Religion & Spirituality

The Problem of Moral Binaries - A critique of church

The Problem of Moral Binaries - A critique of church

For those of you who do not know what a binary is - it is a set of 0s and 1s that underpin the computer program to tell it how to behave or conduct itself

Our world also contains absolute good and absolute evil - no one can deny hugging you grand children is good and nobody can deny killing a child is bad - some things are so obvious they trump all reason and argument

But people are more than just good and evil

If somebody is recovering from alcohol abuse is it bad they used to be alcoholic or good they are recovering from alcohol abuse

If they fight pain in the recovery process is it good they are strong enough to fight it or bad they have to experience something tormenting

Life is full of greys that can’t be coded either as good or bad

Pastors who want to pretend the adult porn actress that was sexually molested in middle school deserves a jail sentence and not a hug and loving therapist are wrong

Pastors who want to mock the bullied kid for not having the confidence to speak his opinion in public rather than attempting to build his confidence are wrong

Pastors who want to exclude the brain cancer survivor who lives on welfare for being too lazy to work as a doctor or lawyer are wrong

They are sinners who practice moral binaries when they should be practicing love and compassion

Recently a pastor who preaches fire and brimstone and punishment all day long has tried to divide our bible study group into age ranges and ban all pre and post bible conversation because I spent so much time mentoring a teenager in the study he thought I had sexual motivations for talking to him

I believe some people are righteous and some are wicked and others are neither evil nor good

This fire and brimstone preacher believes everybody is helplessly evil and jumps to the worst possible conclusion when he sees uncommon or atypical behaviour at church

This is why moral binaries are bad

And why we should view the human heart as a rainbow of complexity and emotion

And not a black and white math problem for which a dark scale is always correct

The Problem of Moral Binaries - A critique of church
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