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Feeling scorned by my lapsed allegiance to conservative evangelicalism and the Republican Party, a family member dismissively impugned, “If you’re not a conservative and you’re not a liberal, then what are you? You’re trying to carve out a middle-ground that doesn’t exist!” Though clearly intended as a rhetorical question, I decided to answer. “The English language has a word for this. It starts with an ‘M’ and ends with ‘oderate.’ I don’t understand why this is such a mystery. If you’re not right-wing or left-wing, doesn’t that pretty much just leave the fuselage?”
People are culturally conditioned to insist the world be framed in binaries, but that’s nonsense. One statement that has had a profound influence upon my Christian worldview comes from a Quaker theologian. Elton Trueblood wrote, “One of the best contributions which Christian thought can make to the thought of the world is the repetition that life is complex. It is part of the Christian understanding of reality that all simplistic answers to basic questions are bound to be false. Over and over, the answer is both-and rather than either-or.” That’s the ticket, laddie.
Complex nondualism is at the very heart of following Jesus. Love OR Truth? Are we God’s beloved children made in His image OR are we deeply marred by the fall? Is Jesus fully God OR fully man? Should biblical hermeneutics focus upon authorial intent in the original cultural-historical context OR see Scripture as a living story read through a Christocentric lens? Are Jesus’ followers contemplatives who rest in God’s presence OR Kingdom citizens who work for social justice? One God OR three Persons? The answer is “Yes.” That shouldn’t be controversial.
Unfortunately, American society is bifurcated from our political reality on down. As the Anglican theologian N.T. Wright put it, “From where many of us in the UK sit, American politics is hopelessly polarized. All kinds of issues get bundled up into two great heaps. The rest of the world, today and across the centuries, simply doesn’t see things in this horribly oversimplified way.” False dichotomy has somehow gone from a logical fallacy to a tribalistic virtue. Yes, it’s all thoroughly irrational, but it’s more than that. It constitutes a betrayal of The Way of Jesus.
The original beatniks were focused on fiction and poetry, so they didn’t explore technical points of nonfiction. Their writings reflect a post-structuralist approach that prioritized empathetic narrative over concrete arguments for propositional truth claims. It’s hard to extrapolate the precise nature of their underlying epistemological and theological convictions. Given their postmodern artistic sensibilities and proclivity toward Eastern religions, however, it seems reasonable to infer an anti-binary perspective that comports with nondualistic spirituality.
