Black or White?: We Don’t Need to Choose
In The Bible, God gives a command to “’Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” (Genesis 1.3-1.5) This quotation from the Bible is known and familiar throughout the world. It symbolizes the beginning of life for those that believe in this religion and is believed as a common theory to the question of how the world was created.
As I read this opening to this astonishing (in size) book called The Bible, I take note on this repetitive concept of light and dark. So far, every book I’ve read in ninth grade, as well as many others I’ve read in my lifetime, portray this same concept of juxtaposition in color. Whether the contrast of color is used symbolically or not, everywhere in our culture we see this extremity between good or evil. Light indicates purity and dark indicates sin or evil, this concept is even stated by God.
What interests me the most is not the repetitiveness of this concept, but instead the irony that in so much of our culture the idea that things are black and white, when this could not be further from the truth. In reality, people are not always purely good or purely bad. Humans consist of juxtaposed morals and complicated emotions that define them as neither good nor bad, but instead the combination of the two define us.
Every person is a mixture, a different concoction of morals and sins. We come from different backgrounds and display different ideas on life. Our actions consist of sin as well as morality. Just because someone has evil inside, does not mean that is what they consist of all the way through. In truth, the balance of these two extremities displays our inner self, not one alone.
