From Black and White to Living Color: The Purpose of This Blog

The Complicated Life of the Believer

The biblical injunction from God through the prophet Micah to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the LORD your God” seems straightforward.  However, Christians today, like Israel back then, know that it is not.  Our world is filled with complex permutations of circumstances that often cloud what “justice” should look like (hence, we have an overabundance of lawyers).  We also struggle with the difference between genuine mercy and enabling harmful behaviors.  Not to mention the fact that humility is in such short supply, even in Christian circles, as to become almost unrecognizable.  Even attempts at humility can become nothing more than photo opportunities that result in the opposite of humility, otherwise known as pride or even hypocrisy.

We live in a gray world in which we are often pleading for simple answers.  Even country music, long noted for its wrestling with sin, has gotten in on the act.  One recent hit song cries:

            I miss Mayberry; Sittin’ on the porch drinking ice cold Cherry Coke;
            Where everything is black and white.

Beyond Black and White

Unfortunately, the black and white simplicity of Mayberry or Leave it to Beaver only exists on TV.  Even Scripture reminds us of this.  One only has to look at the lives of biblical characters like Adam, Abraham, Samuel, Samson, and David – just to name a few – to see that not even Scripture proposes an easy “black and white” approach to living.  Our world is in living color.  It lives in vibrant contrasts of reflected light.  It dies in real red blood and sometimes in flesh colored agony. 

Therefore, Christian ethics begins in the gray: the murky, clouded highways filled with complicated stories of real life people in specific contexts on this journey called life.  The ends of Christian ethics are not found in the transition from gray to black and white, however.  Instead, the goal of Christian ethics is a movement through the gray and into real color-filled living.  This color-filled living takes seriously the nuances of context and circumstance.  It allows us to take into account the complex tapestry of voices – past and present – through which God continues His dynamic and vibrant -- albeit sometimes messy-- work.

Honesty demands that we admit that there are many gray areas – indeed that we live and work and minister and die “in the gray.”  The truth-filled love of Jesus Christ demands that we recognize that simplistic black and white thinking does not always do justice to the truth or to what is good and right.  The “good” and the “right” are the keystones and goals of Christian ethics.  Christian ethics is about not only getting to the results of what is good, but it also addresses how we get there: our motives, our character, our context, etc.  Living as “children of light”(I Thess. 5:5) involves allowing the light of God’s love and truth to bring into high definition clarity those circumstances that inform our decision making, so that in the end we may be consistent followers of the God who reveals Himself in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The basic tools of developing an ethical system, as well as the relationships that inform and guide our approaches to ethics as Christian ministers are the main subject matter of this blog.  Honestly confronting the “gray” areas can shed clear light upon Christian ethics as more than a set of decisions to be made and defended.  Instead, we will begin to see the heartbeat of God Himself as we allow the guiding principle of love – what can be rightly called John Wesley’s “supreme theological and ethical category” – to move us beyond the seemingly hopeless gray areas, through the simplistic and short-sighted black and white trivialities, and into the breathtaking colorful landscape of grace.

Getting There

In a manner than seeks to be rooted in Scripture and the Christian tradition, paying specific attention to the Wesleyan tradition, my goal is to first of all honestly address the gray areas.  As the late singer songwriter Rich Mullins once wrote: We are awfully small, and we are not as strong as we think we are.  That means that our simple "black and white" solutions often betray more about us than they do about the issues we are trying to fix or solve.  The demonstrate our desire to move quickly from gray to black and white, much like the movie Pleasantville, in which the characters are trapped (without realizing that they really are trapped) in a literal black and white world with strictly controlled routines and bland existence.  The two teenagers who become trapped in this world from their world of real life at first enjoy and even embrace the simplicity, but soon realize that although the world of color and complications is frightening, it is a far better way to live.  They seek to demonstrate to the inhabitants of Pleasantville that the colorful and complicated world that they fear is worth the risk.  

God has no fear of living color!  God, in fact, has given us this colorful world and has even given us a dangerous gift called freewill, with which we can either live passionately in the beauty of His love and grace, or live in darkness.  Black and white solutions, though often promising short term comfort, are soon overwhelmed by the nearly infinite possibilities in a world filled with people who have the freedom to say "yes" or even "no" to God.  

I am seeking to trust God enough to allow me to face the discomfort of the gray areas.  I also want to trust God enough to move me beyond simplistic or trite solutions that often masquerade as black and white solutions.  Of course, I am not saying that everything in the Christian life is complicated.  There are indeed simple truths, and these truths are, in the words of the classic hymn, simple gifts.  However, there is a difference between simple and simplistic.  My prayer is that Christians allow God's Spirit to demonstrate the passion and power of living beyond the gray and moving into the glorious realm of life where the light of His love fully shines and illuminates the darkness with the whole spectrum of living color!