What If It's Not Black And White?

biblical coaching christian coach training the pendulum process Oct 04, 2026

Most of us were handed a simple map for the life of faith: right or wrong, in or out, faithful or failing. It's a tidy way of thinking. It's also the reason so many of us feel stuck.

Here's what I've noticed after years of coaching. When we decide something is all bad, we swing hard toward its opposite. Raised with too many rules? We swing to none. Burned by being too trusting? We swing to trusting no one. Exhausted from saying yes to everything? We swing to a hard no.

It feels like growth. Often it's just the other side of the same pendulum.

And the pendulum doesn't stop there. It swings back. So we spend years moving between two extremes, convinced that one of them must be the right answer, and feeling like a failure every time we find ourselves on the wrong side again.

What if neither end is the answer?

Scripture is full of things we'd rather keep separate. Jesus is described as full of grace and truth, not one at the expense of the other. Ecclesiastes tells us there's a time to speak and a time to be silent. Again and again we're invited to hold two things at once, which is much more difficult than picking a side.

Black-and-white thinking is appealing because it's fast and clear. It lets us skip discernment. But it also lets us skip the conversation with God about this situation, this relationship, this season.

So here's a small challenge for the week. Pick one area where you've been swinging. Ask yourself:

What extreme am I reacting against?
What extreme am I running toward?
What might be true in both?

You don't have to resolve it. Just notice the swing. Noticing is where the pendulum starts to slow, and where we finally get quiet enough to hear something other than our own reaction.

Look for this concept in your coaching conversations, too. Where might the other person be seeing things as black and white that may not be exactly right or wrong, but extremes?

I've been writing about this for a while now, and I'll be sharing more in the weeks ahead. For now, just sit with the question: what if it's not black and white?

What If It's Not Black And White?

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