You can know the difference
October 13, 2008 (Monday)
The computer age has brought the possibility of printing your own pictures. You can print them in full color, on photographic paper of high quality. It’s nice to be able to do that.
Every once in a while, you might like to print a color picture in black and white. When you attempt to do that, however, you learn the strict meaning of the term, “black and white.” It means just that. Black. White. Nothing in between. The first picture you print like that doesn’t look right. So you take another look at the print menu, and you discover an option called, “greyscale.” So you give it a try, and you print your picture. Hey, it turns out OK. We call it a “black and white” picture, but it’s really “greyscale,” black, white, and lots of shades in between.
Shades of grey in a picture bring it to life.
Shades of grey in life’s choices can bring disaster.
I recall the first time I ever heard a speaker suggest that moral choices are not just right and wrong (black and white), but somewhere in between, in shades of grey: not right or wrong, but neither. Or both. This way of thinking is seductive, and can get people into trouble.
The person with “black and white” morals is sometimes ridiculed and thought of as simple minded. But it’s not so. Have you read the Ten Commandments lately? They present a moral code that sharply divides right and wrong. It may not be easy to make moral decisions on the basis of right and wrong, but it’s the best way. You don’t have to second guess your decisions and you can live happily with yourself.