Fighting for Nuance in a World of Extremes

Why it's important to embrace the gray and to stay away from dogmatism

Photo by Matteo Paganelli on Unsplash

(A six-minute read.)

C. S. Lewis, in his book The Screwtape Letters, offers an interesting take on one way the Devil may try to trip human beings up.

The book, published in 1942, is a fictionalized account of letters Lewis “intercepted” from an evil angel named Screwtape who is instructing his nephew, Wormwood, about how to tempt human beings and win them to the Devil’s cause.

Everything has to be taken with a grain of salt, of course, as it is completely the product of Lewis’s (perhaps sanctified) imagination, but I think Lewis offers interesting insight into human nature and the ways in which that nature can be manipulated for tragic and evil ends.

In this one letter, Screwtape addresses the great war that is taking place at the time of Lewis’s writing (which, of course, was World War II), advising Wormwood about whether he should try to allure his human “patient,” as he calls him throughout the book, into pacifism or into patriotism. Both, according to Screwtape, are acceptable—so long as the patient is drawn into an extreme commitment to either one.

“All extremes,” he thus explains, “except extreme devotion to the Enemy [God], are to be encouraged.”

Screwtape does grant that there are periods in history when lukewarmness is a better position to try to draw humans into, but there were also other periods, such as the present one, that were “unbalanced and prone to faction, and it is our business to inflame them.”

It’s a fascinating proposal—that the Devil doesn’t really care what our beliefs, values, or commitments are, so long as we’re extreme about them. And it’s one that particularly resonates with me.

After all, you may have picked up by now that I have developed a strong aversion to dogmatic and extreme thinking. In fact, it’s perhaps become a bit of a dogmatism of its own in my life—that I have little appetite for overly black-and-white thinking that doesn’t have much, or any, room for nuance or gray.

This aversion cuts both ways: I actually don’t care much about whether someone is expressing a “conservative” or “liberal” perspective, and care more about whether they’re holding and expressing those views with moderation or with dogmatism.

I could multiply the examples, but let me cite a minor episode in the history of my own faith community which illustrates my point.

Ellen White once wrote about a congregation in Norway that was greatly suffering because of the presence of a “few extremists” in their midst who were agitating over minor issues.

Apparently, according to White, these agitators, whom she called “fanatics,” were making “their own ideas and notions a criterion, magnifying matters of little importance into tests of Christian fellowship, and binding heavy burdens upon others,” causing the congregation’s witness in the community to greatly suffer, leading people to conclude that “their peculiar faith rendered them unkind, uncourteous, and really unchristian in character.”

What specifically were they pushing?

“Some were making the matter of dress of first importance,” she explained, “criticising articles of dress worn by others, and standing ready to condemn every one who did not exactly meet their ideas.”

At the same time, there were also others who “condemned pictures, urging that they are prohibited by the second commandment, and that everything of this kind should be destroyed.”

She called such people, using a phrase I absolutely love, “one-idea men,” who could see “nothing except to press the one thing that presents itself to their minds.” Indeed, they possessed a “conscientiousness that will carry everything to extremes.”

It wasn’t wise to simply tolerate such behavior, however. “One fanatic,” she insisted, “with his strong spirit and radical ideas, who will oppress the conscience of those who want to be right, will do great harm.”

So serious was this matter, in fact, that she proposed the church needed to be “purified from all such influences.”

It’s quite a phrase—“one-idea men.” But I’ve encountered people like that repeatedly (and I’m sure I’ve been that person repeatedly myself).

Sometimes we get so enamored with one idea, one opinion, one perspective, that we agitate over that matter obsessively. We can’t consider a differing perspective, holding our views with a completely closed hand. And we can’t imagine how anyone could see things differently, digging in our heals.

This, of course, seems to be an increasingly challenging problem in our polarized world, where there is more and more conflict between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, religious and non-religious people—and where the middle, moderate posture, the middle of the road, becomes harder and harder to maintain (with both sides trying to force people to choose the either/or—rather than a both/and—binary).

Interestingly, most psychologists and mental health professionals would say that extreme thinking is frequently the result of significant trauma and emotional distress.

The lightbulb really turned on for me with this when I was reading Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly about five years ago and came across her proposal that the need for “absolutes” and “certainty” is the “human response to fear.” When we’ve been the recipients of traumatic behavior over which we had no control, dogmatic and black-and-white thinking gives us the sense of control we’re craving.

Similarly, making a quick judgment about an issue offers us a form of protection, guarding us against threats.

On the other hand, nuance and gray leads us to feeling vulnerable and at risk, leaving us anxious and out of control.

This is not at all to imply that there is nothing we should be dogmatic about, or that we can’t have strongly-held convictions.

But the older I get, the less I’m inclined to feel dogmatic about much. And, to me, the deeper I’ve gone in God’s love, the more I’ve felt at ease to be open-handed about just about everything else.

My security, my safety, my well-being come from my identity as a child of God—and, as a Jesus-follower, in what I believe God has done for me in Christ—not from how tightly I can hold onto or how dogmatic I can be about other matters. My views on sexuality or abortion or the “end times” or how I observe the Sabbath or which presidential candidate I vote for are not the basis for my security.

For that matter, my security doesn’t come from making sure you see things the way I do. And I don’t have to feel threatened if you see matters differently.

I could say more, but I trust you get the point.

So where does this leave us?

How do we know if we’re being wrongly dogmatic or extreme in our thinking and expressions?

Perhaps just check in with yourself: do you use the terms “never” or “always” when speaking about an issue? Are you able to give honest consideration to perspectives that are different than yours? Do you attack, belittle, or demean those who disagree with you? Even if you don’t ultimately agree with someone else, are you at least able to see how they could have arrived at their conclusion?

Again, this is not to imply that we can’t have strong convictions about matters. But how do we hold those convictions—and what is our attitude toward those who disagree with them? (This is probably for another post, but I’d propose that the degree to which we attack others who disagree with us is the degree to which we’re actually—perhaps counterintuitively—insecure and uncertain about our own perspective.)

Bottom line: go in strong with God’s love. Ground yourself in Jesus. Be dogmatic about grace and forgiveness and mercy—and about injustice toward those who have no power.

Also, get therapy.

And then you’ll soon discover that you’re a lot more open-handed about most everything else—and, as a result, a lot more pleasant to be around.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil student at the University of Oxford (what they call a PhD), focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.