Binary Thinking
There seems to be a high corollary between Christianity and black and white reasoning. I am not saying that there is a causal connection although I suspect that there maybe a causal connection, but I have noticed that a very large number of Christians have a very hard time thinking in shades of gray. While I have noticed this much more in the more fundamentalist Christians than the more liberal Christians, I still see it often times within the liberal circles of Christianity as well.
In relation to morality this type of binary thinking is even more pronounced. It is not uncommon for people of reason to say that lying, as a general rule is bad, but to acknowledge that there are exceptions to almost every rule. In fact, morality itself is full of nuances which we as individuals must struggle with and navigate our way through and yet when I talk to Christians, often times something is either a sin or it isn’t. Something either pleases God or makes God angry. You are either with God or you are with the Devil. Stealing is wrong period. It is absolute and if you don’t think it is absolute than you must think that all morality is relative and therefore there can be no morality. Even when we talk about humanity itself, most Christians seem to think that humans can be either perfect or evil sinners… and of course since no one is perfect, we must all be evil sinners in need of salvation, right? No middle ground is afforded to people.
I see this as a serious limitation on thinking and I a limitation, which can be quite dangerous. And while not all Christians are stuck in this binary pattern, an extremely large number of Christians are trapped in this cell of limited reasoning. Many of the stories in the Bible do seem to reinforce black and white reasoning and many churches tend to push it as well. Binary thinking after all helps to raise the fear factor, which the more fundamentalist churches depend on. This is why Bush’s statement to other nations as being either with us or with the terrorists was so effective during his presidency. It tapped into this Christian paradigm of binary thinking.
