Beyond the Good/Bad Binary: A Christian Theological Perspective

- Hannah Pepperidge

In both wars -- the War on Terror and the War on Drugs (which really are both wars of
State-sponsored terror)-- we observe a lack of outrage in the West, particularly the United
States, over lives damaged and lost. As Mavra mentions in Part I, media attention focuses on
Westerners killed by terrorist attacks, but not on non-Western peoples. Similarly, as Andre
discusses, people of color in the United States face disproportionate rates of incarceration in the
War on Drugs, while media attention remains quiet. As Hannah discusses, the War on Drugs as
carried out in Mexico claims vast amounts of lives each year, but most people in the United
States are not aware of it, or if they are, they claim that those killed must have done something
wrong.
Part of this apathy results from a profound tendency to blame the victim as bad, when
in reality those harmed by violence bear the brunt of systemic injustice. In the United States,
poverty and lack of support for addiction create situations that foster drug use, while
disproportionately targeting communities of color for police action in response to drugs. The
War on Terror presumes that death is justifiable, or inevitable collateral damage, for a person
who lives in the proximity of a municipality known to harbor terrorist groups, as if it were their
fault for choosing to live in a conflictual area of the world. In Mexico, the media -- both in
Mexico and the United States -- tends to assume that if someones rights are violated in the
Drug War, it is because they were in a gang, or involved in the drug trade,1 or somehow
making unwise choices.
In reality, of the many thousands of people forcibly disappeared in Mexico since the
beginning of the Mrida Initiative in 2006, many have no involvement whatsoever with
narcotrafficking or organized crime2. But in popular society -- both in Mexico and in the U.S. --

1
Omar Garca, a student who survived the violence, popularly known as Ayotzinapa, notes that in his
home region in Guerrero, Mexico, many families cultivate poppies -- the source of opium -- due to lack of
other economic opportunities in their hometowns. (Source: Garca, speaking at Ayotzinapa Case:
Current Situation and Prospects [sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, Escuelita
Comunitaria, American Friends Service Committee et al] at the University of California, Berkeley, 26
September 2017)

2
While many people who are killed or forcibly disappeared are ordinary citizens, insisting on the
innocence of victims doesnt address the root issue, which is that n o matter what someone is involved
with, they dont deserve an extrajudicial killing, forced disappearance or torture at the hands of the State.
If someone is involved with illicit activities, take them to court for a fair trial. People have human rights, no
matter what theyre involved in.
there exists this victim-blaming mentality that If something happened to them, they must have
done something wrong. Antonio Helguera, political cartoonist for the daily Mexican newspaper
La Jornada, illustrates this phenomenon of victim-blaming.3

This cartoon, entitled Morir en Mxico -- To Die in Mexico -- features headstones which read: She was dressed
provocatively; It was a settling of accounts; Who knows what they were involved with; What were they doing out at
that hour?; She was a whore; They must have been involved in something; It was a gang fight; They killed amongst
themselves. (Antonio Helguera, La Jornada, March 15, 2010)

This cartoon implies a sort of divide between the good and bad people, in which the
people who died were somehow bad and must have deserved their fate. Similarly, scholars
note the existence of a good Muslim / bad Muslim binary in the Western imagination.4 This
good/bad binary occurs also inside the U.S. in the immigration debate, particularly in the
wake of the repeal of DACA, with DACA recipients perceived as good immigrants and the rest
of the people residing in the United States without documentation spun as bad immigrants.5

