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binary thinking: liberal/conservative
Been reading up on the brain and one of the things the human brain seems to be wired for is doing quick and dirty sorts on the overwhelming flood of data coming it’s way. To make our way through the world our brains simplify, simplify, simplify. Binary thinking is one such way: up-down, left-right, forward-backward, friend-foe, people who divide the world in two and those who don’t….. We do this for good reason: it’s necessary for survival–quick judgments required on new situations: safe or dangerous? The brain that can do this well–meaning quickly and with some degree of accuracy–lives to think another day. Because it’s such a powerful brain tendency, this binary thinking business, it’s important that we be careful about which binary categories we adopt as valid ones. Liberal-conservative is one that has outlived it’s usefulness for categorizing God truth, God experience, Jesus, the church, faith, Christianity, spirituality.
It’s adoption as a legitimate category–actually as an overarching, completely trustworthy one–is responsible for much missing of the mark. As I look back at my own religious mark missing (a painful joy of getting older–arrghhh), when I cry out to myself, “What was I thinking!?” often it’s the assumed acceptance of the liberal-conservative category as the equivalent of bad (liberal) and good (conservative) that led me astray.
And I see it in these truly remarkable young people I have the honor of knowing and interacting with–the ones who grew up in “conservative evangelical” settings, or bonded to Jesus in such settings, who are simultaneously craving something more and nervous about the something more they crave. Their brains have been shaped by this category to discern spiritual things. And there’s much sorting going on.
Man, are they ahead of my growth curve in this department–doing in their twenties what I didn’t do until my forties. And I have the added advantage of not being raised in a conservative evangelical milieu. So I don’t have to feel like I’m betraying my family every time I move beyond the legitimacy of this liberal-conservative categorization: every time a step is viewed as “not conservative” and therefore “liberal” and therefore “dangerous,” yet another step on a slippery slope leading away from faithfulness toward an insipid contentless and increasingly Godless god connection.
Instead I landed, in my twenties, like a frog in a pan of tepid water that slowly came to a conservative boil in my forties, at which time, I noticed the heat differential and did some quick assessments that got me out of the pot. That’s a longer story than a blog post.
The thing I love about blog entries: you can just leave it at that for now and pick up the conversation later.
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:50 am
i wonder: can binary thinking and critical thinking relate to perspectives we get from scripture: the prophetic perspective and the apocalyptic perspective? it seems to me the apocalyptic has been used throughout history in the context of social and cultural collapse and transition, where preachers/prophets/statesmen/kings articulate their meaning and focus with images that are stark and black-and-white with no gray middle to muddy the waters. This is a very useful way to articulate ideas and perspectives, especially in times when “evil is called good and good called evil” or when the lines of fact and fiction/truth and lies run together. Douglas John Hall reminds us that it is also the preferred model to articulate clearly the Kingdom of God when the people of God find themselves in situations of such extreme persecution (think Babylonians, Nazi Germany, Imperial Rome) over-against that of the prophetic model which often translates the justice and mercy of God associated with God’s Reign/Kingdom into that which permeates human institutions and structures.
The problem with this kind of sweeping apocalyptic perspective is that when used too much or wrongly, it distorts perceptions by both envisioning for itself and others things that are not clearly evil, and that need to be wrestled with, into at-times mis-leading categories. it also associates ‘the good guys’ with ‘us’ and the ‘bad guys’ with ‘the others’, whoever the ‘others’ may be at the time, whether “Islamofascist terrorists” or “Communists” or whatever. And while pop subculture books have been used with an apocalyptic perspective (think Left behind series, or even Hal Lindsey), these Christian authors distort the apocalyptic imagination to turn a profit and mis-represent God and His Kingdom purposes (in my possibly not-so-humble opinion), and we have to question whether it actually sees things clearly or even goes ‘beyond faith’; for even as faith is the conviction of things not seen (as the author of Hebrews tell us), the apocalyptic imagination/perspetive can at-times go beyond this to see all the things that are not seen (therefore, beyond faith) and communicate from such false certitude as to mislead many.
now, apocalyptic language and perspective is and can be very powerful, and it can and should be used by us when we teach and when we preach and when we minister; it does bring clarity to some, if not many issues. i am not advocating we throw the baby out with the bathwater and abandon utilizing this perspective when we teach and preach and think and minister, but i am saying that we need it in its proper place and time, for without discernment, we wade into dangerously manipulative territory that can distort the reality of any given situation, and one that can and will take hold and over-simplify life to the point of dis-engaging us in the realities of life, so that we never get around to doing Kingdom deeds, because we are too busy going to bible studies and spiritual warfare fasting and prayer services that “wrestle” with and “bind” the demons of America/Axis of Evil/Persia/babylon, when we need to get out on the streets and wrestle the demons in the deep crevices of broken lives. (i think i got on my soapbox there for a minute). it seems to me that the truly prophetic moves toward specifics, while the apocalyptic moves toward generalities. the emphasis - on balance - that i witness to in scripture is on the truly prophetic, which wrestles with the messy details of life, bringing to those messy details the witness and recognition of the Kingdom of God with power and love and mercy and faith.
i suppose this has been my long-winded way to say this: the truly prophetic approach/perspective does not cast out any and all apocalyptic perspective; it just seeks to be apocalyptic appropriately, while holding to the radical middle and the goodness and mercy of God found in Christ Jesus.