“Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater” is good advice about a lot of things, not just about bathing babies.
The point of the saying is that in caring for the baby we shouldn’t confuse the baby with the dirt that may have accumulated on him/her.
When good Pope John XXIII announced his intention to convoke an ecumenical council he had used a somewhat similar metaphor, about cleaning a great painting so that its original beauty could better be seen, for assuring Christians worried about possible changes in the Church.
In our modern world, polarized in many aspects, similar concerns, unease, and challenges are facing us.
On the one hand, we don’t want to leave the baby dirtied or the great painting encrusted with accumulated grime and retouching—but on the other hand, we don’t want to endanger either the baby or the painting.
The reality of life is that babies do get dirtied and need to be bathed—and great works of art sometime do require a delicate cleansing.
Remember when Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel were cleansed and restored? Some in the art world were shocked by the boldness of the original colors he had used, since they were so accustomed to seeing them through the pre-restoration accumulations of grime.
When it comes to babies, the matter is more complicated. Babies are living beings; that means they grow, changing and developing. If we want to have them always as they once were, we are denying them life, since life involves change and development.
Resistance to change may preserve something valued in the past, but also it may preclude growth and, perhaps, betterment and progress.
The challenge is about discernment. Are we cleansing the accumulated disfigurement over time that needs to be washed away? Or, are we confusing accretions with essence, altering and changing something important and vital?
For better or worse, our contemporary politics are never going to be exactly like the days of Washington, Lincoln, or Roosevelt, nor should they be. The world has changed.
For better or worse, our contemporary social customs are never going to be exactly like those of a century ago or even those we may fondly remember from our youth.
For better or worse, our religious beliefs, customs, and practices are never going to be exactly like they were before the early 20th century or the Second Vatican Council.
If we’re tempted to work for restoration, allowing for development, we really need to remember the baby/bathwater dilemma. We cannot return entirely to the past.
We have to let the living baby grow and mature, while washing away all that despoils its beauty and impedes its growth.
Part of the challenge of our aging is experiencing change in our health, fitness, appearance, ideas, and values, as well as adjusting to the continual changes in the customs, practices, priorities, ideals, and values of the society in which we live.
Do I always get it right? Do you? Of course not! It’s the very essence of a human being to be limited in every way—and also to be changing in every way.
Call it what you will—mistake, error, misjudgment, fault, sin, or even progress—it’s who we are and what we do.
God knows! (He made us this way!)
12 December 2021