourselves. We move them down a notch from fully human to something less than human. In public debates over funding for programs such as Food Stamps (SNAP) or pay for those who have filed for unemployment often turn into moments of looking down our collective noses at people who are less than. Somehow those who use SNAP are less than. Those with economic means “look down their nose” at those who are of a “lower” economic status. This happens not so much because our reasoning is clear as much as disgust is a powerful emotion.
Take for example one of Paul’s concerns in writing to the church at Corinth. Paul calls out a rift that has occurred between rich and poor. The wealthy from their social position of privilege are causing issues with the poor and thus with Paul. New Testament scholar Ben Witherington, in his book Conflict and Community in Corinth, points out that some of the wealthy members at the church in Corinth were upset with Paul for not accepting their patronage. Instead Paul worked with his own hands and supported himself. No doubt this was intentional on behalf of Paul to identify with the poor in the city and church. Paul’s refusal to accept the patronage of the wealthy and work with his hands would have been viewed as a deliberate stepping down in social rank. In a city where climbing the social ladder was a major preoccupation Paul’s action would have been considered disturbing and disgusting. Also the poor in Corinth could not afford to purchase meat. Meat was something that the wealthy could afford to eat. Often the only time the poor ate meat was while gathering at the pagan temple for various public festivals. Thus for the poor meat was something associated with a life that they had left behind to become a follower of Jesus.
The rift between rich and poor finds Paul’s strongest condemnation over how the Christians in Corinth are fellowshipping or in reality not fellowshipping during the Lord’s Supper. Jesus’ table fellowship was all inclusive. Yet the wealthy Christians are using the Lord’s Supper to exclude. The Lord’s Supper in Corinth has devolved into following Roman dinner party rules. The cultural social economic rules are simple. The rich eat with the rich and the poor with the poor. The rich get the choice foods (meat) and drink while the poor don’t. Paul calls this behavior out. Paul tells these Christians that by not examining the body they are drinking and eating to their own condemnation. Instead of following the example of Jesus they are following the cultural norms. Their fellowship is being defined by disgust not love. In other words the Lord’s Supper is the realization of a new social and political order found in rich and poor gathering equally in the name of Jesus.
All of this is to point out that the power of disgust is at operation in our lives in various ways. It is also why I enjoyed and was challenged by Richard Beck’s book Unclean. He is the one who takes the concept of disgust and walks it through our daily lives as well as into the life of church. What are we to do? If disgust is such a powerful force in our lives how can we break free? How is disgust creeping into our theology and daily lives? I like Beck’s suggestion.
The church has a built in remedy. It is the Lord’s Supper. When the church gathers and takes the Lord’s Supper is it a ritual of welcome and hospitality. Properly practiced the Lord’s Supper holds in tension insiders and outsiders. It regulates the pull of disgust that can push Christians and Churches to focus on purity to the point of thinking that like the Pharisees we believe we hold the moral high ground. The Lord’s Supper addresses the divisions of “us” v “them” and instead reminds us that God desires mercy not sacrifice.
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