Would you drink a glass if wine if you knew it had a drop of urine in it?
In his book Unclean, Richard Beck played with questions like this. He examined a variety of psychological experiments that showed the majority of people answered no to such a question. This is the idea of “negativity dominance” – once something is corrupted, it is forever corrupted. He then connects it to the work of Jesus. Religious purity laws rest in negativity dominance as the unclean thing corrupts the clean. Jesus reverses it, sending his purity into others and cleansing them. The combination of psychological insights with practical spiritual and theological ideas makes this book a must read.
