The Theological Significance of Eating Dirt

One of the perks of being at a research institution is the web resources--especially ECCO, or "Eighteenth Century Collections Online," which is a searchable database of 150,000 printed volumes from the eighteenth century. It's a lot of fun just to browse, discover an interesting subject, and then see if any other texts talk about it. On this particular occasion, I happened to be conducting searches for the phrases, "eating dirt" and "eat dirt."

I grant that there may be important theological issues at stake in debates which seem, prima facie, silly. As Dorothy Sayers comments, the medieval question "how many angels can stand on the head of a pin?" is actually addressing whether angelic substance, if immaterial, can have extension (i.e. if angels are spiritual, incorporeal beings, can something without a physical body really be "six feet tall?"). I have not spent a substantial amount of time researching the theological issues at stake in the eating of dirt. I did, however, glean something from some eighteenth century texts. What to do with this information, I leave the reader to ponder.

1.Eating metaphorical dirt is spiritually nourishing. In "The Church Porch" in The Temple, George Herbert admonishes, "Look on meat, think it dirt, then eat a bit/And say with all, Earth to earth I commit." Pretending to eat dirt reminds you of your own mortality and that your hope is not in this world.

2.Eating actual dirt is sinful, but God can forgive it. In Thomas Wills' The Spiritual Register (1787), there is the moving story of a child's conversion: "He came to his parents one day ... his little heart had one burden-- 'I am afraid, Sir,' said he to me one day, 'I hurt myself by eating dirt' (his appetite being depraved) 'and that our Lord will be displeased with me.' When I endeavoured to comfort him in the confidence of his pardoning grace, his little eyes glistened, and he expressed his hope that 'the Saviour would forgive him, and receive him.'" Eating dirt is a reminder of original sin, the depravity that infects even the supposedly "innocent" child, but grace can forgive it. This reminds me of when I was a child, and believed that "Take not the name of the Lord thy God in vain" meant that I shouldn't think the word "God." Much like trying not to think of "purple elephants," I kept thinking, "God, God, God" and then would immediately pray my repentance (prayers which, perhaps ironically, began, "God"). I sometimes performed such acts of contrition while on my tricycle, dutifully closing my eyes. I eventually determined, after hitting into several trees, that I should stop pedalling while I was praying.

3.In remembering that eating dirt is sinful, we should not think it is comparable to other sins, or we become deists. As expressed in both The Religious, Rational, and Moral Conduct of Matthew Tindal (1735) and Memoirs of the Society of Grub Street (1737): "the deists of this Age declare themselves of the opinion, that the most unnatural Lusts are, in Foro conscientiae [the tribunal of the conscience], no more criminal than a Child's eating of Dirt." Ironically, by upholding the sinfulness of eating dirt, we risk moral relativism. We must maintain an uneasy tension: all sin is dirty in God's eyes, but eating dirt is a less dirty sin than many others are.

4.We are responsible not simply for our own eating of dirt, but also for its eating by others. The Bible, after all, says it is better to tie a millstone around your neck than cause one of these "little ones" to sin; Ezekiel would bear the responsibility for his fellow Israelites' sins if he refused to point it out. As John Donne points out, "No man is an island," meaning not only are we not a piece of land surrounded by water, but we should not eat pieces of land surrounded by water, and when one person eats dirt, it's like we all do. In Madame Leprince de Beaumont's Dialogues for Sunday Evenings (1797), she writes: "though no earthly Judge call you to account for neglect of infants;...yet God will surely punish you....How many nurses there are ... [who] suffer the poor little baby to eat Dirt" (189). There is, then, not simply the sin of comission in the eating of dirt, but the sin of omission in failing to remove the speck in your brother's mouth.

How can we be attentive to all four of these dirt concerns? Well, if one were preaching a sermon, which I'm not, I'd tell you to remember these four points with the acronymn mnemonic, "DIRT."

Deism-avoidance: Don't pretend that unnatural lusts are only as bad as dirt-eating is.
Island, no man is: Don't pretend that you are not responsible for others' eating of dirt.
Repentance for eating dirt: Don't pretend that eating dirt isn't a bad thing.
Temple, The, by George Herbert: Do pretend that you are eating dirt when you aren't.

-Leopoldtulip