This has always been one of my favorite expressions. So ludicrous—a mom or dad washing a baby, and then looking at the bath water: “Ick…this water is dirty…” Out on the back porch and heaving away the filth, and the baby flies out, too! Ridiculous! No one would do that.
Ridiculous, and yet I suspect we all do it. I start reading a book and if don’t like it—“I’ll never read anything by that author again.” Swoosh. Or I go to a gathering and the people are not as friendly as I think they could/should be, and I make a mass judgement—“ Not coming back here.” Wash them out.
My “throwing out the baby” means I may miss out on a wonderful writer or a delightful, enriching group. Sad, even silly, but not a big deal.
But it is a big deal when people do this with Christianity.
I don’t blame them: the water is so dirty. Think of the hypocrisy of the church down the ages— the crusades, the inquisition, support of slavery, anti-Semitism, colonial rape of other cultures, racial discrimination. Add to that mess the voices of the religious right, polluted by (and polluting the world with) their judgementalism, Bible bashing, brash evangelism, lack of concern for issues of justice and the environment.
For many, the water has also been soiled by religious upbringing. Maybe in your conservative religious background you were taught that to be saved, you had to believe one certain way (the way your church preached!) or else you would go to hell. (Sorry friends and neighbors!) Or you were taught that God despises gay people. Or that your vote should be based, not on how people are treated after birth, but if they make it to birth. Or maybe as someone raised in another part of Christianity, you see the grime of church-imposed guilt, and then look at the sex abuse scandals, covered up for years by grubby church leaders.
This is hardly bath water: it is mud. Throw it out!
But what’s that squirming in all that muck?
Hose it off, and what do we find beneath the sludge?
We find the remarkable teachings of Jesus, who sums up all those Old Testament laws this way: “Love God, Love your neighbor.” Who drives the fundamentalists of his time crazy by undercutting their legalism in his use of scripture.
We see the life of Jesus as he eats with fallen women and tax collectors. We hear people calling Jesus “a glutton and a wine drinker” from his celebratory ways. We see his love for all of society’s most despised; his judgement on the religious hard-liners.
Under the mud we might uncover an early Christian movement, revolutionary during its time for its treatment of women, slaves, and the poor. Or a rich tradition of mystical practice going back centuries. Or people who called themselves Christian working tirelessly to end slavery, racial discrimination, apartheid, and imperialism.
The layers of mud on that baby are thick.
The easiest (and most efficient) thing is to throw out the baby with the bath water. But even a twinge of openness to the idea that the baby might be worth rinsing off and looking at—could be a fine gesture of open-mindedness. And who knows? We may encounter beauty in this most unexpected place.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Mary Ellen Ashcroft, Vicar of Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church.
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