5 July 2015

A friend asked me if I thought goodness was determined by the actions they have taken, or whether it was the actions they would take given the opportunity. But I think it’s the other way around. I think that the temperament of our souls determines the valor of our actions, and I think that the color of our minds will always determine the hue of our words. Actions and words both pour forth as a manifestation of our philosophy, of the things we dwell on.

But here’s the problem: I can’t bring myself to dwell only on things that are noble, true, right, pure, and lovely, because the world is not made of those things. The world is base, wrong, corrupted, and ugly, and denying its true form will not lessen the harshness of it. I know people whose denial of the depravity of the world comes from both extremes. You cannot pretend that certain actions are not evil. You cannot pretend that evil only exists when seen. To hide myself from the world and its dark nuances would be to effectively disarm myself; I cannot fight what I cannot see. 

I can’t balance goodness with honesty, and that is a strange thing to say, but I have thought it before. I can’t balance kindness with truth, and it makes me cruel. I can’t balance goodness with transparency, and it makes me crass. I think the world is made of twilight; the meeting of light and dark, and to separate one from the other creates something that is so concentrated that it corrodes. Too much light will blind you, but so will too much dark. 

There will be some that say, “Jesus is the light. You can never have too much of him.” Well, to you I say that I have seen people abandon their friends in the name of purity. I have seen Christians so wrapped up in their need to keep themselves pure and spotless, that they forget what a large stain disloyalty leaves. It’s hard to believe in a God that heals the broken when his followers are the ones doing the breaking. I think that there has to be some way to refuse to participate in someone’s depravity without leaving them to drown in it. Telling someone that they are drowning is not very helpful if you aren’t going to help them out. (And to those who say that you cannot worry about what others think; you cannot worry, but you should care; be wary what sort of Christ you present to the world.)

We are selfish creatures, and we wrap ourselves in bitterness to keep ourselves safe, and this too is a mingling of light and dark. It is no crime to desire shelter. It is no virtue to harbor resentment. 

Perhaps I’ve taken the question and lost it in the answering. Maybe I don’t really have an answer. I just know what I’ve always believed; that we walk a narrow road with a bottomless cavern on either side, and one is marked Decay and the other is Preservation, and somewhere in between the two has got to be something called Living.