One of the biggest puzzles is how so many things in our lives are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but some confusing mixture of the two. It is difficult to hold onto this complexity and there is a strong tendency to simplify things and to see only the good or only the bad. That is what some psychologists call ‘splitting’.
These issues arise in religion as well as in our personal lives, and I can illustrate this from the story of Jesus’ life, and how that is celebrated through the Christian year. When you look carefully, all the key stories are a complex mixture of light and darkness, though there is a tendency to simplify them and to see only one side of the picture.
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