Even God got bored with the binary

Dualisms – whether black and white, male and female, or good and evil – are appealing, but often fail to tell the whole story.

A lot can be said in celebration of the binary. It’s an ancient system of organization, dividing reality into complementary or contradictory halves. Think true/false tests and yes/no answers. Arranging reality in black-and-white terms can make it as interconnected as swirls of yin and yang or as conflicted as two armies squared off on a battlefield.

Binary systems were used in China, Egypt, and India thousands of years ago in the fields of mathematics, philosophy, and literature. Binary thinking made the invention of the computer possible. The binary code is the simplest mathematical language: a tiny realm based utterly on ones and zeroes.

Many people find it efficient to keep their moral universe neatly binary. Such a perspective divides right from wrong, truth from lies, sinners from saints. It distinguishes between orthodoxy and heresy, the saved and the damned. Heaven or hell: What could be more clarifying on the moral map than this profound fork in the road?

One might argue that God is the inventor and chief proponent of binary reality. Doesn’t Genesis declare it on page one? God organizes primordial chaos into neat divisions of light and darkness, day and night, land and water, birds and fish, man and woman. Let there be order, and let it be wondrously binary!

The dualistic vision works well at certain times for certain people. Take divinely favored Israel versus the nations. If you’re Israel, this is an excellent reality to buy into. Not so much if you happen to be born in Assyria, Edom, or Egypt. Israelite binary love manifests in laws concerning diets—kosher or bacon eater?—as well as clean or unclean, holy or profane. Lines of demarcation are drawn between marriage partners, priests and the priested, landowners and workers, judges and the judged. It is always clear who counts and who belongs.

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