Living in the In-Between

Found here

We are all on the edge of our seats watching BP as they are trying to fumble their way through the process of stopping a horrible oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The original estimate of the amount of oil leaking per day was 2000 gallons. It has now been updated to 200,000 barrels per day. The pressure behind this leak is 70,000 pounds per square inch (psi). Imagine the amount of oil that is mucking up our oceans and coastlines.

As someone from my church leadership wrote in the last 24 hours, this oil leak could completely wipe out all living creatures in the entire ocean (this prediction based on the word of a former ocean oil drill engineer).

Is this the beginning of the end of the world? Could it be one of the first of the seven last plagues listed in the book of Revelation? Will this completely ruin our economy? Will it crash? Is this a portent of things to come? What should we do?

This kind of world event makes those of us whose lives have been focused on the "watching and waiting" commands of Jesus, become quite alert. And yet, it is also easy to tell oneself that these things have happened before and will always be present in our world. So why get worked up and panic--as many Christians do?

It is easy to fall at one or the other extreme end of this conversation: either it doesn't matter that these things happen, and they have little eschatological meaning, or else they are a portent of immediate danger that calls for an immediate and decisive response. It is rare to hear anyone articulate a middle of the road, or more moderate opinion on these kinds of things. Interestingly enough, if Christians from my subculture don't immediately respond with a sense of urgency, they are thought of as nominal Christians. If they do, those who are on the other end of the continuum think of them as religious fanatics. In this, as in many, many other arenas, I ask the question, Where is the moderate, thoughtful response to things like these? Especially when the issue is extremely charged?

Just tonight, as my class watched the videotape of one of the students conducting therapy with a woman who had been convicted of child abuse crimes, we noticed that she reported behavior that was either above reproach--almost too good to be true--or else she was suicidal--all bad. There was no in-between. I reflected to the class that people who abuse others are often so emotionally fragile themselves that on a deep level they can't admit that a part of them is flawed or broken. To do so would put them at the "all bad" end of the continuum. So they try to live at the "all good" end of the continuum, at least in public view. This is how the "pillar of the community" can be a serial killer. It is quite difficult to bring such therapy clients to the place where they can recognize and admit that they are a combination of good qualities, behaviors, and thoughts, and bad tendencies, behaviors, and thoughts. It is an all or nothing proposition. Until they can claim any portion of "badness," they split off the objectionable parts of themselves in their minds and manifest only the superlatively good side. Or, when they can no longer ignore the bottled up "bad" parts of themselves, they act them out without impunity. Their behavior is absolutely evil sometimes, because it is undiluted with goodness. They are at either one end of the continuum or the other, but can't seem to live in the middle.

It seems that it's more of a human quality to try to lean toward one extreme or the other, and that's true in both the emotional and spiritual aspects of our lives. It is more complex to work our way into a more moderate stance. We see the results of this kind of polarizing behavior in America's political climate. We align with either Democrat or Republican and tend to villify the other--everything about them. Again, it is difficult to pick and choose from the variety of legislative initiatives to align with without feeling that we need to embrace the extreme of one side or another.

How do we live in the in-between? Is it a bad thing? Is it worse than throwing out the baby with the bathwater as many of us have done as we skittered to the extreme end of an issue? This is not in any way to disparage those who disseminate religious, political, or other scenarios that seem to polarize. It is an honest question. Is moderation a goal for which we should aim?

I would like to suggest that it takes considerable internal fortitude to be able to sift through options and ideas with which we are presented, whether religious, political, or emotional. It is much easier to scoot to the extreme end, to be caught up with what people are whispering about with furrowed brows, rather than laboriously think about issues that are full of emotional charge. And yet when we fail to do this, we lose out on the good that can be found at both extremes: the "bad" extreme is rejected for it's complete odiousness, and the good extreme, which can't be fully enjoyed because it is rigidly held in its extreme form without being able to see that nothing can be all good. Thus, people at the "good" end actually embrace the negative portions of their ideas at that ideological endpoint, and eschew the good parts of the opposite end of the continuum.

In Part II I will talk about differentiation, what this is, and how it applies to situations like these. Because every single one of us struggles with this in some form or another. No one is exempt.