A Lion’s Lesson: People Are Not Black-and-White

Bryan College has had a special place in my heart since 2010. The beautiful hilltop community was my home-away-from-home for four years, the place where I met some of my dearest, closest friends and where I grew intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally. Rubbing brains with the best of the best, engaging in deep conversations in the cafeteria, wrestling with ideas and practicalities, embracing opportunities to be both logical and creative, and just plain having fun—these characterized my days as a Bryan Lion.

To this day, I am still realizing the depths of the lessons I learned on that hill in Dayton, Tennessee. Many of them were excruciatingly painful to learn; many were thoroughly enjoyable. Some were accompanied by laughter, some by tears. But all have shaped the woman I am today.

One of the lessons that has served me well in years since truly hit home in the spring of 2014, my final semester at Bryan. I don’t have the time or the desire to hash out all the details here, but for the sake of context I will do my best to summarize the circumstances that led to my learning this lesson…

In early 2014, the college’s administration took action that contributed to what has since been referred to as a “purge” of faculty and staff. The way this action was carried out led to many in the student body involving ourselves in organizing respectful means of protesting and voicing our concerns to the administration.

Unfortunately, the action in question involved a particular passage of Scripture—one about which there has been a history of intense and passionate debate. Because of this, the administration was able to frame the entire situation surrounding their action and any opposition to it as one that was very black-and-white—either you were for the administration’s action and therefore for upholding the truth of God’s Word, or you were against the action and therefore an enemy of the truth of God’s Word.

As someone who personally agreed with the administration’s stance on the particular passage of Scripture and who also disagreed with their action, I myself became living, breathing proof that their black-and-white assertion was a false dichotomy. In other words, it was possible to stand on the truth of God’s Word and to oppose the administration’s tactics. But as the college’s president persisted in the black-and-white characterization, I struggled to recognize this reality.

Being an incredibly loyal person and having grown up in a largely conservative, though not legalistic, spiritual community where those in authority were often revered, I became incredibly troubled when my president began to paint the issue with these all-or-nothing brushstrokes. He was not only a man I respected in many ways but also was one of the reasons I often gave for why I chose Bryan in the first place. So to have him tie my disagreement with him to unfaithfulness to the Word of my Savior left me questioning the strength of my own faith.

I am almost ashamed to admit that now, because I see how foolish and wrong it was of me to fall for that kind of spiritual abuse where a leader equates support for himself with support for God, but I share honestly in hopes that others can benefit from the lessons I have learned.  

My struggle only increased when a nationally prominent man, who was highly respected in the communities in which I had grown up, publicly promulgated the same black-and-white dichotomy. I was crushed. How could this man, whom I had never thought anything but good things about, perpetuate such an unjust claim?

It was then, like a flickering candle with the force of a lightning bolt, that it began to dawn on me that I was guilty of the same all-or-nothing approach when it came to other people, this man included. Either they were trustworthy and upright and everything they said or thought was to be embraced, or they were suspect and foolish and everything they said or thought was to be rejected.

This man ironically, in practicing such foolishness himself, was instrumental in my seeing the same fault in my own life and in recognizing that neither the pedestal nor the dog-house are accurate places for people to be placed. That is, just because someone is godly or wise does not mean he or she will never ever be off-base. Likewise, just because someone is ungodly or unwise does not mean he or she will never ever speak truth.

This realization and the accompanying repentance in my life led to such relief and freedom! It was okay to evaluate what people said independently of who I thought they were or what opinion I had of them as individuals. More than that, it was healthy and good. I could legitimately agree with people on one thing and disagree with them on another, and disagreement did not have to necessitate lowering my opinion of them as people.

And then, as if I didn’t appreciate the mind-expanding education I was receiving at Bryan already, I realized how this balanced posture is precisely what I was being trained for. The questions my professors and staff mentors had been asking me and prompting me to ask on my own for years were uniquely fitted for maturing my mind to be able to achieve this balance.

I can’t count the number of times since graduation that I have gone back to the moment the light first dawned, the moment the Lord first convicted me that I was unfairly raising some up and pushing others down instead of holding them all in open hands and evaluating their messages against His own Word.  That moment left its mark, and I have drawn upon its lesson over and over again.

So now, I seek to be like the Bereans who examined what they heard from a man against God’s revealed word in the Scriptures (Acts 17:11). I seek to maintain that balance whereby I can honestly see and acknowledge both the virtues and the vices in others instead of thinking of them as all-good or all-bad. And I’d like to challenge you to do the same.

Let’s fix our eyes on the only One who is truly and thoroughly Good and ask Him for the grace to treat others equitably and to discern what to hold on to as truth and what to discard as falsehood. Let’s be quick to repent when we either idolize or demonize mere men. And in all of this, let’s ask God to help us remember that, while people come in all different pigments, none of us are black-and-white.