This is How God Wants You to Poop (Outside)

I updated THIS chart from LNT to be theologically accurate.

Let’s talk about poop. Pooping is this totally normal thing that we do. I’m no scientist but my understanding is that after we eat food, it turns to moosh in our bodies as the healthy bits (or unhealthy bits) go into our bones and muscles and stuff. The leftover moosh builds up until we can’t take it anymore and we push it out our buttholes. We all do it. You might be doing it right now. 

Working as a backpacking guide in Colorado, I literally got paid to talk about poop. Taking a group of thirteen teenagers on a multi-day trip in the woods means they’re going to poop. It was my job to teach them how to do it responsibly. The normal range for daily pooping is from three times a day to once every three days. So let’s say the average person poops once a day. Thirteen teenagers plus four adults backpacking for five nights equals 85 poops, give or take. 

*insert Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park clip*

Nobody likes to talk about poop or pooping because of another science thingy: the psychological impulse of disgust. Once the thing — the poop — has been removed from our bodies it is other. It’s set apart and its set a part-ness makes it foul and icky. Unclean. This makes sense. Human communities are living things that must necessarily make boundaries between clean and unclean. This is good and practical. For example, you shouldn’t eat egg salad made on the back of a toilet in a truck stop bathroom. The impulse of separating clean and unclean is an ancient one. 

(SIDEBAR: This desire for purity is a good one. The danger comes when we start making distinctions between “clean” and “unclean” people. Please don’t do this. In the Gospels, we repeatedly see Jesus blurring the boundaries between clean and unclean through his table fellowship with tax collectors and prostitutes. Please do that.)

One of my favorite weird biblical texts is an obscure commandment made in Deuteronomy 23:12-14. Here, God sets the regulations for the proper method for disposing of the Israelites’ poop during a military campaign. 

"You shall have a designated area outside the camp to which you shall go. With your utensils you shall have a trowel; when you relieve yourself outside, you shall dig a hole with it and then cover up your excrement. Because the Lord your God travels along with your camp, to save you and to hand over your enemies to you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you."

These banal and mundane requirements of hygiene cloaked in theological language make practical good sense when large numbers of men are living close together in hastily-built and ill-protected conditions. In fact, modern outdoorsy-types familiar with proper Leave No Trace principles will recognize the most widely accepted LNT practice of waste disposal: the cat hole method (LNT Principle 3). For those taking notes, here’s a side-by-side comparison: 

Two out of three ain't bad. 

Although hygiene is the most obvious objective of proper poop disposal, Gerhard von Rad, Walter Brueggemann, and J.G. McConville all assert that the real underpinning behind the ancient Near Eastern Leave No Trace method is holiness. Holiness is, after all, the proper habitat of God. According to these scholars, the rules outlined in Deuteronomy 23.12-14 are determined by the cultic and ritual assumptions of primitive peoples. The cultic ritual is a precondition for Israel’s military success. 

But I'd argue that the rationale is not entirely cultic, nor is it totally about public health. It's somewhere in between. Actually, the whole reason is rather pedestrian. Let’s take a closer look at v. 14. It reads, “Because the LORD your God travels along with your camp…” Or in Hebrew: מִתְהַלֵּךְ בְקֶרֶב מַחֲנֶךָ or “God paces/walks with your camp.” See? Pedestrian. Israel must go outside the camp, dig a hole, and bury it is because God doesn’t want to step in their poop. 

What’s truly astonishing to me is that throughout the long editorial process of compiling what would become the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Israelites felt compelled to include this in their holy scriptures. The proper disposal of one's poop is enshrined forever in the 613 mitzvot. Perhaps you find it a bit nutty to consider what this ancient text and these pre-scientific people did or thought. Perhaps you fancy yourself a modern man, you're thinking, "I don't derive my ethics from ancient narratives, I get my morality from corporations like Amazon and Netflix." Yes, you're very sophisticated. 

Dismissing ancient wisdom just because you have an iPhone is insane. Instead, maybe do the work of finding principles within the Law and making application in a different setting and context? It adds flexibility to a law and allows it to find meaning when the particular circumstances of a law have changed. You can see how this can be helpful not just for pooping outside but also, for example: debt and loaning on interest, which is the paradigmatic evil in the Old Testament. 

"Literalism is the lowest form of meaning."

Or you can roll your eyes all you want at these ancient “primitives.” But I bet if we had more folks think about what they did with their poop as thoroughly as the ancient Israelites, you wouldn’t wander off into the woods at Foster Falls and find a big ol’ pile of human excrement twenty-feet away from a popular sport climb. Yes, we're very sophisticated these days.  

So next time you're out in the woods and you have to take a dump, ask yourself what would ancient Israel do? God doesn’t want to step in poo and neither should you. So please, for God’s sake, leave no trace.

Like this post? Continue to support megasplitter by subscribing to the mailchimp, commenting on, and sending the posts you like to your friends.