Richard Beck recently wrote a long series on Purity and Defilement over on his blog, Experimental Theology. One post – one a while ago, actually – spoke about the reason why often much theological argument is doomed to failure:

Disgust is very different from anger…You can teach a young child to feel disgust at a substance–by strong parental reactions and other forms of psychological influence. Imagine, however, trying to convince someone who is not disgusted by a bat that bats are in fact disgusting. There are no publicly articulable reasons to be given that would make the dialogue a real piece of persuasion. All you could do would be to depict at some length the alleged properties of bats, trying to bring out some connection, some echo with what the interlocutor already finds disgusting: the wet greedy mouth, the rodentlike body. But if the person didn’t find those things disgusting, that’s that.

A similar analysis holds in the church. If the felt experiences of the divine (and, by definition, the profane) differs within the church then these groups will be at an impasse, literally dumbfounded by their inability to find common ground. One group finds the word “crap” intensely offensive. Others don’t. And, as Nussbaum notes, that’s that.

What I’m saying, in a strong form, is that if our experience of the divine is regulated by disgust psychology then our conversations about God, sin and holiness are being torpedoed at some deep level. A dumbfounding is occurring. Consequently, conversations about God are inherently difficult because the logic of the divine is being regulated by emotion rather than logic. I think people in the churches have always know this. I’m just trying to illuminate the mechanics or, rather, identifying the monkeywrench that keeps jamming up the gears.

So, we have difficulty having conversations about God, because we find the implications of each others’ theologies disgusting. And that’s that. It won’t change. It’s a basic, psychological reaction. So I’m dumbfounded by how you can believe what you believes. And you’re dumbfounded that I’m not moved by your arguments. But the reason is that we don’t believe because of our arguments: We believe what we believe based on our disgust psychology, and justify it with our arguments.

But that’s not the purpose of Beck’s series: His point is that Christianity’s goal is to overcome our disgust psychology. It’s about mixing with sinners, lepers, and tax collectors.

So the implication is that part of our responsibility as Christians is to overcome the barriers within theologies; barriers not brought on by disagreements of argument (although it seems that way), but rather brought on my basic differences in the perception of cleanliness. We are to show hospitality to those who disagree with us theologically, just as we are to show hospitality to strangers and sinners and the unclean. And hospitality, not just in the sense of welcoming into our homes, but in the sense of accepting who they are and that they seem unclean to us, and not enforcing change.

I’ve never had a host I’d considered hospitable, end the night by forcing me to change my mind.