This is a copy of my most recent post on the Communitas Collective blog.
I’ve been doing some programming recently which has reminded me how black or white computer code is. When it’s correctly written it always works. If it’s just one character off it will (maddeningly) entirely fail to run. And yes, I’ve been reminded of the latter this week!
When I became a Christian I joined a Christian tradition with black or white at its core:
- There are two eternal destinies: heaven (perfect happiness) or hell (unending conscious pain)
- Heaven is for perfect (100% sinless) people only
- Either God’s spirit indwells you or you aren’t a Christian at all
There’s a stark elegance about black and white on a piano. And as I mentioned, I know from (frustrating) experience that computer code is black and white.
Yet the more I thought about *people* the less it made sense to try to fit them into the black or white framework of the theology I’d been taught. How could it be possible that a simplistic divide of all humanity into perfect happiness or eternal torment is appropriate given the diverse complex spectrum across which human behavior (and motivation) lies?
And the black and white designation of, you either have God’s Spirit or you don’t, didn’t seem to fit the character and behavior I saw from people supposedly with or without. I saw no consistent pattern of people I was told had God’s Spirit behaving better than those I was told did not have it.
These observations helped break my theology. I’m glad, because although I was taught grace manifests through the black or white, it seems to me that (in that system) it’s only for the people who fall in the’white’ category. I’d rather live in a world where simplistic dichotomies exist only inside machines and in stylized art, because that means there’s hope for everyone. Not just those on the right side of the dividing line.