So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the traditions of the elders instead of eating their food with ‘unclean’ hands?”

- Mark 7:5

This passage took me back to a time before I knew Christ, to a little bathroom at a little pub in Nanaimo, British Columbia. It was my favourite pub, and I was poised this night before the far left urinal in the men’s bathroom. At the urinal next to me swayed an inebriated stranger, hiccupping and belching politely to himself (by “next to me,” I mean two urinals down – the Laws of Urinal Dynamics are too complex to delve into here, but all men consider them as real as the Law of Gravity; Rule One states, “unless it is unavoidable, a man is not to occupy a urinal directly beside another man”). Keeping a firm gaze fixed upon the tiles in front of me (Rule Two), I finished my business, did up my button fly, and made my way calmly to the exit.

The gent turned to me (just his head, thankfully), hiccupped once more, and said “hey buddy, aren’t you going to wash your hands?”

Bathroom Etiquette and the Modern Christian

Pulling open the door, I threw him my sagest expression and intoned, “my dear sir, there are two kinds of men in this world: those who wash their hands after they pee, and those who choose not to pee on their hands.”

I didn’t invent that saying, but I sure love to use it. It’s one of the few sayings a Christian guy can get away with in a situation involving bathroom etiquette.

As I read Matthew 7:5, my mind transported me back to that bathroom in that pub, those many years ago. Forgive me this mind; things often spring to it which have no business springing anywhere. Nonetheless, I noted unmistakable parallels between my innocent bathroom encounter and the Pharisaic interpretation of God’s Law.

No, seriously.

Don't Touch That Corpse

The thing is, God’s Law wasn’t instituted as a tool of oppression; it was based on scientific principles created by God himself and unfathomable to a tribe of nomads who wandered a desert thousands of years ago. Sure, much of it dealt with issues that seem strange to us, like haircuts and clothing, but so much more was about common sense items like hygiene. God had chosen the Israelites as his people, and the best way to keep his people alive was to ensure that they didn’t give each other all sorts of disgusting infections. The Israelites knew nothing about germs and the nuances of disease transmission, but God did. Keep your hands clean and you won’t get sick. Keep your hands clean and you won’t get everybody else sick. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t touch that corpse.

But rules become ceremony; ceremony becomes ritual; ritual becomes tradition. It’s what humans do. We take something simple and try to adapt it to every situation, filling loopholes and adding subsections a through g. We take common sense and turn it into a spiral-bound document, a tool of obedience. It’s not just religion; have you ever attended a PTA meeting or been on a strata council? People like to make rules, and they love to enforce them.

Eight Thousand Simple Rules

Do these Pharisees… better, do we think that all our indiscretions, all the lousy things we say and do, are rendered irrelevant simply because we’re going through the proper motions? Can we really do whatever we want in our hearts as long as we bow in church, as long as we say the Lord’s Prayer every night? Can we go ahead and cheat on our taxes as long as we make sure the church gets its share? Is it really about what’s written down and dictated to us, or is it about our respecting the God who wrote it down in the first place?

Should we wash our hands after we pee? Or should we just not pee on our hands?

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