Black and White

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of there only being black and white. Light and Dark. No middle ground. No fence sitting. Either it is good and comes from God or it bad and comes from Satan.

At first it seemed a harsh way of looking at life and things. There is so many good things - tv shows, movies, music - that are basically good except for that one part. Those shades of gray in between, what about those? The mostly white things with a little bit of black. (Hopefully we have enough sense to stay away from the mostly black things with a little bit of white.)

I'm reminded of a scripture from the Book of Mormon:
2 Nephi 9:9 And our spirits must have become like unto him, and we become devils, angels to a devil, to be shut out from the presence of our God, and to remain with the father of lies, in misery, like unto himself; yea, to that being who beguiled our first parents, who transformeth himself nigh unto an angel of light, and stirreth up the children of men unto secret combinations of murder and all manner of secret works of darkness.

The devil can transform himself nigh unto an angel of light! Yikes!! He looks goods - like an angel in fact, perfectly harmless - and yet he's still the devil. He's still black. Makes you think, huh?

In October's General Conference Randall K. Bennett of the Quorum of the Seventy stated: "In reality we have only two eternal choices, each with eternal consequences: choose to follow the Savior of the world and thus choose eternal life with our Heavenly Father or choose to follow the world and thus choose to separate ourselves from Heavenly Father eternally. We cannot successfully choose both the safety of righteousness and the dangers of worldliness."

So in reality there really is only black and white. Light and Dark. You cannot sit on the fence. You cannot have your residence in the kingdom of God and your summer home in Babylon. You cannot serve to masters.

Here comes my rationalizations to satisfy the 'black' in my life- Choosing mostly white with a little bit of black (the lightest shades of gray) won't hurt our eternal outcome too much. But, as any painter knows, a little bit of black goes a long way so choose carefully.