Loving in Full Color in a Black and White Time
“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.” — C.S. Lewis
Lately, I’ve noticed how quickly our conversations in this country fall into stark categories: right or wrong, good or evil, truth or lies. It feels like everyone has an opinion about what the mayor, the governor, or the president should be doing—and if you say one thing, someone is ready to tell you the exact opposite. I confess, sometimes it leaves me hesitant to speak at all, worried that whatever I say will upset someone.
But here’s what I’ve been wrestling with: life is rarely black and white. Most of the time, we are living in the gray. We do good and we fail, we speak truth and sometimes stumble into half-truths. And in that space between, God meets us—not with condemnation, but with grace.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face.” In other words, none of us sees the full picture yet. Our perspective is limited, shaped by our experiences and perceptions. That doesn’t mean our truth isn’t real, but it does mean it’s partial. It calls for humility.
The good news is that God doesn’t limit us to black and white categories. Through Christ, God paints our lives in full color—the colors of love, grace, peace, and compassion. And here’s the challenge for me, and maybe for you too: how do we bring those colors into the gray? How do we choose love in the tension with our neighbors, instead of insisting only our perception is right?
This fall, I want to invite you to wrestle with these questions alongside me. On September 21, we’re beginning a new sermon series called Both/And. Clearcut categories are helpful—they make life easier to understand. But real people don’t fit neatly into boxes. We are full of tensions and paradoxes that—when embraced—can bring immense depth and beauty to life. Together we’ll explore how faith in Christ calls us away from an “either/or” experience of the world and into the wonderful truth of “both/and.”
I hope you’ll join us as we discover what it means to love in full color in a black and white time.
With Gratitude,
Rev. Rodney Whitfield
Senior Pastor
Aldersgate UMC