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Praying about the flow of time: Praying about AND — again

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 3 2025

Praying about the flow of time: Praying about AND — again

Last week, I wrote that one of my goals is to help people think critically and pray wisely about the human brain’s love of dichotomies and hierarchies. We often mention two things and link them with BUT, indicating that one of them has priority over the other. Linking them with AND places them side by side with equal emphasis.

After I wrote that post, my friend Rich Morey, a therapist and psychologist, replied:

“AND seems to play an outsized role in my life.  I am often struck by how seemingly opposites often present in unison: grief and gratitude, sadness and joy, the sweet and the bitter.  For me personally — confidence and uncertainty, knowing for sure and having doubt, being thankful while also being disappointed.”

I love that Rich has mentioned several significant ideas that he links together with AND rather than BUT.

Rich notes that choosing to use AND can feel like we’re being wishy-washy or indecisive:

“As a younger person, I asked myself — ‘Is it this or that?’ — which one of these takes precedence?  As an older person, it seems that many of these truths/instructions are parallel lines. They are both true simultaneously. This can seem to me like psychological double talk — a point of indecision or straddling the fence in an effort not to make a commitment.  Yet, I am becoming more and more convinced that this is just how things are. Oftentimes, two seemingly contrasting perspectives/truths are present and in play at the same time, and we need to acknowledge and deal with both.”

Pause and think for a minute about how we create dichotomies. I’ve been baking sourdough bread recently, and I feed the starter every day. Last night, when I was ready to feed it, the starter smelled awful. The familiar sour yeasty smell was gone, and something sick had taken its place. My nose and brain said, “No. This is bad, not good. Dump this out.” Good, bad. An appropriate dichotomy in that moment.

Here’s another example. A month ago, we had the exterior of our house painted. I went to a paint store and looked at a couple dozen paint colors that were recommended for the exterior of houses. I brought home six paint chips that I liked and asked my husband, Dave, to choose between them. That whole process of looking at paint chips involved creating a hierarchy. I like this one better than that one. An appropriate hierarchy for choosing paint color.

Rich points two problematical aspects of dichotomies and hierarchies: oversimplification and condemnation.

“It seems that categorizing things and experiences helps us to organize our thoughts and make sense of the world. The problem with either/or is oversimplification, taking something that is multifaceted and nuanced, and reducing it to such a point that the positions are exaggerated. We cannot avoid making assessments, but Jesus is clear that we are not to condemn. I am reminded of the categories of Jew and Gentile. Part of the glory of the early church was that these two groups could live and worship together and be one body.”

Rich’s thoughts echo one of my AHA moments during my Ph.D. studies in communication two decades ago. I learned the sad fact that throughout recorded history, humans have used communication to look down on others. We use language to create “we-they” dichotomies. We “other” groups of people. I had never before known that “other” can actually be a verb, the act of thinking and talking about an individual or group as separate from ourselves and thus inferior.  

Our tendency to other individuals and groups of people comes from our brain’s love of creating hierarchies and dichotomies. We start with God’s good gift of sorting and evaluating things, and then we go too far.  We create barriers, not bridges, which must grieve God, who is the great bridge builder. We express disdain and even condemnation, not kindness and compassion, as Jesus exemplifies and the Apostle Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 13 and Colossians 3:12-17.

Dichotomies and hierarchies also stop us from accepting that we are loved by God. Someone else did that task better than I did, so I must be inferior. I had more energy for showing hospitality and compassion when I was younger, and these days, I feel more limitations. Something must be wrong with me. 

The God who calls us beloved affirms Rich’s words that we can feel many things at the same time: “confidence AND uncertainty, knowing for sure AND having doubt, being thankful while also being disappointed.” When we know we are accepted and loved, we are more able to cross boundaries between people. We are more able to affirm Paul’s words: “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

In this church season of Ordinary Time, as we affirm the significance of God’s presence in our ordinary days, may we all grow in embracing the significance of AND. 

God of grace AND truth, forgive us when we go too far with our dichotomies and hierarchies. Cleanse us from our desire to oversimplify and to judge people who are different than we are. Help us hear your voice calling us beloved. We thank you that you are always stretching us to grow. This week, help us set aside overly simplistic dichotomies and hierarchies and embrace AND.

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Next week: more about ordinary time. Illustration by Dave Baab.

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