theology and poop

How people talk about things often comes with a lot of cultural material they assume in the background. Most often people simply are not aware of much of the material that they are assuming when they begin to create societies and new knowledge and insights about the world. As human beings who literally construct the world around us as no other known species does with the same intensity and scale, we have to do so with assumed values and systems of knowledge. We mediate all of this social "stuff" through our language systems.

If you every took a vocabulary test in grade school and onward through various obligatory tests, the focus of the term's meaning is usually on its substantive meaning and how the form of that word functions in a sentence. This is what spelling bee competitions do and forms kinds of questions contestants ask to clarify what the substantive meaning of the word is. What we do not often learn, and what we are often less aware of, is the social functions of words and the role that our language plays in the construction of our social worlds.

Let's look at the word "excrement." You know…"poop." The basic Webster's definition is "waste matter discharged from the body." That's the substance of the word and there is little doubt that this is the very object to which "excrement" refers. The social function takes us to some different places. Look at your bathroom. What is in it and where is it located? What does it do? It has shower or bath, a toilet, and a sink if it is "full." (Odd that in the US we call it a "half bath" when there is no actual "bath" or shower in it.) All of these objects are there to perform a clear social role and that is to remove human waste, dirt, and debris not just out of the house, but through intricate systems where that waste decays over time in a tank underground or through a sewage system to the edge of town. (Yes, taking a bath to relax, sexual activity, etc. are newer social functions of bathrooms since hot water became a reality, but that's not why we have bathrooms either…for the most part.)

For most cultures, it is not socially acceptable to do anything with excrement other than to remove it from one's sight as fast as possible. We even cover up our tracks with a match or spray a little "Glade." While some fertilizers are made from treated human waste, like Milorganite, it no longer looks like it did when "fresh" and it now has a brand and different chemical structure and so, it is no longer "excrement." Showers and sinks serve the same essential purpose of toilets since they are there to remove human waste from the home. It is for the function of putting "dirt" where it ought to be to use Mary Douglas' concept. Zizek takes this further by pointing out the ideological assumptions toilet design inherits.

However, other species use excrement for different purposes such as marking territory, covering a scent, or throwing out of sheer boredom or anxiety. People turn poop into sport not by throwing their own poop for that would offend the entire reason we have outhouses and toilets, but by tossing cow "chips." People use animal poop for fuel, recycle it for clean water, fertilizer, etc. Since it came from a different source and is in a different form, it is acceptable.

If we pull back and examine how words function in the construction of social worlds, a simple meaning like "discharged matter" takes on an entirely different set of assumed values. From those values people construct boundaries that both constitute and regulate social practices from throwing cow chips at a Texas bar-b-cue to ducking scat flung at you from a hostile monkey! We assume what is regulative because it is predictable and identities can be constructed and weaved into societies that way. Language mediates this kind of process in the ways we build our social worlds. Thus "excrement" becomes "poop", "crap", "shit", "dump", and so on with each word playing functional roles that in different contexts take on different forms – all of which refer to the basic boundary between what is acceptable, and what is abhorrent or grotesque.

Language dances on these social boundaries both constructing and regulating them. In this way language, primarily here in its relation to societies, regulates and constructs societies that each have different norms related to what boundaries are acceptable, what boundaries accepted members ought not breach, boundaries to which people must consent if they are to be a participant, etc.

Any theological discourse serves the function of constructing and/or regulating social boundaries between people and between God and all that exists within the world. Theology is reasoning about God. It is the connection between the human intellect and that which the human intellect cannot fully comprehend.

Myths serve the function of ordering societies around the relationship between sacred and profane realities which is why washing in some form or another is such a central ritual function in virtually every form of religion. When people engage in a theological discourse, they are doing something with and to social boundaries that dance on the distinction between God and the world – if there is to be any distinction at all. It simply does not matter what your conversation is; you are assuming, deconstructing, constituting, regulating, re-configuring, etc. boundaries that exist between people based on different criteria and sacred reality sometimes on the same criteria and sometimes on different criteria. Societies cannot function without boundaries, and language plays a central role in what people do with the boundaries that make these boundaries work. These boundaries go all the way down to individual identity formation and all the way up to the development of the polis and other political structures which are themselves boundaries of other sorts.

What we can do is re-work the boundaries we assume in our theology after understanding not just how they got there, but the function that they served when they were constructed, the function they now serve, and the role our language plays in relation to them. Issues over homosexuality, abortion, how to interpret the bible, who is a Christian, who will be saved, who was Jesus, what to do with science, etc. all work within and breach religious and theological boundaries that we inherit, reconfigure, reinforce, etc. at different points in our lives. However, create boundaries we must and any theology that uses the language hopeful to eliminate these boundaries is probably charting a wrong course.

So how are your various boundaries in your theological imagination holding up and why are they there? It's probably better to back up and think about that before we Christians fling shit at each other like bored or anxious monkeys.

Related posts:

1. sociology and religion, what a pair
2. functional agnosticism: a confession of sorts
3. boundaries and labels: good luck getting rid of them