More thoughts arising, direct from brain to laptop, from PAYG. Today's reading was from Mark 7:
Then he called the crowd again and said to them, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile."
When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable.
He said to them, "Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.)
And he said, "It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person." Mark 7: 14 - 23 NRSV
Usually this is read pretty much literally, that there are no foods that can defile us, nothing that is forbidden for us to eat. Eating certain foods might leave us with stomach ache or worse, but it will not make us 'unclean'. Food, after all passes through the body, the nutrients are extracted and the waste expelled. So far, so good. But the scripture actually says 'no thing' not 'no food'. Maybe I am playing games here, but it suggests that there is nothing I can see, hear, touch, etc. that in and of itself will defile me. It seems to render 'things' somehow neutral. The potential for defilement comes from within, is a function of human propensity to sinfulness, not the objects, foods, books, films, music themselves. Is this so? It runs counter to everything I was told in Sunday School/GB/church over decades, where the message to eschew that with the potential to corrupt or defile was loud, clear and rooted in other passages of scripture.
Things are neutral - but human hearts and minds have the potential to employ or exploit those things for good or ill. This means that there is the potential for things, as an expression of human sinfulness, to be defiled. So do we have to discern what is defiled and avoid it? And if so, who decides what and how? Intuitively, I feel that some 'things' are better avoided. Some films or books will not edify; some activities are inherently destructive... I think maybe the principle here is to distinguish between 'things' and 'intent', between the neutrality of, say books as a category of things, and books that promote avarice, wickedness, licentiousness... or anything else in the list of examples quoted by Mark.
After all that, PAYG gave me what felt like a left-field shove... if we say that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, how does that relate to what we bring in? What we read? Listen to? Eat? How we care for our bodies, physically, mentally, spiritually? Way back when, as a young student in London I recall a Bible study in which we interpreted this image as meaning we needed good diet, regular exercise... and going to the dentist! The Temple needs to be looked after, but not to be worshipped.
Somewhere in all of this lies the workable middle ground that allows us to live in and enjoy the physical world of which we are part without becoming 'worldly'. Somehow we avoid legalism and the Christian ghetto, at one extreme, and lazy indifference to human sinfulness, at the other. The idea that my body remains a Temple of the Holy Spirit, a place in which God is pleased to dwell, in some measure, irrespective of the surgery scars, bits missing, and potential for undetected cancer cells, is a very precious one that cuts across any theological or social niceties about purity or defilement. Purity is not the same as perfection... there's a thought for my to ponder awhile.