Black and White, 1+1… I’m Grey

Black and White.

That was the analogy. Something to do with good and evil. I’m pretending like I don’t remember, but the fact of the matter is I can remember it like it was today. I was sitting in a church. I was a missionary. He was our leader, our sage, our Elder. He was preaching about the difference between right and wrong. He told us that there was no grey, it was black and white. There was no space for justification. Everything was cut and dry.

I ate it up. It made sense. It seemed my mind was clear. I could see the straight line that one would have to walk to reach perfection. To be perfect. Black and White.

I’m one of those rare people who loves math. I’m one of those even rarer people who loves math but also loves to write. I love math, numbers if you will, because they are perfect. There is no room for argument, no room for maybe. Once the equal sign is posted it is either right or wrong. You can’t argue that 1+1 doesn’t equal 2. There is no grey. On the other hand, I love the ambiguity of words. I can say one thing and my reader may understand something so completely different that we may as well be communicating in two separate languages. The perfection of language is not the ability to perfect the sentence, but rather to magnify the inconsistencies so that one cannot misunderstand.

I am grey.

It took a few months but after a while I couldn’t understand why that speech was so clear, why life was so numerically perfect. I could be quoted saying, “There is no commandment that doesn’t have a justification for breaking.” I argued this point on a couple of occasions and then came home. It really came down to this point for me. Everything is grey except numbers. There are no absolutes outside of mathematics. None.

Thou shalt not kill.

I was raised to understand that the worst sin was to kill, another human being. This is where life went grey first. I couldn’t understand why it was explicitly written that “Thou shalt not kill” but, in Mormon scripture, a prophet killed in the name of god to bring about righteousness. And then a few hundred pages later, there were the most righteous people who would rather die than darken their swords with blood. Praying as they were wiped out. It was a little too grey for what my spiritual sage had been teaching. It didn’t add up. 1+1…

I studied with those crazy, often times annoying Hare Krishner people. I read most of their books. Watched them worship in the streets, dancing, singing, praying, chanting. I found many things within their teachings that guide my life today, five years later. I sport a strange little tail that most people will never understand. I don’t eat animals, but I’m not vegan.

I don’t kill. One of the things that I learned from said studying was that it doesn’t say, “Thou shalt not kill humans.” It says, “Thou shalt not kill.” They introduced an entirely new grey to me. The more I thought about it the more it made sense. On my 23rd birthday I decided to do what I could to not kill.

Utah Phillips is a true American hero.

In his songbook, that isn’t a songbook at all, he sings, “Then we kill to prove that killing is wrong.” One of the great contradictions, disconnects, of this supposed Christian nation is the amount of war and killing that we are willing to allow. There is no “turn the other cheek” nor “thou shalt not kill,” outside of church. There is justification. There is grey. Is war moral? Can killing be justified? Is life precious? Is there a difference between killing animals and killing humans? Is the integrity of a nation state justification enough? Is capitalism justification? Is war moral?

I guess this whole debacle became clear to me when I asked myself, “What are you willing to kill for?” I couldn’t think of anything. I am not willing to live with the memory of such an act. I am definitely not willing to allow the blood of my brothers to be called out upon my head. I will not kill. What am I willing to die for? That is question I can die for. There are many things that I would be willing to die for, but none that I can think of that are worth killing for and then being dead anyways.

There are many people that would take offense at the logic I lay before you, if you can call it logic. It’s half black, half white. That is what I am saying and not saying. Killing is wrong. I, personally, can find no justification for such destruction. There are many people who would find it to be a grey issue. One that justifications can be found for. To those people, I hope they can live with what they are willing to kill for. To those of us that refuse such mixed coloring, may we die for what we are not willing to kill for.

Peace. Love. and Revolution.