As I waited for my physician to see me, I overheard a disheartening conversation between a supposed “Christian” nurse with an elderly lady. They were talking about the murder of babies as a “gray area”.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 5^th Edition defines “gray area” as an area of uncertainty or indeterminacy, and an intermediate area; a topic that is not clearly one thing or the other. The phrase or its concept is not found, however, in the Bible.

The idiom of morally “gray areas” has no concrete origin. The word “gray” referring to the color was first used in English sometime in the 1100’s. The KJV which came about in 1611 uses gray only for the elderly’s hair color. The word “area” specifying a space was not used until the mid-1500’s, and is not found in the Bible. The generic sense of “area” as something unspecified or undefined did not come into being until the mid-1800’s. For instance, “area” is not found in Webster’s popular 1828 Dictionary. Morally “gray areas” are a modern term. It is not in the Bible. When contemporary believers and the world turned from God’s Word, they naturally created places of moral uncertainty called “gray areas” so they would not have to face guilt or conviction for their evil and sin.

God and His Word are extremely clear about “gray areas”. There are none. Both the color and concept of gray require the mixing of black and white; dark and light. God never, ever condones this. In “Myth #1 – ‘Where God’s Word Is Silent’”, we briefly noticed that God’s requirement to “prove all things” in I Thess. 5:21 indicates the impossibility of gray areas. As this evangelist follows Paul’s example of reasoning out of the Scriptures in Acts 17:2, I ask the reader to be like the noble Bereans of Acts 17:11 and heed the other Scriptural examples we list below. As we do, notice carefully how God only ever gives two choices, not gray areas.

• II Cor. 6:14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?”
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• I Kgs 18:21 “And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.”
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• Eccl. 12:14 “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”
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• II Cor. 5:10 “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”
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• Deut. 30:19 “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:”
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• Rom. 6:13 “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”
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Do you see how God never gives a 3^rd option? It is always only the option of two masters (Mt. 6:24; Lk. 16:13): blessing or cursing, life or death, good or evil, righteousness or unrighteousness, light or darkness. God never makes allowance for “gray areas” or moral “grayness.” The ambiguity of “gray areas” is an excuse for sin and a cop-out for depravity.

(This article is from the “Are You ‘More Noble’?” series.)