Richard Beck - Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality

Mercy and Sacrifice

Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

Matt 9:13

Imagine spitting into a Dixie cup. After doing so, how would you feel if you were asked to drink the contents of the cup?

Admittedly, this is a bizarre hypothetical and an odd way to start a book. For this, I apologize. But the Dixie cup hypothetical is really the best place to start, as it was the trigger, the key psychological insight, which culminated in the book you now have in your hands.

When I heard Paul Rozin, the world expert on the psychology of disgust and contamination, discuss his Dixie cup research I had been puzzling over the fragility of hospitality, the psychological obstacles to what Miroslav Volf calls the will to embrace. Why do churches, ostensibly following a Messiah who broke bread with tax collectors and sinners, so often retreat into practices of exclusion and the quarantine of gated communities? Why is it so difficult to create missional churches? In seeking answers to those questions I had been thinking a great deal about Jesuss response to the Pharisees in Matthew 9. In defending his ministry of table fellowshipeating with tax collectors and sinnersJesus tells the Pharisees to go and learn what it means that God desires mercy, not sacrifice.

Why, I wondered, are mercy and sacrifice antagonistic in Matthew 9? Why is there a tension between mercy and sacrifice? Of course, this tension might only be apparent and situational, two virtues that just happened to come into conflict in this particular circumstance. But the more I pondered the biblical witness and the behavior of churches, the more convinced I became that the tensions and conflict were not accidental or situational. I concluded that there was something intrinsic to the relationship between mercy and sacrifice that inexorably and reliably brought them into conflict. Mercy and sacrifice, I suspected, were mirror images, two impulses pulling in different directions.

Despite these suspicions, I was having difficulty penetrating the dynamics that linked mercy and sacrifice and fueled the tension between them. Perhaps surprisingly, the Dixie cup hypothetical helped lead me forward. I concluded that a particular psychological dynamicdisgust psychologywas regulating the interplay between mercy and sacrifice. How so? Consider the peculiarities of the Dixie cup test. Few of us feel disgust swallowing the saliva within our mouths. We do it all the time. But the second the saliva is expelled from the body it becomes something foreign and alien. It is no longer salivait is spit . Consequently, although there seems to be little physical difference between swallowing the saliva in your mouth versus spiting it out and quickly drinking it, there is a vast psychological difference between the two acts. And disgust regulates the experience, marking the difference. We dont mind swallowing what is on the inside. But we are disgusted by swallowing something that is outside, even if that something was on the inside only a second ago.

In short, disgust is a boundary psychology. Disgust marks objects as exterior and alien. The second the saliva leaves the body and crosses the boundary of selfhood it is foul, it is exterior, it is Other. And this, I realized, is the same psychological dynamic at the heart of the conflict in Matthew 9. Specifically, how are we to draw the boundaries of exclusion and inclusion in the life of the church? Sacrificethe purity impulsemarks off a zone of holiness, admitting the clean and expelling the unclean. Mercy, by contrast, crosses those purity boundaries. Mercy blurs the distinction, bringing clean and unclean into contact. Thus the tension. One impulseholiness and purityerects boundaries, while the other impulsemercy and hospitalitycrosses and ignores those boundaries. And its very hard, and you dont have to be a rocket scientist to see this, to both erect a boundary and dismantle that boundary at the very same time. One has to choose. And as Jesus and the Pharisees make different choices in Matthew 9 there seems little by way of compromise. They stand on opposite sides of a psychological (clean versus unclean), social (inclusion versus exclusion), and theological (saints versus sinners) boundary.

In sum, the antagonism between mercy and sacrifice is psychological in nature. Our primitive understandings of both love and purity are regulated by psychological dynamics that are often incompatible. Take, for example, a popular recommendation from my childhood years. I was often told that I should hate the sin, but love the sinner. Theologically, to my young mind (and, apparently, to the adults who shared it with me), this formulation seemed clear and straightforward. However, psychologically speaking, this recommendation was extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to put into practice. As any self-reflective person knows, empathy and moral outrage tend to function at cross-purposes. In fact, some religious communities resist empathy, as any softness toward or solidarity with sinners attenuates the moral fury the group can muster. Conversely, it is extraordinarily difficult to love the sinnerto respond to people tenderly, empathically, and mercifullywhen you are full of moral anger over their behavior. Consider how many churches react to the homosexual community or to young women considering an abortion. How well do churches manage the balance between outrage and empathy in those cases? In short, theological or spiritual recommendations aimed at reconciling the competing demands of mercy and sacrifice might be psychological nonstarters. Spiritual formation efforts, while perfectly fine from a theological perspective, can flounder because the directives offered are psychologically nave, incoherent, or impossible to put into practice.

In light of this situation, one goal of this book will be to examine the events in Matthew 9 from a psychological vantage point. The goal will not be to psychoanalyze the participants in the story but to understand the psychological tensions separating Jesus from the Pharisees, the same tensions we observe in churches who take different missional paths in the world. This will be the main plot of the story I have to tell. But there will be many surprising subplots as well.

The central argument of this book is that the psychology of disgust and contamination regulates how many Christians reason with and experience notions of holiness, atonement, and sin. In a related way, the psychology of disgust and contamination also regulates social boundaries and notions of hospitality within the church. We will examine how this facet of disgustdistancing oneself from the uncleanis clearly on display in the events of Matthew 9. Finally, we will also explore how disgust and contamination psychology affect our experience of the body and soul, with a particular focus on how disgust is implicated in the scandal of the Incarnation. All in all, by the time we reach the final chapter of this book I expect many readers will be surprised at how much of the Christian experience is regulated or influenced by the psychological dynamics of disgust and contamination.

But before proceeding I would like, here at the beginning, to offer an apology for the approach used in this book. Let me start with a confession: I am not a theologian or biblical scholar. I am an experimental psychologist. Although I think Ive done my homework, theologically and exegetically speaking, at the end of the day this book leans heavily upon the discipline of psychology. But I want to be clear that this book isnt solely or even primarily intended for social scientists. This book is for the church and for those leading the church in thought, word, and deed. It is my hope that theologians, biblical scholars, church leaders, spiritual directors, and pastoral counselors will find great value (and freshness) in the psychological approach pursued in this book. But I am a bit worried as there is always the danger that an interdisciplinary approach could fall between the cracks of academic and professional specialization. To prevent that from happening let me articulate, for any who find this necessary, how I think psychology can facilitate theological and moral reflection in both the academy and the church.