Violence and Holy Ground

In my book Unclean I discuss how purity psychology regulates the divinity dimension. If you've not read Unclean, the psychologist Richard Shweder has suggested that three main moral codes regulate human experience. One of them is the divinity code which is experienced as movement along a vertical dimension. As we move higher on this dimension we experience sacredness and holiness. As we move lower on this dimension we experience degradation, spiritual pollution and defilement.

We need the divinity dimension to have an experience of the sacred. However, my worry in Unclean is when this experience is used to exclude or harm others. My analysis in the book is that Jesus addresses this situation by conflating the sacred with acts of inclusion. When Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners in Matthew 9 he says to the Pharisees, who are standing on the outside in an act of self-quarantine, that God desires "mercy, not sacrifice." The act of mercy and embrace becomes the sacred space. And the act of exclusion becomes the source of pollution and defilement.

I was thinking about the conflation of harm, violence, care and the sacred last week. I was in Oklahoma City for a conference. One morning I walked over to the Oklahoma City National Memorial that honors and remembers those killed in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Obviously, this is a sacred space. The grounds are high on the divinity dimension. People here are quiet and reflective. Being boisterous, littering or spitting on the ground would be highly insulting. This place is holy, set apart for special care and veneration.

As I pondered this, how various peoples set apart sacred spaces, it struck me how often these places are associated with violence. The memorial in Oklahoma City is holy because 168 people were tragically killed there. And beyond that violence the memorial and museum also honors the first responders and those who worked to recover the dead. These are acts of care.

To be sure, the sacred doesn't always overlap with locations of harm, violence and care. This is a point nicely made by Jonathan Haidt in his new book The Righteous Mind. However, reflecting in Oklahoma City last week I was struck by how often we converge upon Jesus's conflation. Places become holy when the ground becomes tragically blood-soaked. That violence moves us toward the demonic and we want, in response, to move in the opposite direction, to redeem the space and lift it toward the heavens.

We seek to embrace those who were satanically excluded to stand on holy ground.