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Purity, Rules and Allergies
By: hawkgrrrl
Childhood allergies like hay fever are linked to an absence of contact with fecal matter in their early years. In other words, their houses were too clean for them to develop immunity. When antibodies have no real threats to fight off, they’ll pick the next best thing – dust, pet dander, and pollen. For some reason, I think it would make my mother proud that my hay fever is a byproduct of her obsessive cleanliness. Perhaps this phenomenon also explains why Mormons are prone to creating extra rules on top of our already high standards. Let me explain.
One of Jonathan Haidt’s 5 moral foundations is Purity. An example of a purity violation from another culture is the use of the left hand. In many Muslim and Hindu cultures, the left hand is considered impure. People do not touch others with their left hand or use their left hand for retrieving food from communal bowls. The left hand is used for washing oneself in the toilet, hence its association with impurity.
Many multi-cultural and multi-religious societies don’t have as many clear cut purity prohibitions that are obvious to us, but we do have them. In fact, Seinfeld plumbs them for comedic effect routinely throughout the series. You may remember a few of these:
- George Costanza takes an art book into the bathroom at a bookstore, he is told he must buy it, and then the store won’t let him return it because it’s been flagged. (“You get your toilet book out of here, and I won’t jump over this counter and punch you in the brain!” yells the cashier.)
- George finishes a half eaten eclair he finds in the top of the garbage at someone else’s house. (“Adjacent to refuse is refuse,” Jerry explains).
- Kramer asks if he can borrow Jerry’s swim suit. (“I don’t want your…your boys down there.” Jerry whines).
- George double-dips a chip. (“That’s like putting your whole mouth right in the dip!” rages Timmy, the younger brother of George’s girlfriend).
- Jerry won’t eat pizza made by restaurateur Poppy because he sees that Poppy has not washed his hands in the restroom. (“Even if you’re not gonna soap up, at least pretend for my benefit. Turn the water on, do something,” Jerry says to George later.)
- Kramer makes a salad in the shower by installing a disposal in the drain.
- Everyone in NYC begins to eat candy and donuts with utensils to keep their hands clean. (“I am eating my dessert,” George sneers when Mr. Morgan asks what he’s doing eating a candy bar with a knife and fork. ”How do you eat it–with your hands?”)
- Elaine returns a babka with an impurity. (“You sold us a hair with a cake around it. We’d like another one.”)
- Elaine is offended that co-worker Peggy uses a seat protector in the bathroom since they are the only two women on their floor. (Jerry defends Peggy while obsessively cleaning up his own place, “Well, maybe she just practices good hygiene.” Elaine eyeballs him: ”Yeah, you’re probably right. She’s probably one of those neurotic clean freaks.”)
We often consider people who are hypersensitive to impurities to be borderline mentally ill. We call them germphobes and say they have OCD. The line between purity and impurity is often personal and may differ. My mother was always a bit of a germphobe like Jerry. She had a strong distaste for drinking from the same glass or eating food someone else (even in the family) had touched or eaten from. She has always locked the bathroom door, and she insists that house guests clean and towel dry the bath tub if they shower in it.
So what are some examples of Mormon impurities? A person is said to be pure when his or her thoughts or actions are “clean” in every way. We talk about no unclean thing being able to enter into God’s presence, and we sing a hymn about our hearts and hands being clean and pure. We also find things morally repugnant that “defile” people. When doing his research on moral foundations, Jonathan Haidt used a few scenarios to help people identify their revulsion towards impurity by removing all of the other moral objections (Harm, Fairness, Loyalty and Authority) from the scenarios. Subjects who were asked to explain why they considered the scenario objectionable had difficulty. Here are scenarios that illustrate a violation of the Purity moral foundation:
- “I have some fresh orange juice, into which I have dipped a sterilised cockroach. The roach was bought from a lab supply company, raised in a clean environment. It has been stored in alcohol, but just to be certain, I sterilised it again in an autoclave, which heats everything so much than no germs can survive. Would you drink the juice?”
- “Julie and Mark are a brother and sister who, one night on a vacation together, decide to make love. Julie is already taking birth-control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. Was it wrong for them to have sex?”
- “A family’s dog is killed by a car in front of their house. They have heard that heard that dog meat is delicious, so they cook it and eat it for dinner. Was it wrong for them to eat the dog?”
- “A man goes to the supermarket once a week and buys a dead chicken. But before cooking the chicken, he has sexual intercourse with it. Then he thoroughly cooks it and eats it. Is this morally wrong? Why?”
