… it builds character

If you watch the commercials running on television during the daytime you might get the idea that the most pressing problem in the United States today is not the war on terror, homelessness, illiteracy, or AIDS; it is bacteria. Yes, common average everyday bacteria, molds and viruses that people like me call flora – the normal microbiota of everyday life. These poor organisms have been maligned as germs, called pathogens, and killed with everything from Lysol to phenol. Now we are doing everything possible to screen them out of existence with hepa filters on our furnaces, vacuum cleaners and air-conditioning units. Some folks are even filtering out almost every microorganism with specific air filters that run constantly and remove almost all of the particulate matter from the air.

Trouble is, humans are not designed to live in a sterile environment. Neither are other animals. About the same time HIV hit the scene in the early 1980’s people started raising animals in sterile environments to see how they would develop and to study the way their bodies would react to infectious agents for the first time. Almost immediately scientists began to discover something very interesting: Animals raised in sterile environments developed a much higher incidence of allergic and autoimmune disease.

In a country so fearful of what we cannot see the tiny terrorists are among the most deadly and repulsive. We hear about AIDS, bird flu, E. coli, and salmonella; but when someone wants to talk about the beneficial aspects of the micro world no one wants to listen. It’s just not news. In the past 25 years or so, what we observed in mice has become a fairly widely accepted scientific hypothesis in humans as well. In the United States the incidence of allergy and asthma have increased dramatically in one generation and autoimmune disease is at an all time high. We are the most pampered, protected, and proscribed society in history and yet the incidence of these diseases is on the rise?

It appears that those infections we got as children (if you are over 40) were good for you. Dad was right when he said, “ Don’t worry dear, “it” builds character in small boys”. A growing body of evidence now indicates that being exposed to a variety of infectious and commensal organisms at a young age triggers a type of immunity called TH1 immunity which, in turn primes the immune system away from an allergic phenotype. In people who are not exposed to these organisms there is a higher incidence of allergy, which is dominated by TH2 immunity. We are almost to the point of being able to identify which infections are beneficial and which are not… we may soon be able to vaccinate people against developing allergies by infecting them with mild forms of other organisms.

As strange as that sounds, I wonder how well the same concept could translate into other areas of our lives; specifically our lives in the church. Do those of us in the church protect ourselves and our children from too many things in the world around us? Would we be wiser to experience the world in small doses at the appropriate time, not to harden our hearts and minds but to prepare them to take what the world around us is going to dish out. I wonder if we were more aware of the outside world, would we be less apt to turn on people within the body? Just a thought.

To be sure, I am not advocating a complete abandonment of cleaning and disinfecting products. Nor am I saying that we should avoid the use of antibiotics and other medications that help us control the most pathogenic organisms. Certainly, there are certain people with compromised immune systems that need extra protection. What I am saying is this; there is no need to become overly obsessive with the near sterility of the world around us. As long as you (or your children) have healthy immune systems, let them play in the dirt! Turns out there is a purpose for those little buggers after all.