Shades of Gray...or clear as a Night and Day...?


People sometimes like to refer to things as being in "the gray area". When we hear this it is more often than not something that has to do with the scriptures take on morals.

Now when someone says that something is in the gray area they mean that they are not sure whether it is right or wrong, its a 'shade of gray' to them. When we are not sure whether something is right or wrong there is often the tendency to go ahead and do it anyway and deal with the consequences later. When something is considered to be in the gray area it usually is because the person isnt sure on the issue or they want to do it and then convice themselves and maybe others, that it is OK.

Now when we say that something is in a 'gray area' it can mean that although we are probably going to go ahead and do it anyway we know that it is probably not the right thing to do. It used to be that it was cut and dried, either right or wrong, but more and more often people are being told and taught that nothing is really 'right or wrong' its only a veiwpoint that they can change their mind on.

Now the problem is that certain things are set by God, and if we go against them we suffer. It's just like if we try to jump off a cliff, the law of gravity takes us down to a very painful result, or if we consistently break the laws of health there will come a day of reckoning.

Now the worst part is that we seem to take more risk in matters having to do with our eternal destiny that a person in their right mind will do with things having to do with temporal things.

Is the Christian life composed of things that are right, things that are wrong, or is it of things that are in a gray area with no way to discern what God desires for us?

I think there are three categories: right, wrong, irrelevant. The trick is to determine how God categorizes each item. And things are not necessarily categorized the same way for each person.

Or cultures, as there use to be a time not to long ago that Anglo churches would not allow using guitars as a musical instrument, while in the Spanish churches it was virtually a necessity if there was no organ or piano or someone to play it....

Why would a wise God leave our lives up to "finding the trick?"

That could be one of many instances where men have categorized things differently from how God does.

The shades of gray make life interesting. Is it a sin to buy and eat kosher meat sold in pagan markets that have been dedicated to heathen gods?

Define a 'pagan market' as I havent seen one in my neighborhood....


1 Corinthians 10:28
But if any man say unto you, this is offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake: for the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof:

What does the heathen god do to the meat that would affect it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, why does God want me to figure out "the trick?"



Let's look at the "jumping off a cliff" statement. While that may seem true on the surface, deeper thought will teach you that MAY not be true anymore. Yeah, about 200+ years ago, that was true. But today, I could jump off a cliff with a parachute, or a bungee cord, or dive into the water even, and not have a very painful result, infact, it might be fun, and I might do it again, just for the fun of it.

If life really was all black and white, there would be no need for this site, nor many church's, nor even to have a church. We would all know what to do, exactly, it would be black and white. Many SDA's think their line of thinking and relationship with God is black and white. But CLEARLY that is not the case, this church is way too fractured and broken for that to be true.

You can have a black and white world if you like (it's your choice and your reality), but God gave ME so many wonderful colors in the world, and I'll be glad to have ALL of them in my life, even gray.

Who said God wants YOU to figure it out? Perhaps He already knows the trick, and is just waiting for someone to listen to Him.


Perhaps you were working with faulty standards. Nobody ever got hurt from jumping off a cliff; it was the sudden stop at the end that hurt. So what seems to you to have been a change in the truth of the statement is really a realization of the original error.


Believing that everything is either black or white is not difficult. The difficulty lies in telling which is which. So the conclusion that "we would all know what to do" is unwarranted.

However, trying to categorize everything into either black or white is foolish. The size of the "irrelevant" group is significant.