Well, what makes someone spiritually dirty?

This is an important question and one borne out of our Bible reading together,

specifically in three Bible texts that a female listener to the podcast named Ivy is trying to put together and understand herself.

A text coming up for us and are reading soon.

Ivy writes this,

Pastor John, I never saw this connection until it was put together in the span of one week in

the Navigator's Bible reading plan. In Leviticus 5-2, in Leviticus 7 versus 19 to 21,

we read that touching unclean things makes one unclean. But Jesus completely changes this. He later

says it is what comes out of us that makes us unclean. He says this in Matthew 15, 18 to 20.

I'm trying to put myself in a first century Jewish mindset that was conditioned to think about clean

and unclean things, what to touch and what not to touch.

This seems like a radical change.

Uncleanness is born inside of us.

What caused such a major turnaround here

in what seems to be a fundamental redefinition of evil?

I think this question is an example of making right observations

from the Bible, but drawing from them a wrong conclusion. Sorry about that. Let me see if I could

gently nudge a correction.

It is right to observe that in the Old Testament there are laws against touching or eating certain things because they are ceremonially unclean.

For example, if you touch a carcass, then you become unclean until the evening, Leviticus 11,

or every animal that parts the hoof but is not cloven-footed or does not chew the cod is unclean for you. Everyone who touches them

shall be unclean, Leviticus 11 again. So there is such a thing in the Old Testament as external ceremonial

...