I am curious about the intersection between passion and moderation.  Can I be passionate and moderate at the same time?  For example, I passionately believe that God exists, but I do not understand everything about God.  I expect someday I’ll discover I know very little about God.  I also passionately believe that God created our world, including you and me, but I don’t know exactly how or when.  Frankly, I don’t care how or when.  I’m a Christian because of my passionate belief that Jesus of Nazareth was God in the flesh, but I don’t understand how it’s possible to be divine and human.  I realize that many people in the world do not share my beliefs.  In fact, I understand why it might be difficult to believe what I believe about God and Jesus.  After all, it’s difficult to prove any of it scientifically.  If I depended on scientific method to support my beliefs, I would be in a tough spot.  I have passionate beliefs, but I don’t understand everything about my beliefs.  I guess that’s the nature of faith, and not so much the nature of science.  I am in the middle.  I am a moderate.  Passionately. 

Can I be a passionate believer and moderate also?  Is this a tenable position?  Consider this: There is a difference between passion and extreme.  One can be passionate about anything, anywhere along the wide spectrum of viewpoints, from one extreme to the opposite extreme, and lots of territory in between.  This means I can be passionate about the middle, the moderate view.  Passionately moderate.  Passion in the murky middle.

It’s hard to be moderate, even harder to be passionately moderate.  It’s murky here.  Gray, sometimes foggy.  This murky middle way is often hard to explain in short sentences.  It’s not very flashy and does not suit our five-second sound bite culture.  Passionate moderation is not very attractive during elections or in some pulpits.  There is complicated tension in the middle.  The murky middle represents strained relationships, and strained politics.  One is pulled toward opposing views while trying to hold on to the middle.  When I am being tugged by competing values all around me, sometimes the middle begins to drift.  It’s hard to hang on to the middle.

But it’s not all bad.  What’s cool about being passionately moderate – at least from my perspective – is that I enjoy a good view in all directions.  For example, in the middle, I think I understand the evangelical and the progressive views about most issues, while also respecting that I probably don’t really understand enough about either.  I understand the goodness of multiple facets of political debates, even though I rarely agree with any extreme position.

I wonder if I will continue to thrive in the middle.  It’s hard work here.  It’s complicated here.  Yet, it feels complete here.  You might enjoy it.  Meet me in the middle.

[For an expanded version of some of these ideas, check out a speech I delivered to the Christian Businessmen Association on the Eastern Shore of Virginia in April, 2006.  See "Random Comments, Links" to the right, or http://www.unpackingideas.org/?page_id=17]

© Copyright by Jeffrey Y. Harlow, Ph.D (2009).