Tag Archives: clean

Decontextualize

Decontextualize: (v) to remove from a context

Water.

What do we use it for?

  • We drink it.
  • We swim in it.
  • We clean with it.

Very simple.

This is the context for water.

So the young prophet shows up at the river and he wants to use the water to baptize people. Why?

Because it’s something we drink, we swim in it and it cleans us.

The context is clear.  Water is a symbol of life, joy and cleanliness.

What a great way to communicate a transition in our beings. Take us into the water, let us promise good things, let us believe better things. Then splash us beneath the deep and rise us up—cleansed.

Could anything be more beautiful than that?

Does it matter how the water is used?

Does the top of my head have to get wet?

How about my hip bones?

Is it less significant if my kneecaps remain dry?

Since we understand the context of water bringing life, joy and cleanliness, why must we decontextualize by insisting the style in which we enact this ritual is more important than the expression itself?

How shall we take our communion?

Should we use wine or grape juice?

How can we take the symbolism of the body and blood of Christ and trivialize it down to grocery store concerns?

Are you saved?

How do you know?

Did you confess?

Did you come to it on your own?

Did you do it in church?

Did you do it in public?

Do any of these things matter?

Is it necessary to take the context of something beautiful and change it to a complexity and make it nearly inaccessible?

How do you know when you’ve found something pure?

That’s easy.

When no one needs to explain it to you.

 

Clean

Clean: (adj) uncontaminated and pure; innocent.

I didn’t take my first shower until I was in junior high school.

Our house had a bathtub. I remember, as a boy, sitting in that tub until my skin started to prune up. This told me two things: first, I had been in the water too long. But secondly, there was a chance I was clean.

But the first time I stepped into that shower after junior high school football practice, I realized I had never gotten the back of my neck clean sitting in that tub.

Matter of fact, a friend standing nearby, who should have been minding his own business, saw that there were little streams of dirt flowing down my backside.

He thought this was hilarious.

Being one who liked to share his joy, he pointed it out to all the nearby fellows showering. I was embarrassed.

I tried to explain that I was a bather, not a “shower-er,” but that sounded even worse.

I scrubbed the back of my neck the very best I could, went out, changed clothes and left as quickly as possible.

I grew up a lot that one afternoon, because I realized that just because we think we’re clean doesn’t mean that every place on us–or in us–has been cleansed.

Sometimes it takes a shower hitting us at just the right place to expose hidden dirt.

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