Fade to Grey

“And if you follow me, you’ll see all the black and white fade to grey.”   -Jars of Clay, from the Song, “Fade to Grey”

“The perception that divides you from her
Is a lie
For some reason we never asked why
This is not a black and white world
You can’t afford to believe in your side
This is not a black and white world
To be alive
I say the colors must swirl
And I believe
That maybe today
We will all get to appreciate
The beauty of gray”  –From the Live song, “Beauty of Gray”

There was something very interesting that’s come up in my mind and in my noting back in forth in the last couple of days I want to address.

This is another of the important differences between Christianity and secular worldviews.  There was an anonymous note on my last entry that basically stated that religion is, “Black or white by definition.”  I want to talk about that just a little bit, because it’s an interesting and somewhat ironic charge.  Again, there is critical information missing from this view that we need to be appraised of to decide rightly.

The noter didn’t leave any reason why they thought that way, but I can assume that the claim will be the same one made over and over about ‘religious people.’  That we don’t flex, that we live in an unrealistic world, and that we don’t offer and mercy for people who live in a world that isn’t so clearly defined.  In other words, because we have a moral view that doesn’t allow for much give, we must therefore be somehow out of touch.  From that viewpoint, there may be some merit.  I’m not really qualified to judge that view and speak for it.  If someone wants to take up that cause, I’d be interested to hear how that conclusion can be reached.

I can tell you about my Christian faith.  Let me tell you what the only black and white thing I know is:  people are sinners.  That much is not up for debate.  The rest of it, to my way of thinking, is all shades of gray.  Once we label all people sinners, absolutely, everything else changes.  Sin, from the human perspective is not an issue of black and white.  Christians are constantly combating the absolutes.  For example, the Bible teaches to hate sin and love the sinner.  How in the world does one accomplish that.  It’s trite and simple to say that we need to distinguish between people and actions, but that’s not easy:  many people identify themselves by what they do, not who they are.  So, we are forced to reconcile our definitions to the gray.  Then it comes to the issue of how we, as Christians, deal with issues like abortion.  Contrary to popular belief, there is no explicit biblical teaching on abortion.  There are plenty of teachings on murder, but none on abortion.  So, that issue is a gray area.  It is an informed gray area, but it’s gray, never the less.  Christians have to go to their Bible’s and try to figure out how in the heck they deal with issues like this.  Stem cell research, which may very well be the end of disease as we currently think about it, is another issue.  Cloning.  All of these issues are issues which do not come up in the Bible.  When you start talking about the raw, unimaginable power involved in such issues, there is serious repercussions you have to deal with as a Christian, and they are all about discerning shades of gray.  There is no black and white.  We see that the view that Christianity is a black and white proposition is faulty.  Now, that is different than saying it is all or nothing, because whole hearted devotion to Christianity is one of the calls on the Christian, but even that is gray, because what devotion looks like is highly individual.  Even with interpretation of the Bible, you will see some variation between members of the same schools, because they have discerned differently the shades of gray in the issue.

I’m going to suggest a theory here, and we can see how we feel about it.  Is it possible that the reason this charge comes up is because Christianity sees clear distinction in areas where secular culture does not, and vica versa?  It strikes me that this is what is going on.  I have no problem acknowledging that Christians see clear distinctions in areas where others may not.  But that is not the same thing as being black or white.  Part of what I think is beautiful about Christian doctrine and theology is that I think it discerns rightly those areas which we need to be careful about how we view.  Murder being wrong?  I’m willing to always call that wrong.  Subjective ethics (or, if you will, ethics that depend on the situation) does not make that distinction. Stealing is always wrong from a Christian view.  That same isn’t true of situational ethics.  The “what if you had to steal expensive drugs in order to save your family” question that always arises here to purportedly support subjective ethics doesn’t hold much water with me, because the question has no consideration for anything outside the person who is deciding to steal.  What about the man who owns the Drug store and is trying to pay off the mortgage?  What does he do about this?  What about the drugs that the man steals?  What if they are heading to someone who needs them even more desperately than him the next day?  What then? In addition, the question implies that there is a black and white–namely that stealing is better than the death of a loved one.  While I am sympathetic to the situation, the question doesn’t particularly endear me to subjective ethics.  It is a selfish question, and it is a question which infers an objective ethic in order to pose the question.

Anyways, I think what we’re dealing with here, once again, is a difference in priority and definition.  Christianity is no more black and white than anything else.  It just discriminates differently between what the black and white issues are.  Have a good one, folks.