Switching Toggels to Tuners

Dear Light Walkers:

I’ve been thinking a lot about our understanding of binary categories ever since several months ago I listened to an interview with a man who is blind, having lost his vision in his mid-twenties in an accident. He mentioned that he did have some shadow vision—he could make out shapes and forms, but they lacked definition and color. When he described what his poorly functioning eyes could ‘see’, he expressed his surprise that many people told him he wasn’t really blind. He said that we think of blindness and sight as a binary relationship, when less than 20% of blind people live in total darkness. Sight is not a toggle condition where most people dwell with light in the on position and blind people suffer with off.

In 1944, blindness became an additional standard deduction for income tax purposes. The standard for ‘legal blindness’ was established as having vision less than 20/200, having a field of vision of less than 20 degrees, or, what the IRS defines as total blindness. When filing for the deduction (in 2023 the deduction is $1,850 for single filers and $1,500 for each joint or head of household blind filers), one needs a letter from an optician or ophthalmologist confirming the condition. This demarcation reinforces our sighted/blind duality, a codified flat deduction not provided for other forms of impairment. While expenses associated with accommodations for work may be itemized for deduction for any disability, our tax code draws an arbitrary but ridged distinction between the sighted and the blind.

We love binary thinking. It’s a human thing—good/evil, happy/sad, abled/disabled, sinner/saint create reflexive and unnuanced judgments as we negotiate our day. It allows us to quickly dismiss the moderately impaired, reserving our full pity for the ‘truly’ unfortunate. It was the kind of thinking Jesus railed against many times. He took the clean/unclean duality of his day and scrambled it through direct observation, parable and healing. The neighborly Samaritan, the quick-witted Syrophoenician woman, the grateful former leper Samaritan, the compassionate penitent tax-collector, the ‘blind’ Pharisees, the outrageously generous widow—all stood as examples of how binary thinking obscured true righteousness and normalized hierarchical abuse.

On Christmas Eve we will again hear the nuanced message from John’s Gospel, “The light shines in darkness and the darkness did not overtake it.” (John 1.5, NRSV) For a room to be truly dark, there must be a total absence of light. The smallest candle or the lowest watt bulb eliminates all darkness, and while a room can be made brighter, no amount of dark can overtake the light.

I believe we, as followers of that light, are invited to non-binary thinking, dropping the coin-flip toggle-switch mentality through deep light-finding intimacy with others. It’s hard work to live in a world where we presume light may be found everywhere, to approach people with the assumption that regardless of their condition, light on them and light through them shines. It’s a prophetic way of life that echoes Isaiah’s words, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light…” (Isaiah 9.2, KJV) It’s a way of seeing that suggests the world’s dualities serve no purpose; we can no longer see others as good or evil, clean or unclean, blind or sighted, because as John goes on to say, “…[T]o all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1.12-13, NRSV) It is the will of the flesh, human will, that obsesses over the binary. It is the will of God that grants us illumination to see all of us as God’s children.

Seeking to swap toggles for tuners, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor