The Gray Letter Bible:

I read a quote the other day on twitter by a motivation speaker and photographer named Marcus A. Murphy:
"It's interesting that the bible doesn't have a section for life's gray areas, being that this is where the majority of us live."

Now, think about that statement and answer two questions:
1. Do I agree with that?
2. What is he really saying here?

Well, what he's really saying here is that for most of our lives we will be dealing with situations that the bible does not have answers for.

To which I had only two simple thoughts:
1. Are we reading the same Bible? Because thats not what I see
2. Thats just depressing, especially since I know that there are christians out there that believe this.

In fact, if you look at this mindset you see a separation of "Christian life, or church life" and "real life". The speaker divides the decisions between good and evil and the rest of our everyday decisions, theso-called gray areas of life, harmless decisions between the good and the less-good.

Probably known to the enemy as "Divide and Conquer" because if your "real life" falls, your "church life" is pretty much already broken.

And I could go on and on here about postmodernism and its effect on the church and the history of literature and philosophy and all this technical stuff but you know what?

Its not a new issue:
It stretches back further than the last fifty years, its been plaguing christians for a lot longer than we've had a name for it.


Christ himself dealt with this all the time when the Pharisees tried to play stump the chump with him.
Have you ever looked at the questions the Pharisees where asking Jesus?

The Sadducees questioned Jesus about the issue of a man's brother marrying the man's widow (Matthew 22:23-28).
The Pharisees asked Jesus about healing on the Sabbath (Mathew 12:10).
The Pharisees questioned Jesus on His disciples' hand washing (Matthew 15:2).
A Pharisee asked Jesus about the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:36).


Are these, for the most part, earth shattering issues of theology and deep philosophy? No, not really.
I mean, hand washing? Man, that doesn't strike me as particularly divisive..

But you must understand that at this point the whole Jewish society had developed such a wide array of laws governing every facet of their lives that you couldn't throw a brick with hitting a law that would tell you what kind of brick should be thrown, what you could throw it at and the time of day when you could throw bricks over 5 lbs, and all these laws were designed to make people "holier" enough that they would be acceptable to God (or, if you want to take cheap shots at the Pharisees, who are kind of the nazi's of Christianity, you could say they were so one could be "holier" than their neighbor).

So In fact, these questions were grounded in the day-to-day minutia of ordinary life to Jesus's listeners.

They are totally trying to stump Jesus with situations that they say aren't answered in the Bible.
Sound familar?
Lets look at this last one, because I think its got some good things to say.

Matthew 22:34-36
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.
35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
So lawyer comes up wondering whats the most important law here is how Jesus answers him:
Matthew 22:37-40
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.
40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
In one single move Jesus removes the question and replaces the answer with a lesson.

Its like, I'm not sure if you guys have ever had this experience but I grew up homeschooled and somedays I'd be going along, doing my math and I would run into a problem that I couldn't quite figure out, so I'd come to my math teacher (my mom) and ask her "How do I solve this problem?" Always stressing the "this" so maybe she'd just tell me whether or not my answer is right. Instead she would always sit down with me and teach me how to do the problem correctly.


The bible is not a rulebook, it is an instruction manual. Some person once turned it into an acronym: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.
It will not tell you exactly what to do in every situation, God is not the divine referee. It will teach you to live your life in a way to please and glorify God.


That passage in Matthew we read says that we are too "Love God and Love your neighbor as yourself."
This is the foundation of the Bible, everything we are supposed to do grows out of ( or hangs upon) these two things.


There is no situation or moral dilemna where we cannot discover what we should do by asking ourselves "what will show that I love God, and what will show that I love others."
Now, do not mistake "possible" for "easy" and do not mistake this as something you should apply to other peoples lives.
And certainly don't mistake love for fairness.
Ultimately, We can live the answers but that does not make them fun to live through.
But by the grace of God we can.

Let us pray.