The Truth and the Myth of Only Two Choices

Let me present an element of fundamentalism that I find dangerous (at best). 

There are only two choices:  You can either be a submissive wife and have a happy marriage, or you can be a conniving rebellious domineering woman and make your marriage miserable. 

There are only two choices:  You can either spank your children, rewarding every infraction with swift clear punishment, which we say will produce “godly seed,” or you can not spank and have sniveling brats who run into streets and throw tantrums every five seconds and will grow up to bomb schools and have fifteen illegitimate children before they run straight to the fires of hell. 

There are only two choices:  You can believe my denomination/group’s theological view (plainly taught by the Bible) and thus be a real Christian and please the Lord, or you can not subscribe to our particular theological view (er, do you even read the Bible?) and be a second-class Christian (if you’re saved at all, that is), and be outside the pale of God’s approval. 

 Note the similarity in all the above scenarios.  There are only two choices: A or B.   If you pick A, you will be happy and in God’s will.  If you pick B, you will be/remain in misery and out of God’s will. 

This is the fallacy of the “world is black and white” mentality.  It does nobody any favors.  It makes us look stupid to the watching world, and it does little to promote our own personal growth, to boot.  Maybe I especially hate the A/B lie because I fell for it so many times.  I was ripe for it, coming out of a Christian-cultish experience and looking for a little stability, something to ensure that the previous experience would never happen again.  I found my home in conservative Christianity, where I promptly set up camp and started handing out tracts.   When the books presented A/B arguments, I sure knew I didn’t want B, so I thankfully threw myself into A, joyful that God saved me from the horrors of the B alternative.

To me, the A/B myth is the summing up of what modernity did to Christianity, particularly (though certainly not limited to) the subgroup I came from, which is fundamentalism.   They never told us there was a C.  Or a D.  Or an E…

Newsflash.  Yes, you can be a submissive wife and let your husband lead you.  You can also be a domineering witch—you  have that right, as well.  But there’s also C: you can be a Jesus-follower who is commited to treating others with love and honor, seeking to have the fruit of the Spirit charactarize your relationship with your spouse.   

You can be a parent who is swift with the rod and rewards all transgressions with punishment.  You can be a parent who lets your kids run all over you.  You can also be a parent who rarely spanks (if ever) but who gently-but-firmly enforces boundaries and seeks to grow up happy and healthy God-lovers through the dirt and sun and rain of Love’s Law. 

You can be a firm believer that your theological view is Right.  You can be a theological mess who never cracks a Bible, much less cares.  You can also be a Berean, loving to study the Scriptures yet knowing that we will never be able to mathematically diagram the mystery of God, no matter how hard we try—but we can Love Him and humbly love eachother, because brotherhood and sisterhood doesn’t disintigrate when we disagree over doctrinal distinctions.   

Before you post an outraged comment, let me present that I’m not talking about the fact that there is “a path that is wide, leading to destruction, and a path that is narrow, leading to Life.”  There is a right hand and a left, there is a up and a down, and there is a North Pole and a South.  Though there is much in postmoderndom that moderns could stand to embrace, the “no absolutes” part is strikingly opposite to the name of God Himself (I Am).  He is, and there is no other, and that is absolute. 

When my eyes roll, it’s when the little absolutes, the “lesser-than” opinions, are made into Thou Shalt Not Question This, For It Is An Absolute, Thus Sayeth the Lord.   That kind of thinking shuts off the brain, shuts down the mind, promotes death much more than it promotes life.  The truth is supposed to set us free, not box us in.