Clean and Unclean - 1

I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. (Romans 14:14)

After the last time I expressed my thoughts on this passage along the line of being fully convinced, I find it interesting that I find myself feeling less than convinced the more I look at this passage. That is not an invitation for zealous Christians to assault me with the purpose of convincing me that there is nothing wrong with eating unclean meats as many want to insist. That is almost always done with the wrong spirit which would only turn me off. In fact, that is one of the reasons why Christians in general have so little success attracting both Jews and Muslims to Christianity, because they mistakenly believe that insisting that converts must eat unclean foods is a supposed sign of true “freedom” in Christ. This is highly repulsive to people from those backgrounds and blasphemes the very Spirit of the One they purport to represent.

But I am praying to know the real meaning of what this verse is trying to convey. I am not very confident that I can unpack it completely even in the very near future, but like many other beliefs that I am no longer afraid to re-examine, I am asking the Holy Spirit to give me insight and understanding about the real issues and principles underlying this statement of Paul. At the same time I do not want to become too side-tracked by the simplistic, conventional arguments typically associated with this verse.

I am beginning to notice something here. Paul is not necessarily saying that nothing is unclean at all. That is not the distinction that he seems to be trying to make here in spite of the strong insistence of many teachers and preachers. He is saying that in itself nothing is unclean. The uncleanness that he is referring to here is not a physical contamination which is inherent in something that can cause disease or death when ingested. That kind of uncleanness is very real and should not be ignored by a foolish interpretation of this text. The uncleanness that Paul is referring to here is of a spiritual, symbolic nature and was very real in the minds of people in his day, particularly the Jews.

This uncleanness was due to violations of meticulous prescriptions, laws, rules and ordinances that were both spelled out in the Old Testament writings of Moses and the added restrictions accumulated over many years of tradition put in place by the teachers and elders of Israel. Their lives had become something similar, in a way, to the superstitious lifestyles of many tribes still living today in remote parts of the earth that are steeped in demon and spirit worship. Their whole daily life is filled with rules and restrictions dictated by their superstitions that seem strange and bizarre to people outside their cultures. But these superstitions are very real and pervasive in the minds of those who have grown up within that tradition.

So too, the Jews over the centuries have pieced together a whole, elaborate system of meticulous rules and inhibitions that govern practically every detail of life in an attempt to perfect a way of life pleasing (or appeasing) to God in heaven. This system was built up around the original system of laws and prescriptions first given to the Israelites in the desert just after they were delivered by God from slavery in Egypt. As a nation, the people at that time were extremely immature and typically acted and thought like little infants. Because of this condition God needed to provide for them very restrictive and detailed rules just as parents have to do for young children, in order for them to reasonably function as part of His family and to keep them from destroying themselves and each other.

Part of the meticulous rules and detailed instructions that were given during that time were a great deal of rules regarding things that were considered good or things that were considered off limits for them. The terms used for this was clean and unclean. It was a very simplistic way of setting boundaries that are very necessary for immature individuals who are incapable of making safe decisions or thinking in adult ways. And just like the way we have to oversimplify things when dealing with immature children, God had to be very restrictive and explicit and simplistic in the way he dealt with these people who simply did not have the capacity to enter into a more mature, trusting relationship with Him at a higher level.

But just as the principles behind our rules for children outlast the rules themselves, so too the principles embodied in the clean and unclean dictates given to the Children of Israel remain valid long after the simplistic restrictions may no longer be needed. But part of our problem yet today is that if we view God's dealings with men through the lens of an authoritarian and control mentality instead of God's family model, we will come up with very confused notions of why He gave many of His instructions and what His purposes were for doing so. We will fall right into the same trap that the Jews did in the days of Jesus and Paul by clinging to the rules more that clinging to the One from where the rules originated and were given to describe.

Just as we would become distraught and terribly concerned if our grown children were still trying to live under every detail of every rule ever given to them in our home from the days of their infancy, so too, God is very disappointed when we place so much emphasis on rules that He designed to restrain and protect highly immature people until they should grow up into a more mature love relationship with His heart. But at the same time, He is also very disappointed when people try to claim that since the rules were designed primarily for children that we are now free to violate both the rules and the principles underlying those rules. That is not a sign of advanced maturity but a sign more along the lines of rebellion and insubordination. Principles are eternal in nature and God's rules are more descriptive than prescriptive. It is important to understand this distinction if we are to ever begin to grow up to a level of maturity where we can enter into a deeper level of intimacy with our Creator and Lover and Redeemer.

When Jesus came to this earth, the Jews were still deeply entrenched and absorbed in the rules designed for infant and child level maturity given by God for His chosen people. They had unwisely also added many more rules in a mistaken belief that God was more interested in performance and external “perfection” than in anything else. They had almost totally lost sight of the fact that God was more desirous of a personal connection with them at the heart level than He was in their meticulous performance and alignment with every detail of every rule ever given to them throughout their growing up years. But they refused to accept this important facet of God's desire for them and so forced God to divorce them, to relinquish them as His priority people and form a new entity from all those who would accept His offer to participate in what was called the body of Christ on earth. This new body or entity was made up of both Jews and non-Jews without discrimination based on previous distinctions prescribed in the Old Testament.

This new body of believers was to be a more mature and advanced body than just infant or child where the Jews had remained stuck. The Jewish nation had become so entrenched in a juvenile mindset that God had to let them go in order to achieve His original plan to grow up a people to a level of maturity where He could interact with them like a marriage partner. This is almost astounding even to think about but is true according to the message of the Bible. God desires to draw us into a marriage relationship with Him after getting us grown up enough and matured so that we can have a healthy, dynamic life that measures with the life of God.

It is important to have this context in place when trying to understand the issue of clean and unclean and God's purpose for instituting these restrictions in the first place. Good parents still do the same thing today with their very young children and infants. We may have extremely simplistic rules like insisting that certain things are off-limits to children simply because they are “yucky”. The child is too young to understand or grasp the complex reasons and dangers behind why they should not play with something or put it in their mouth; so parents simply make seemingly arbitrary rules about those things in order to protect them from harm until they are mature enough to understand the real reasons and they have enough self-discipline to make wise choices.

That second point is also a very important part of the mix. It is not enough to just know the deeper reasons for some arbitrary rules if one does not have the internal discipline needed for self-control and self-regulation. In order to live in a healthy society successfully, we need adults who are self-restrained, thoughtful and considerate of others, who can reason from cause to effect and can have healthy, mature interactions with those around them. One cannot have a satisfying marriage to a person who is highly immature, undisciplined and irrational. That is a very tragic relationship and is due to failure of one or both partners to mature properly before entering into this kind of relationship.

Just the same, God knows that we must mature much more and internalize the principles embodied in the rules originally given to us as immature children so that our lives will become reflective of those principles, not just complicit with the external details of simplistic rules. As the true principles are more and more internalized, the outward expressions of those principles will be seen naturally. They may vary according to taste, personality and uniqueness, but the basic principles will never change.

If I am to properly understand this issue of clean and unclean, I need to grasp the underlying principles behind those early restrictions and then understand how they should be incorporated into a mature mind and heart. Many of the teachings in the New Testament are designed for the more mature, but they can also be easily misunderstood and misapplied by anyone who has failed to mature to the level needed to relate to them properly. We must understand the eternal principles behind the rules and instructions or we can easily be deceived and thwarted from entering into the relationship that God desires us to have with Him.

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