This may seem like a very unladylike topic. But one thing I’ve learned living in a developing nation is that it is easy to lose all concept of propriety in your home country when you cross into a place that’s not so germ conscious as America. Poop is part of life; we really just need to accept it.Bear with me. This has a spiritual point.
I’ve been to a lot of places over here and have seen very few sanitary facilities. Public bathrooms never provide toilet paper, so I have taken to carrying scented tissues with me. Why scented? So I can cover my nose. I could go into detail, but doing so might offend your sensitivities. Lets just say it wouldn’t be a bad idea to bleach the soles of your shoes after you leave the bathroom. And never, under any circumstances, do you want to touch the wall. If you can avoid it, don’t touch the door (if there is one) to the stall (if there is one).
What might be more appalling than the state of the bathrooms here is the state of the non-bathrooms. Everyday I see several children going potty on the sidewalk, or off the curb, or even on the floors of stores or restaurants. One and two. Two gets swept up, one gets left to dry, or maybe spread around with a towel.
My recent trips to villages have been interesting too. The last few village homes I’ve stayed at had no outhouses. Villages rarely have plumbing. I’m usually grateful for an outhouse with at least one wall. But in these places, when I asked where the toilet was, they pointed to an area and said, “Find a place over there.” “Over there” is out of the way of foot traffic, but dogs and other animals roam freely back there. (One morning I was surprised when I stood up and saw a large brown cow to my right. Didn’t see her at first…) And take my word for it, dogs will eat just about anything given the opportunity.
As you can imagine, this would be germaphobe’s nightmare. Not to mention the public health department. It’s easy to criticize, or make jokes and belittle these people for their lack of attention to sanitation. I often have to swallow the criticism and remind myself that I’m here to show them Christ’s love and not belittle them with my scientific understanding of disease prevention. I repeat to myself the anti-culture-shock mantra “not bad, just different.”
But I wonder about this topic. You know, when God first brought his people out of Egypt to make a nation through which he would reveal himself to the world, he gave them a bunch of laws, some of which seem silly to us today. He told them what to eat and what not to eat. He told them how to dress themselves. To be true to scripture, all of these laws were meant to set the Israelites apart as the Lord’s, to make them clean and holy because they were his, and to remind them that he was the Lord. But if you look at some of those laws, you can see that God was teaching them how to take care of themselves.
I’m not really in a position to speak with authority on this, but I’m pretty sure if you looked at the food laws in the Old Testament, you’d find that a lot of the forbidden foods are actually bad for our health. God was instructing the Israelites on eating healthy when he told them to stay away from pork (high in cholesterol and filled with trichinosis).
And then buried in the book of Deuteronomy there’s a little bit of instruction about poop: “Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. (Deut 23:12-13)”
The reason God gives for this practice is in the next verse. He wants them to keep the camp pure because he’s planning on walking among them, and since he’s Holy, he doesn’t want to step in their… you know.
His command makes sense from a modern sanitation perspective as well. Poop goes outside the camp, away from where people are walking and kids are playing in the dirt. We’re not to go one or two on the kitchen floor, we’re to take a shovel outside the camp and do our business in a more hygienic fashion.
My point in all this is not to criticize the way people here do their business. My point is to say that God taught his people how to take care of themselves. He cared about their health and holiness. He gave them commands to help them remember who he was and how to worship him, and he gave them commands to keep their camp clean.
And now I’ll wonder out loud (in cyber space) whether the people here would have more sanitary practices if God’s Word had reached them thousands or hundreds of years ago as it did the forbears of our Western culture…