In Matthew 15, verse 11, the Pharisees have called Jesus on the carpet because his disciples aren’t washing their hands properly according to Jewish law before eating. Jesus says, “Not that which goeth into the mouth adefileth a man; but that which cometh out of the bmouth, this defileth a man.” No wonder Jesus was so popular with all those damn dirty hippies in the 1970s!
Food prohibitions are common purity hallmarks of religious practices. Many of them originated for safety reasons. For example, eating shellfish while wandering in the desert for 40 years with no refrigeration is a sketchy proposition. Joseph Smith introduced the Word of Wisdom in the early days of the church, and Bushman theorizes this is so that members would purge their minds and bodies to make themselves pure vessels ready to receive revelation. During prohibition, women involved in the temperance movement used to say, “Lips that touch wine will not touch mine!” Keeping specific substances out of our bodies creates a feeling of purity even if those substances are not inherently harmful.
In addition to food prohibitions, many religions (including Mormonism) are obsessed with cleanliness. In Balinese Hinduism, menstruating females are prohibited from entering the temple. According to the book Mysteries of Godliness, early Mormon temple worship had a similar prohibition. And in ancient Israel, women who were menstruating were considered unclean and separated until they underwent specific post-menstrual ablutions. Likewise, there were prohibitions that involved post-coital ritual cleansing before participating in spiritual rituals. The rite of baptism, washings & anointing, and foot cleansing all have significance in the LDS faith. Throughout the ancient world, water figures in to ritual temple worship, also creating a purification for those who enter.
The colour white itself is viewed as a symbol of purity, both in and out of the church. White clothing in particular symbolizes purity. White shirts that are clean and pressed are somehow more pure than coloured shirts or those with rolled up sleeves for those who bless and pass the sacrament. White is worn in the temple. And the Book of Mormon conflates white skin with purity.
On the flip side, we run the risk of focusing so much on the outward appearance of purity that we lose our grip on other aspects of morality. This is what Jesus was really cautioning against. He was constantly on the hook for purity violations – hanging out with the outcasts of society, not washing his hands when eating, eating out of the same sop dish at the last supper (alright, maybe not that last one). His willingness to break purity taboos when they conflicted with other more secure moral foundations are a good example for us all.
Do we judge some sinners more harshly than others because we consider some sins more impure than others? Do we have a stronger dislike of sins that have a physical component rather than just a spiritual one? Do we more readily accept impurity that is ideological or unseen than that which is physically apparent?
- Would you be surprised to know that people are not turned away from the temple if they have a valid recommend, regardless of what they are wearing? And yet, how often are people judged harshly in ward meetings for what they wear?
- Do we judge people who smell of alcohol or cigarettes more harshly than we judge those who gossip and backbite or tattle on other members to the bishop? Yet who is doing more harm to others?
- Are sexual sins considered next to murder because they are more “icky” than other sins?
- Are tattoos and piercings associated with making the body impure and therefore considered a visible manifestation of internal sin by some?
My theory is that many Mormons are especially prone to hypersensitivity about ideological impurity because of the sanitized environment in which we intentionally live. We isolate ourselves from not only sin, but even the appearance of sin. We not only censor our own behaviour, but also censor what we watch, listen to, and often the types of people with whom we associate to the point that we have no tolerance for the stuff of life. Art majors at BYU do not use nude models. Some Mormons will go to ridiculous lengths to avoid using profanity. I met engaged Mormon girls who were unfamiliar with the basics of how sex worked. Many members won’t cook with alcohol, eat coffee ice cream, or drink herbal tea (which isn’t even tea – look at the box!). Enterprising Mormons have made a living “cleaning” up the objectionable parts of movies so that members don’t have to witness anything unseemly. In some ways, we’ve created a second Eden, empty of the growth and progress that only comes with exposure to grit – with a knowledge of both good and evil. But we’ve also been able to make sins of things that aren’t inherently sinful, like wearing flip-flops in the chapel and entering the bedroom of a person of the opposite sex.
What do you think? Does lack of exposure to life in all its gritty glory prevent or enable spiritual development? Does self-censorship lead to increased purity or just intolerance for imperfections in ourselves and others? Are Mormons the fussy arms-length Jerry Seinfeld equivalent of obsessive spirituality?
Discuss.
There were quite a few mentions of the wicked world, the ever darkening world in conference talks. In fact it was probably the most repeated “principle”.
I do not know what the wickedness referred to is?
The world I live in has never been as good. Less abuse is acceptable, more tolerence.
I see the perception that one is the righteous standout in (saving) the wicked world, is probably a variation on what you are writing about.