3
Antonio Helguera, Morir en Mxico (To Die in Mexico) [political cartoon], La Jornada, March 15,
2010. Available at: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/03/15/cartones/1 . Reprinted in John Gibler, To
Die in Mexico, San Francisco: City Light Books, 2011, p. 6.
4
See, for example, Mahmood Mamdani, Professor of Government and Anthropology at Columbia
University (New York) in his essay, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim - An African Perspective. Available at:
http://essays.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/mamdani.htm
5
For more on the good immigrant and bad immigrant narrative, see Joel Sati, How DACA pits good
immigrants against millions of others, Washington Post, September 7, 2017. Available at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/09/07/how-daca-pits-good-immigrants-ag
ainst-millions-of-others/
 Much of Western culture has also subscribed to this good/bad binary: something is
good, or it is evil. People are guilty or innocent, vicious (that is, full of vice) or virtuous. Hispanic
Christian theologian Justo Gonzlez, however, offers a counter-perspective beyond this
good/bad binary. After recounting the flaws and failings of many of the great heroes of the
New and Old Testaments of the Bible, Gonzlez concludes that biblical history is a history
beyond innocence,6 then draws parallels with how Anglos and Hispanics today construe their
own histories:
[*trigger warning: reference to gender- and race-based violence*]
We [Hispanics] know that we are born out of an act of violence of
cosmic proportions in which our Spanish forefathers raped our Indian
foremothers. We have no skeletons in our closet. Our skeletons are at the very
heart of our history and our reality as a people. ...
...The parallels between the Bible stories read in our Sunday schools
and the American stories that pass for history in our daily schools are striking.
In both cases, the great heroes are depicted as people of pure and unmixed
motives, clear conscience, and undeviating righteousness. ...
Innocent history is a selective forgetfulness, used precisely to avoid the
consequences of a more realistic memory. ...
Therefore, part of our responsibility as Hispanics, not only for our own
sake but also for the sake of other minorities as well as for the sake of the
dominant [Anglo] group, is constantly to remind that group of their immigrant
beginnings, of the Indian massacres, of the rape of the land, of the war with
Mexico, of riches drawn from slave labor, of neocolonial exploitation, and of any
other guilty items that one may be inclined to forget in an innocent reading of
history.7

When we accept, as Gonzlez asserts that Hispanics8 generally do, that we are all beyond
innocence, a mix of good and bad, both in our collective histories as well as in our individual
persons and actions, we can move beyond those binary labels and consider instead our actions
as lying on a spectrum between just and less-just, helpful and less-helpful, effective and

6
Justo L. Gonzlez, Maana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective. Nashville: Abingdon,
1990, p. 77.
7
Ibid, 77-80.
8
I use the term Hispanic here, rather than Latinx, to follow Gonzlezs lead.
less-effective. This releases us from the need to defend our identities, our very s elves, as
good against a perceived accusation of badness and focus instead on the effects of our
actions. Accompanying this shift, we turn our evaluative focus from i ntent to effect, paving the
way for us to listen to feedback about the effect of our actions without this posing a threat to the
ontological goodness of our very selves.
ood, in our essence, because
Theologically, we accept that we are ontologically g
according to the Genesis account, we are Gods good creation9, made in the image of God10.
Nevertheless, we often do varying degrees of harmful actions, even when we have good intent.
Our ignorance of the context of situations leads us to miss the mark11 in determining what to
do, how to do it, when to do it. (As Aristotle argues, for an action to be fully virtuous it must be
the right action, done at the right time, in the right way, with the right motive, to the right extent.12
How very easy to miss the mark in even just one of those domains!) We accept, then, that we,
who are fundamentally good because we are made in Gods good image, do actions on a
spectrum between helpful and harmful.13 We resolve to listen to feedback on how others
experience our actions, rather than shutting them down by insisting upon the goodness of our
intent. We accept that the very same action in one context may have helpful effects, while in a
different context it may have less helpful, and even harmful, effects.
Despite our ontological goodness, we also have this proclivity toward missing the mark,
which in theological terms is our concupiscence -- our tendency to do harmful things. Thus,
although our nature is fundamentally good, it is wounded. Therefore, we do actions which are

