Previously written at the Hirshorn while contemplating ,”Plastic Construction of Noise and Speed”
She wants me to live like there is no absolute truth. He wants me to accept that our view of right and wrong is just evolved conditioning to promote survival of my species. They want me to cast aside the concept of Holiness and Evil, black and white in favor of their comfortable gray sweaters. I have to admit the idea of curling up on the couch in a well worn faded sweater is very appealing.
The problem is – as good as that sounds, I can’t accept that the idea of that gray sweater solves all my problems. Without a black and a white, all the grays are lost. What does it mean to say one is “darker” than another, or “lighter” than another. There is chaos.
I want to embrace the idea of grays because I look around me and they seem real. Every day people are faced with decisions that do not easily break down into an embracing of Right or a Denial of it. It seems that the problem is not in the existence of the grays, but in the banishing of black and white.
And so I ask myself which system seems more honest. A system that acknowledges a black and a white but scoffs at and derides the grays that appear everywhere? A system that sees the multitude of varying valued grays and disallows the ordering of them because to do so would be to recognize a black and a white? Or a system that recognizes a black and white as the organizing scheme by which we make sense of all the grays we see in this foggy world?
It is written that some day we will see Him even as He has seen us. I wonder if on that day we won’t say, “This is the white I have always seen hinted at but now realize I never saw. And that over there is the black I always felt pressing in but, Thank God, realize I never truly saw.”
1 Corinthians 13:12 (NKJV) For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.
1 Corinthians 13:12 (MSG) We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
Monday, March 06, 2006
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3 comments:
SPOILER WARNING: Quotes ahead from The Matrix movie... although I'm not sure they'll make much sense if you haven't seen the movie.
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In the movie, Morpheus makes an offer: You take the blue pill, the story ends, you awake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe... you take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
I find myself wondering, like Cypher does, what it would have been like if we'd chosen the blue pill. "Ignorance is bliss," he explains later. No doubt; there's some truth to that.
But we know, and it's just like Jesus tells his disciples: "Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them" (John 13:17). And besides that, what did we learn from G.I. Joe? "Knowing is half the battle!" Ha ha... YES!!
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It's written in Jeremiah 33:3 that the LORD says: Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.
Interesting comments. I was going for sort of a, "Even if you desire a relativistic view you still have to allow for some kind of organizing principal - otherwise you have chaos" thing. I wanted to show that the idea of there being gray areas can be reconciled with the idea of Black and White, that the two are actually necessary together to get an accurate picture of real life on earth.
Admittedly some people argue that the organizing principal is sort of a "We need to all get along somewhat so our species florishes" sor of thing, but I was trying to show one of the weakness-es of that arguement here. Namely that in the end it STILL pre-supposes that there is a Good and Bad, it just alters where the source of the judgement. And if the source of the judgement is not absolute, then the judgement itself is worthless.
I like what Lewis says about this particular argument in the scene in Out of the Silent Planet where the head guy on the alien planet interrogates the main antagonist. (I need to read the book again, sorry I can't remember the correct names for any one or anything in that book, except that the main protagonist's name was Ransom)
Gibran,
I enjoyed this commentary quite a bit. You know, as a Catholic, that I greatly value the black and whites but I have to say that it's the gray situations that allow us to grow the most spiritually. In fact, you might say that the dogmatic black and white exists solely to guide and form our individual conscience and that subjective situations are the test of that formation. So, I concur, balance - as in most things - is key.
PS I'm ultra-down for the book club. Sorry again that I've neglected Narnia but I would love to discuss things. I am starting an MA-English program in the summer, so perhaps we could incorporate some of my readings so I can double-up and take advantage of your wise counsel.
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