I think it is the GAs of Mountain west origins that see the world this way. Uchtdorf for example, does not, because he has lived in the real world and realises it is a pretty good place.
For those who partake of this vision of the ever darkening world, there is an understanding that there must have been a time when things were good and they are now detoriating. When was that, and what was better then?
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One of the problems with trying to stay clean and pure is that once you get dirty, you realize it’s not so bad. And the shame and guilt, self imposed or otherwise may not have been worth it.
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I hae always assumed that the reason murder and sex sins are more serious is because they play with the powers of life, which is outside our pay scale, not because they are “ickier.”
But I think you are right: sins we see (and smell, as in the case of alcohol or tobacco on the breath) are likely to be more harshly judged than those we cannot see (ignoring the injunction, of course, that on judgement day nothing will be hidden). I suppose those who are guilty of more hidden sins of avarice, lack of charity, gossiping, judging, and so on, may hope that they can improve before anyone notices their shortcomings. (I know I hope I can improve, but I have few illusions that other people don’t notice my shortcomings…my teenagers have been excellent at pointing them all out over the years.)
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#1 Geoff: There were quite a few mentions of the wicked world, the ever darkening world in conference talks. In fact it was probably the most repeated “principle”.
I do think this is somewhat ironic. We perceive the “outside” world as “bad” and try to make our own “germ-free microcosms”. The outside world is beautiful and doesn’t seem to me as “bad” as they are making it out to be. Examples:
- US teen pregnancy rates have decreased significantly, and there were fewer teenage mothers in 2010 than any year since 1946!
- Smoking rates have decreased. In 1997, the teenage smoking rate was 36.4%. In 2009, it was 19.5%.
- In 1988, 51% of teen girls and 60% of teenage boys had had sex. By 2010, this had decreased to 43% for girls and 42% for boys.
- In my lifetime, blacks went from segregated schools and being banned from the priesthood to having a black man as president of the United States. Similarly, people are much more accepting of others with regards to sex, orientation, diability, etc. We are more tolerant as a people.
So, I look around at all this and wonder – if things are “increasingly bad” – what does this mean? Is this barrier against the “outside world” like trying to scrub down every surface with anti-microbial soap? Is this kind of talk actually counterproductive?
I like this post and wonder if we creating more “allergies” in the Church. When people raised in this sterile environment encounter the world as young adults and realise that it’s not that bad and that it’s full of beauty and amazingly wonderful people, it seems natural that perhaps they instead turn their “antibodies” on the same environment that raised them. We are seeing an increasingly large trend of young people leaving the Church. Could this contribute to that?
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I have often wondered if some of the biblical verses pointed to as prohibitions against homosexuality aren’t really prohibitions against anal sex. An e coli infection would have been a major problem back then.
The wicked ever darkening world rhetoric concept is used similarly in politics to instill fear – see you need US to protect you so keep those votes or tithing checks coming!
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This is such an interesting comparison, hawkgrrrl! So if I have the analogy right, you would say we have some kind of an ideological immune system, and we need to declare things unclean, right? Sorry if I’m overstretching the analogy. But it kind of makes sense that we have to find something impure that we can reject. So you’re saying that if we don’t come across really evil stuff, like a frustrated immune system having a fit over unimportant stuff, we will have a fit over fairly minor stuff.
It works for me. Nice post!
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A 2012 study shows “a positive relationship between disgust sensitivity and political conservatism”…”contamination disgust was strongly correlated with conservatism”. A 2010 study found “disgust is part of a ‘behavioral immune system’ that promotes socially conservative value systems and can lead to increased negative attitudes toward outgroups” such as homosexuals. A 2008 study found “disgust can increase the severity of moral judgments” and “chronic and contextually aroused feelings of vulnerability to disease motivate negative reactions to foreign peoples” Another 2008 study found the link between disgust and politics was clearest on “purity-related issues — specifically abortion and gay marriage”. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/24/disgust-breeding-conservatism
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As a doctor, sometimes I feel thrust into this grey area of LDSism. Because you’re a doctor or training to be a doctor, it is not considered a bad thing? But if it is acceptable for a doctor (or nurse, or nurse practioner, or x-ray tech) then the ability of others to do the same actions without committing a “purity violation” exists.
For instance:
We were expected to examine each other’s ‘private areas’ in intersexed groups of 4 in physical exam class. (BYU art class resonance?)
We were expected to sleep in the same call rooms with members of the opposite sex during medical school and residency–if you were lucky enough to sleep. In fact, when you had a rare chance to sleep, you had to sleep where you oould, and rotated turns on a bed–sheets not being changed between users.
