Psychologically, we feel that purity and holiness is achieved by removing ourselves from the gutter and waste. This impulse also makes us want to protect God from the disgusting aspects of our bodies and existence. God needs to be quarantined. But this movement is worrisome. In the impulse to become holy we move away from the more dirty aspects of the human predicament. In light of the Incarnation, the divine moving into the grit of life, this holiness via a flight from the body seems to be pulling us in the wrong direction. The church is pulled away from life rather than toward a deeper
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