Pastor's Corner: The beauty of the gray areas

Sometimes, we really want the world to be binary. We want black or white, good or bad, wrong or right, yes or no. We want extreme clarity. But is the world really like that?

Recently, I took a class for pastors on the ethics of pastoring and pastoral boundaries. We were handed a list of questions, and we needed to circle "yes" or "no" for each question. Some of the questions were clear, like "Is it acceptable to pursue a romantic relationship with a parishioner?" The answer is obviously no.

But other questions just didn't fit with the yes/no dichotomy. For example: "Is it ever acceptabl...