There’s a worldview behind everything. From the atoms that form us, to the stars shining above us, to the sharks swimming in the ocean. There’s an origin and a meaning behind it all. Even someone who believes things are created by time and chance still believe a purpose is being served.
The Origin of Disgust
I recently heard a podcast (linked below) about the emotion of disgust. There is a theory behind the purpose of it and where it comes from. In a nut shell: evolution and memes (the genetic passage of information) transferred feelings of disgust through the generations. The origin of them is impossible to know, but the idea is that at some point in human history, someone came into contact with a dead body, or a parasite, or something unclean—once there were witnesses that that person died or became sick as a result of that contact, we developed an instinct that it was bad for us. Now, we experience disgust as a way of keeping us away from those things that might make us sick or kill us. That’s the theory, anyway.
While I was listening to this podcast, something dawned on me: everything generally considered disgusting is related to sin and death.
Physical Disgust
We experience disgust when we see something dead, when we smell the waste of another person or animal, or when we taste a harmful chemical. These examples are by no means exhaustive, and clearly the sale of cigarettes shows us that not all harmful things are disgusting, but the source of disgust is clear: death.
Most people don’t want to be rude to homeless people, but some can’t help but steer clear of them. The reason so many do this is because they assume they’re dirty, and don’t want to catch a disease or become unclean. Not everyone is trying to be a bad person when they avoid homeless people. Coming into contact with diseases is a serious risk to our health. Disease can lead to death, and most people can’t fight their instincts to avoid it.
Moral Disgust
There’s another kind of disgust, too. Sometimes we find things morally disgusting.
I don’t know if something is changing culturally (it probably is), or if it’s always been this way and I just hadn’t noticed it. I’m aware of a massive increase in infidelity and unfaithfulness. For whatever reason, I didn’t realize it a few years ago, but now it’s everywhere I look. Those people who are obviously having an affair and no one’s talking about it; that girl who hooked up with someone’s husband at a music festival; that married guy who has been sending inappropriate messages to someone he’s not married to. I’ve even heard stories from barbers seeing the same guy come into their shop one day with his wife, and a few weeks later come back with his pregnant girlfriend. This may have always been a ubiquitous blemish on human society, but it seems much more prevalent today than it used to be.
The revulsion some feel toward this is similar to smelling human waste, or seeing a person decimated by a speeding bus. It can be clearly shown that sin and death are the root of disgust.
The Implications of Disgust
Even people who reject the biblical worldview will accept that a man beating a woman is disgusting. They have no standard of goodness on which to base this claim, but they have no problem claiming it nonetheless. Some things are unanimously considered disgusting.
For the wages of sin is death…
Romans 6:23 ESV
Death exists because of sin. Corpses exist because of sin. Disgust exists because of sin.
Consider this quote from C.S. Lewis:
If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.
We didn’t evolve the innate sense that death is bad—we are born with that sense. We’re born with it because we’re made in the image of God. Despite the bellicosity we have toward God from our first breath, we still retain our instinct that death is not the way it’s supposed to be. We tacitly understand that we’re made for another world and we spend our whole lives trying to get there. Through love and family, pleasure, financial security, and even the avoidance of things that disgust us. We ultimately fall short of our goal. We attempt to build our lives into a Garden of Eden, but instead we build them into the tower of Babel.
Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for sin for all who repent and trust in him. If that describes you, then you have a guaranteed place in eternity. A place (somehow) even better than the Garden of Eden. All of the things that disgust us like death, misery, and moral evil will have no place in the New Heavens and New Earth.
Click here to listen to the Stuff You Should Know episode that inspired this post