9
God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good (Genesis 1:31a, New Revised
Standard Version [NRSV]). Note that in the creation story, God pronounces each stage of creation
good, but after creating man and woman, the refrain changes from it was good to it was very good.
10
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he
created them (Genesis 1:27, NRSV).
11
The Greek word (hamartia), translated into English as sin, employs the image of an archery
target to indicate the concept of missing the mark.
12
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II.
13
Some might argue that positing the essential goodness of each person (in her personhood, not her
actions) serves to minimize the reality that some people do extremely harmful things. After all, they might
say, wouldnt it be fair to call that person essentially bad? To this, I respond in two ways: 1) This
argument confuses a persons essential being with her doing; and 2) Even a persons doing always has
some element of perceived good in it, no matter how distorted that persons perception of the good.
Aristotle contends that every person does what she does because she is striving after something that she
sees as good in some way (Nicomachean Ethics, Book I.4). For instance, a woman may attend her sons
soccer game and spend the whole time on her cell phone with her back to the playing field. While this
child may feel abandoned if he has expected the parent to be present to the game, the mother may be
making calls that she deems important. She is striving after something good -- making important
connections with others -- but possibly causing harm due to the timing of the calls and her disregard for
the expectations held by the child.
less helpful, or even harmful. When we describe these actions, however, I propose we move
away from the binary descriptions of good and bad and toward language on a spectrum
between helpful and less-helpful (or harmful). Why? Three reasons:
1) Accommodation to culture: Western culture for the last few hundred years has tended
toward utilitarian ethics and away from virtue ethics. This language of helpfulness better
reflects that focus on what works in a practical sense.
2) Functional capacity of words: The language of good and bad, while theoretically
possible to place into a spectrum (very good, less good, a little bad, etc.),
nevertheless evokes not a sense of gradations but of absolute judgments. Im not sure
why our minds tend to see the function of the words good and bad as communicating
polar opposites without incremental gradations between them, but since they tend to do
this, we do better to describe behavior using language that more strongly evokes a
spectrum.
3) Language equivocation: Our minds too easily convert language that describes
behavior as good or bad into an assessment of someones personhood as good or
bad, which undermines the premise that we are all essentially good people who
happen to also have a wounded nature with tendencies to do harm. We mistake, or
equivocate, language of action for language of essential personhood. When we do so,
we find ourselves arguing, What I did wasnt bad because I did it with good intent.
What we usually mean is, My action wasnt bad because Im a good person. We see
here the equivocation of language for behavior with language for personal identity.
For these reasons -- accommodating to culture, acknowledging functional capacity of words,
and avoiding language equivocation -- I propose that we shift our language for behavior to the
spectrum of helpful and less helpful (or harmful) and away from the binary of good/bad.
Recent work in mindset informs this shift in focus away from the good/bad binary and
toward a spectrum of helpful and less-helpful, or harmful, effects. Psychologist Carol Dweck, in
her seminal work in educational psychology, Mindset, contrasts a fixed mindset with a growth
mindset.14 Those of the fixed mindset see intelligence and ability as s tatic -- innate and
resistant to change over time -- while those of a growth mindset see intelligence and ability as
dynamic, subject to adaptation in accord with hard work. Dweck reports that the people most
likely to achieve successes, in the long run, were those who adopted the growth mindset and
thus were willing to take risks, make mistakes, learn from those mistakes and grow.

14
Dr. Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006.
 The shift from a fixed to a growth mindset corresponds with the shift out of the
paradigm of a good/bad binary, which tends to focus on the virtue of ones intent, toward the
paradigm of a spectrum that assesses the helpfulness of actions, focusing on the effect of ones
actions on others. The growth mindset allows the actor in civil society -- each one of us -- to
listen to the feedback of others to evaluate the outcome of our actions, without judging our
innate selves in a fixed and static manner such as good or bad based on our actions, and to
make changes and adjustments so as to grow and act with greater justice, in accordance with
the circumstances of each context.
A theological foundation for this move away from the good/bad binary, within
Christianity, lies in the eschatological vision of the Catholic theology of purgatory. Contrary to
Protestant visions, which envision a binary future for each individual of either heaven or hell,
the Catholic theology of purgatory makes space for the nuanced reality of most of us: We are
essentially good, but flawed in our actions. We act both helpfully and harmfully (i.e. virtuously
and viciously) to different degrees in different contexts. Our effects on others are a mix of
shadow and light. We live in the now and the not-yet. We are reaching toward Christ and are
being saved by grace, yes, but we have a lot of growing yet to do in our souls. Purgatory makes
space for this growth in its vision that, after death, before entering into the perfect presence of
God, we metaphorically need a shower. As C.S. Lewis wrote15:
"Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would it not break the heart if God
said to us, 'It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud
and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these
things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy'? Should we not reply, "With
submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be cleansed first.' "It may
hurt, you know'--"Even so, sir'."16

