Grappling With Grey
When the moment came and I began to realize that many of my definitive, black and white answers that I had turned into a simplistic grid of belief-ism were actually grey and complex, my life changed forever.
I was forced to struggle through realizing modesty has more to do with materialism than skirt length; that “husband, lead you wife” isn’t a verse in the Bible; that spanking your child isn’t a mandate; that the New Testament mentions a handful of women church leaders; that Jesus turned water into alcohol; that some people don’t fit the Church’s gender box and that sign gifts might still be a thing.
For me...
- It is easier to mandate a spiritual skirt length than to take into account culture, intent and humility.
- It is easier to assign traditional roles in marriage than to balance join leadership as a couple.
- It is easier to have a canned discipline method than to deliberately learn a child’s heart and correction needs.
- It is easier to relegate teaching to a masculine tone than to consider a soprano voice could communicate the same truth.
- It is easier to ban a beverage than to learn how to use it properly.
- It is easier to stereotype genders than to work at discovering an individual’s particular gifting.
- It is easier to discredit a mysterious gift than to learn how to control it well.
I want life to be all black or white but I am coming to realize there is a lot of grey to grapple with. The questions that come out of all this are often hard and the daily living it out is even harder... but we weren’t call to an easy life.
I love what Sarah Bessey says on this topic:
“Lean into the pain.
Stay there in the questions, in the doubts, in the wonderings and loneliness, the tension of living in the Now and the Not Yet of the Kingdom of God, your wounds and hurts and aches, until you are satisfied that Abba is there, too. You will not find your answers by ignoring the cry of your heart or by living a life of intellectual and spiritual dishonesty. Your fear will try to hold you back, your tension will increase, the pain will become intense, and it will be tempting to keep clinging tight to the old life; the cycle is true. So be gentle with yourself. Be gentle when you first release. Talk to people you trust. Pray. Lean into the pain. Stay there and the release will come.
Hurry wounds a questioning soul.”
When questions, contemplations and realizations come, cling to the One who is steady. Work the things you don’t understand, struggle until you do or release and admit you don’t know.
Breath. It’s ok to not know.
“...continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. -Philippians 2 {NIV}”
-Ashley Easter