One of the biggest problems in the world, and that is no less true in the church, is that too many people tend to only see black and white. The result is people have a hard time accepting and forgiving one another. Maybe it is because the medium we have watched all our lives is TV. On TV the characters are almost always black or white. Not in the sense of when I started watching TV and it was literally in black and white but in the sense in which people are all bad or all good. I grew up on westerns, and there were always bad guys and good guys. You could tell by the hats. (Black for bad, and white for good) Today my favorite TV and movie genre is murder mysteries. Except for the lack of hats, things have not really changed. It is still true that in a 1 hour or even full length movie there is little time to develop characters that are in fact true to life. Nobody is really all bad or all good. In fact, we all do good things and bad things. We all have good attitudes and bad attitudes. We all have good days and bad days.
Imagine how you would feel about David from the Old Testament if all you knew about him was the fact that he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband Uriah killed in order to cover things up? That would make a pretty good film and certainly would take the whole hour. Think how black he would look as he tried to get Uriah to go home and have sex with his wife and then failing to do that just had him killed. There would be no doubt that he would be a bad guy. But suppose you never heard that story, and the only thing you knew about David was the fact that he refused to kill Saul when he had a perfect chance even though Saul was trying to kill him and he already knew that he would eventually be the king? Talk about a good guy. Give him a white hat! The truth is, David was both of those guys and many more. He loved his family, but was a lousy father. He was a brilliant warier and a beautiful psalm writer. He was many things. He was not black or white, he was grey. Most important, when it was all said and done, he was a man after God’s own heart according to the Bible. That means that in spite of his failings and they were significant, he loved and followed the Lord.
As Christians, we accept that. I have never heard any in the church say that they cannot accept David of the Bible. We know his weaknesses and his strengths, and when it is all said and done, we know we are no better than he was. We are sinners saved by grace.
In other words, we all know we are grey. Too bad we still think everyone else is either black or white!
I love being your pastor,
Russ
