The World in Black and White

Quote of the day:
"Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want."
--John Fowles

As human beings, we prefer to think of things broadly assigned to one side of the fence or the other--”us, them” and lots of varieties of “good, bad.” There are many examples, including big ones like “Christianity good, Islam bad,” “small business good, big business bad,” and “Democrats good, Republicans bad” (or “Republicans good, Democrats bad”).

Putting things on one side of the fence or the other is a way for us to deal with fear and to avoid the work and discomfort of understanding. We sometimes do this quite openly in areas related to entertainment and the arts.

Some statements I’ve heard are: “church good, movies bad” (and its variation “church good, movies after 1945 bad”), “books good, TV bad,” and “classical music good, contemporary music bad” (and many variations).

Because I regularly talked about movies in my church work, the first statement is my favorite, and it provides a perfect framework to counter this way of thinking (more correctly, this way of not thinking).

There are about 400 movies released each year.
Most of them are bad.
Some are good.
Some are very good.

There are about 65,000 sermons preached in American churches each week.
Most of them are bad.
Some are good.
Some are very good.