It is acceptable under appropriate conditions to put our fingers into all orifices of a patient’s body.
Examinations of unexposed, though properly draped body parts is acceptable.
In the urology clinic, examining male patients to assess the affect of erection-producing treatments is acceptable.
We guide patient’s through that grey area of abortions that are not prohibited by the church handbook.
Choosing a job where Sunday work is required is considered noble.
Acknowledging homosexuality/homosexual relationships and their impact on why a patient is there to receive of your career skills is expected.
I remember my career being discussed at a YSA activity I attended and hearing a LDS girl say she ‘could never marry a doctor because….’ and named one of the things that is in the above list. Yet I suspect when she got married and gave birth to a child, she was treated by a doctor and that protected special status for doctors in her mind shielded her from committing a ‘purity violation’.
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Google ‘Pussy Riot’ and grit your teeth at what the links indicated this gaggle of Russian ‘artists’ have been up to. No wonder the Russian authorities jailed them for “Hooliganism”.
So, to avoid childhood asthma, let the toddler play with his feces? Interesting theory!
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Hawkgrrrl,
I feel the need to say that I am listening, reading, thinking and engaging, but feel constrained against posting at this time. I have written a few thoughts down, which may turn into its own post, but not coherently enough to respond yet. This post and discussion has triggered some emotionally and spiritually visceral respinses, adn I am trying to find ways to translate them into words. Thank you for the topic, and the Spiritual experiences coming to be because I am attempting to turn the Spiritual lesson into something that could be conveyed to another with words.
For now I will just say that Christ is the opposite of the physical/spiritual prudeness that is found too often in the people who claim to follow Him. There is no way you can mourn with those that mourn, without having your spirit entangled with that of another.
(If I do figure out how to put it into words, I will post the link here, since I think it will be rather too long for a comment. Or I can email it to you and see if you think the community in general might find value in sorting through the messiness.)
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That is an excellent set of thoughts Hawk.
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There are infectious pathogens that interact with hosts in complex ways, and then there is intake of heavy metals such as mercury and lead, which don’t do anything good, that accumulate in the body with every exposure, and whose harm is amplified by malnutrition. Alas, the trickiness of analogy when lacking a rational mapping to prefer one metaphor model over another.
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My mom grew up on a farm and has hay fever. I didn’t have hay fever as a child, but I do now. I wouldn’t call my mom, myself, or my wife excessively cleanly, though my wife and my mom are much more germophobes than me.
I like the analogy, but it isn’t perfect.
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The analogy, like most, isn’t perfect, but it’s an astute observation. In particular, in raising children, especially when they hit adolesence, it’s tough to let them do things on their own and have to trust, but what alternative is there in facilitating their maturation? Case in point, a minor anecdote but part of the typical “travails” in being a single dad to a girl in middle school. The kid joins me in watching a “Family Guy” episode. Yeah, if she weren’t interested at all, that’d be quite alright, but the kid likes the show, and I know she’s seen episodes when I wasn’t around to supervise. And yes, it’s pretty much NOT what her young women’s leader recommend for entertainment. So, do I shoo her off, or change the channel? Nah…I let her watch it with me…but not without making commentary, insofar as the freqeunt sexual (and often very gay) innuedos and blasphemy are concerned. I can’t necessarily prevent exposure of these things to her until she’s 18, and I don’t want a naive young adult who’s not the least bit tested in what values she has.
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I found that once I stopped worrying about what was pure and wasn’t, I became a lot more relaxed. (Full disclosure – I’m an agnostic who was raised in a strict Mormon family) For example, when I stopped thinking of alcohol as a sin, I ended up developing a “take it or leave it” attitude – I didn’t have to feel guilty or ashamed about trying something and I also didn’t feel the urge to over-indulge.
I think it all comes down to mindset – if you are so obsessed with labeling something as a sin, then you will develop a hypersensitivity, usually in the form of obsessing about something that has been denied.
Anyway, that’s my two cents, take it or leave it.
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Hawkgrrrl -
I did end up responding to this post with a post on my personal blog. Considering how long it turned out, it wouldn’t have been appropriate as a comment here, and I think that “Sarah,” the young woman who allowed me to tell some of her story wouldn’t have been comfortable with it being on a larger blog.
I thought you might be interested in the post, since it was spurred by the thoughts that came from this post and the discussions. You can read it here: http://www.poetrysansonions.com/2012/10/my-mormon-perspective-my-dream-for.html?m=0
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