The Grayscale

Grayscale- a range of gray shades from white to black, as used in a monochrome display or printout.

"Black and white" thinking vs "gray"... Did I tell you there are a lot of little (and big) thoughts bouncing around in my little mind? I did a little research on thought processes and this article was helpful. (It's here) It explained different ways of thinking in a way I could understand without bashing religion, politics, or morality. Even a grayscale picture has some black and white.

A few years back I wrote a "Black and White" post. (It's here.) It was about people; black people and white people and everything in between. In reality there aren't any "black" people or "white" people, we're all a variation of one or the other.

Did I tell you my thoughts bounce? Of course I did...

I've been going to Community Bible Study this year and we're working our way through the book of Matthew. We're almost done now and have seen plenty of run-ins between the religious leaders of the Jews and Jesus. Apparently they didn't like his gray way of thinking. He heals and performs miracles (repeatedly) on the Sabbath, His disciples eat with unwashed hands. He befriends "sinners." He challenges the religious leaders... Of course, eventually Jesus shows His black and white side. He labels the Scribes and Pharisees "hypocrites, snakes, and whitewashed tombs." They don't like that, and so they have him killed. Like that was going to solve their problem...

When God gave the Law, he gave it in black and white, but not because we could ever be good enough to keep it. It was exactly the opposite. The requirements were in black and white to show that we couldn't keep it. We are helplessly not-good-enough. Enter Jesus. God slips His hand into the glove of human flesh, comes down to earth, fulfills the law, and gives himself as a sacrifice. He dies so that the rest of us can be saved from the consequences of not being good enough. Jesus was a perfect living example of grace-scale thinking, and we are saved by grace.

(I borrowed the photos from my old post. Every one of these children has a "black" grandparent. In reality, we're not as black and white as we'd like to think.)