Filth is the Path to Clean

I am a sucker for people who are willing to get down and be dirty in their writing. The world is not clean no matter how much we and Haze Motes wishes to deny it. It does not matter how we try to be clean, whether that is in our "good" deeds of atonement or whether we try to eliminate the concepts of "good" and "evil" altogether (Nietzsche); the fact remains that we are not clean.

The Puritans knew this. The Puritans believed that one had to go through the muck of one's soul (thus their heavy preaching on sin and damnation) in order to be able to appreciate the grace of God that Christ was to clothe you with. This process was known as "justification" (not in the sense that is used today) and was a personal Odyssey to discover one's sinfulness in order to embrace God's forgiveness.

Only the filthy can be made clean. Haze Motes believed that he could be clean and never deal with his filth. Not surprisingly, O'Connor uses the images of mud and pigs (Prodigal Son in the pig trough anyone?) to emphasize just how messy the situation really is. Haze Motes knows he is not clean but dealing with his filth is too much for him; he would rather A) deny it or B) attempt to atone for it. What is sad is that Haze Motes will never be clean following either method; he will forever be in denial or seek to atone for his sin. He does not ever accept grace.

Grace cannot be accepted without the acknowledgment of sin, of filth. Otherwise, the human heart never bows to reality of what it has fallen from: the imago dei, the image of God. In the image of God is the contemplation, adoration, and communion with God. Haze Motes, like so many of us, do not want to have anything to do with God relationally; we want what he offers and his benefits...but we do not want him. Haze wants to be clean, but aside from restore communion with I AM, he will never be clean. His statement; "I AM clean!" is not just an adamant declaration but indirect revelation of truth: I AM clean; or I AM is clean.

Since Haze refuses to bow and seek grace from I AM clean, he will never be clean. God's grace through restored communion with the Trinity is the only way to be clean; the imputed and undisputed righteousness of the God-man Jesus Christ, Son of Man, Son of David, Son of God. Haze's attempt to have "The Church without Christ" is fundamentally flawed: there is not reason for the Church to exist without Christ. The failure of modernist, liberal Christianity is that it removed Jesus Christ from the Church and attempted to pronounce everyone clean by denying that anyone was dirty. Haze incapsulizes modernist, liberal Christianity except that unlike most "soft-hearted" liberals, Haze is in your face and not allowing you to escape the absurdity of what he is saying. It is almost as if in his pronouncements of cleanliness that he is daring someone to stand up and say, "No, you are wrong! There is good, there is evil; we are all unclean!" If he could find this one prophet left who had the same amount of passion for Christ as he had against Christ; he might believe.

But he would have to be convinced he was unclean.

Then, when he comes to grips with the fact that he is unclean; he does not seek out grace and restoration with God. Instead he goes about the task of atoning for his sin and basically keeping God off of his back. Throughout the novel, God is seeking Haze even in the midst of Haze's denials: first of sin and then of grace. Once he recognizes that he is unclean, he does what Judas did when he betrayed Christ...the straight-laced, upstanding man who "believed" in Christ goes and hangs himself. Haze Motes would never just kill himself, but instead he goes about acts of horrific mortification in order to become clean...Judas thought that he would be clean by hanging himself with remorse, Haze thinks he will be clean by blinding himself, filling his shoes with rocks, and wrapping barbed wire around his body.

You can't just acknowledge you are dirty, you also have to acknowledge that you can't make yourself clean.

Only Christ can make us clean. Our filth is a reminder of our need for God; to make the world a place governed by fake goodness and morality, robs us of the reminders that we are fallen, broken, and that what we most desperately need is the grace of God. We must beware of making the Gospel a strictly moral affair about becoming a better person; instead we must emphasize the grace of in spite of our brokeness and our uncleanness.

So, bring on the pig sty; bring on the mud; bring on the filth.

Christ will make us all clean who trust and love him.