GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 7:19
Toilet Training
Every parent has the experience of a baby moving from the diaper to the toilet—a phase known in parenting as “toilet training.” A survey revealed that over 60 recent parenting books discussing toilet training. Some of the more interesting titles include “Potty Training in 3 Days,”
“Ready, Set, Go!” and “A Potty for Me!” The parenting book list dealing with toilet training includes over 25 picture books and children’s stories. The long list of books dealing with this subject indicates it’s important for parents.
Where in the world is all this going with an exegesis of Mark’s gospel? Well, when translating Jesus’ explanation to his disciples about his lesson to the crowd after answering the criticism of the Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem about his disciples eating without the traditional handwashing, he said, “Because it [food] does not enter his heart, but into his stomach and goes out into the toilet.’ Thus he declared all food clean.” (Mark 7:19) Translators have difficulty finding a good word for “toilet.” In various translations, the word is changed to “eliminated,” “draught” (KJV), “sewer,” or “drain,” among others.
The word Mark used is a compound word combining “from” and “a place of sitting,” and the best English equivalent is either “latrine” or “toilet.” These words are perhaps too… what? … graphic, so translators indulge in some circumlocution, finding gentler words.
Jesus’ lesson to his disciples, of course, was that eaten food does not defile a man because it does not go into the heart—the center of man’s motivation, his presuppositions, but ends in the toilet. So the Pharisees and scribes were focusing on the wrong issue—what ends up in the heart is much more important than what ends up in the toilet. It may be stretching the point here to say that Jesus was indulging in a little “toilet training” with his disciples, but his lesson is still true spiritually speaking—the focus should be on what enters the heart, not on what enters the toilet.
Previous
Next
Directory