Ivory soap is 99 and 44/100% pure.
For 143 years this has been an established fact. Dr. Squatch might be all-natural but Ivory is pure. It’s not enough for me to give up my Irish Spring but when I walk down the soap aisle of the grocery store I look up with respect to the bar that sets the bar.
The genius of this marketing campaign is that for the average bather we recognize the importance of our soap being pure and that at 99 and 44/100% pure Ivory soap washes away all doubt of its purity.
The filthy heretic might ask, however: “Pure what?”
This is where we get into Ivory’s dirty little secret.
In 1895 Harley Procter set out to differentiate his company’s soap against other soaps being made at the time. Marketers were finding results with scientific claims and the idea of purity fit perfectly with a product that was meant to cleanse. His problem? He didn’t know how to back up his claim of purity.
Procter decided to contract out to an independent lab. Their job: to determine a scientific test to show Ivory’s purity. They came back with a definition. They decided that soap is made of fatty acids and alkides of which Ivory contained 99.44%.
That sounds good but notice the problem. The lab wasn’t contracted to discover the usefulness, the effectiveness, the types of fatty acids and alkides mixed together, the ratios of those chemicals, the benefit of a 100% mixture, or even the optimum combination of the ingredients in the soap.
They simply defined the word soap as being fatty acids and alkides and tested ivory against that artificial definition.
99 and 44/100% pure.
In marketing we call words like pure a weasel word. The quick origin story of weasel words brings us to the method that weasels use to eat eggs. They create a hole in the egg, suck the insides out, and leave the complete shell for a nesting mother to come back to and sit on none-the-wiser for what is beneath.
Weasel words are a hollowed out shell that give the illusion of value but are intrinsically empty.
Like pure.
Belgic Confession, Article 29:
The true church can be recognized if it has the following marks: The church engages in the pure preaching of the gospel; it makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them; it practices church discipline for correcting faults. In short, it governs itself according to the pure Word of God, rejecting all things contrary to it and holding Jesus Christ as the only Head.
No disrespect to de Brès but pure is a weasel word. It is not defined.
What is the “pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them”? Should there only be 12 people present? Is it okay for clergy to stand though the text indicates that Jesus was reclined? Given that it would have been Passover shouldn’t we all be using matzah for the bread? The Word of God clearly indicates that a little leaven ruins the loaf. Wine or grape juice?
How about the “pure Word of God”? Vulgata? Sinaiticus? NIV? ESV? Do we include the longer ending of Mark? Dispensational? Amillenial?
The “pure preaching of the gospel”? Which gospel? Whose articulation? Is it only penal substitutionary atonement or is it okay to occasionally refer to a little Christus Victor on Easter Sunday? Does it include an altar call? If we include a quote from Winston Churchill is that okay? Should we perform mikvah before we alude to the name of God or can we spam Yahweh with impunity now that we have been washed clean? Should we avoid wisdom texts recognizing that when one person falls it is not necessarily certain that the person next to them can lift them up? (Ecc. 4)
This is a long walk but it’s not without purpose. The dudes that I don’t Abide with are weasels selling empty eggs.
They love this word “pure” because they can define it however they want or not at all. The “pure” gospel is complementarian. The “pure” gospel is binary. The “pure” gospel doesn’t offend individual liberty (theirs, not others). The “pure” gospel is escapist in its eschatology and has no real need for temporal justice. The “pure” gospel defines love for LGBTQ+ folks in a way that these dudes would never accept if it was directed their way.
And why is this important?
Laying claim to the definition of pure is what allows them to sell their justification for discipline. Notice that tucked into the Confession the practice of church discipline for correcting faults. This is at the heart of what Abide is trying to do.
They are trying to sell discipline to folks in the middle by employing the weasel word purity.
They don’t have to define it. They simply have to imply that they have it and that we don’t.
Here’s the thing that they’ve forgotten: we have the light of truth.
We don’t have hollow eggs. We’ve got fresh eggs. You want to tell whether or not you’ve got a fresh egg? Shine a bright light on it. See what’s inside.
As we approach Synod let this be a part of our strategy: demonstrate that we’re sitting on something good here!
How? A few thoughts:
We get ourselves into trouble by appealing to much to nuance and greys. While it would be hubris to claim that we have the true definition of purity, it is false humility not to hold to our convictions strongly. No waffles with breakfast.
Show the egg. We dwell on stories of lament and the harm that is done in the name of Christ. That’s not a bad thing. The challenge: We often forget to show the life. You want to know why Abide is afraid of stories? It’s because they know if word gets out that LGBTQ+ folks are bearing fruit and that affirming churches are spreading the gospel their arguments are destroyed.
The metaphor leaves the impression that I’m calling the Abide leadership weasels. That’s not accurate. I’d also call them chickens but I couldn’t get away with both in the prose.