"My favorite image on this matter comes from the dentist's chair. I hope that
when the tooth of life is drawn and I am 'coming round, a voice will say, 'Rinse
your mouth out with this.' This will be Purgatory.17

15
For an exploration of how Lewis, as a Protestant Christian, embraces the typically Catholic Christian
belief in purgatory, see Paul Arnold, Rethinking Purgatory: C.S. Lewis on the controversial doctrine,
Canadian Christianity [blog], January 23, 2013. Available at:
https://canadianchristianity.com/c-s-lewis-and-rethinking-purgatory-5968
16
C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. London, UK: Geoffrey Bles Ltd, 1964, p. 140.
17
Ibid, 141.
This doctrine of Purgatory provides the underlying cosmovision to believe that our human
behavior is not so neatly divisible into good and bad but a bit more nuanced, collectively and
pe Salvi (Saved in Hope), describes
individually. Pope Benedict XVI, in his 2007 encyclical S
eloquently this paradox within each person:
For the great majority of peoplewe may supposethere remains in the depths of their
being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of
life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evilmuch filth covers
purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is
base and remains present in the soul.18
Benedict XVI acknowledges the ultimate goodness within each of us in our openness to truth,
to love, to God. He observes that this essential goodness commingles with our tendencies
toward a mix of good and bad in our concrete actions and compromises on a spectrum
between those two absolutes. Benedict points toward the ultimate hope of an integral
congruence between our behavior and the essential goodness of our being:
Before [Christs] gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us,
transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during
our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this
encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies
salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful
transformation as through fire. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his
love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus
totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes
clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for
ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards
love.19
This searing encounter frees us to be ourselves by purging out the disposition to act in
less-helpful and unhealthy ways, so that we can be in our totality, essence and behavior, what
most of us long to be: good and just. This transformation, according to Benedict, happens for
most people in Purgatory.

18
Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (Saved in Hope), 2007, paragraph 46. Available at:
http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.h
tml
19
Ibid, paragraph 47.
 So in the meantime, as we walk our journey of life with its call to do justly, love mercy
and walk humbly with God,20 we can and should accept the essential goodness of ourselves
and others, while also acknowledging that we all do varying degrees of helpful and less-helpful
(and harmful) behavior. We boldly denounce actions that harm others, and respond with
appropriate consequences to prevent further harm, without shaming the agent of those harmful
actions as an essentially bad person. We refuse to blame or turn a blind eye to the victims of
human rights violations on the presumption that they must have deserved it somehow. We
insist that all human beings have human rights, not because of any degree of merit of their
actions,21 but because they are human, made in the image and dignity of God.22
In Louisa May Alcotts classic novel Little Women, the protagonist Jo March makes a
compelling argument for womens suffrage, which we may adapt to any form of human rights: "I
find it poor logic to say that because women are good [i.e. do good actions], women should vote.
Men do not vote because they are good; they vote because they are male, and women should vote,
not because we are angels and men are animals, but because we are human beings..."23
In the same vein, if we replace vote with have rights, we have a compelling argument for
the defense of human rights of all people without having to resort to the creation of a good/bad
binary which overlooks the fundamental goodness of all human beings and the nuanced nature of
the behavior of all humans. We no longer have to try to paint a picture of someones innocence in
order to justify our protest against the injustice inflicted upon them. Whether the context involves the
war on terror or the war on drugs -- both of which are wars of terror carried out by the State -- we
can move beyond victim-blaming to stand up for the intrinsic human rights deserved by all.

20
From Micah 6:8, King James Version
21
Theologically, this concept echoes the attitude reported about Christ toward humankind in that he
saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy
(Titus 3:5a, NRSV).
22
One could also say that people deserve human rights due to their fundamental ontological goodness,
as declared by God at creation. On the same basis, one could also correctly argue that animals and
nature have rights. The distinction between human rights and animal rights or nature rights could be
argued to consist in the distinction between the Genesis declaration of animals and nature as good and
humans as very good. This suggests two realms for further exploration: the theological bases for rights
of humans, animals and of all the created order; and the bases for these rights outside of a theological
context.
23
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868). Quote available at:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/jo-march