Children of Light, Children of Darkness

Anonymous

I think the Qumranites, whoever they may have been, need a new category. Perhaps the world they lived in was more easily divided into binaries, but I doubt it. Binaries, in my experience, are usually something we impose on the world around us in our attempts to understand it. Because of this they can be both helpful and harmful. Oversimplification is a dangerous thing. Children of light, children of darkness, sure. But I think a more helpful category would be children of dusk. I don't know anyone who is entirely good or entirely bad, as apocalyptic dualism likes to divide them up. I think everyone has a little bit of both darkness and light in them, or at the very least, the potential for both. We are neither noon-day people, nor nighttime people, but children of the dusk; the intersection of them both. I think this category is also helpful to apply to the division between in-group and out-group. Every middle-schooler knows that it is not that simple. Sure, there may be some people who are definitely "in" and some who are definitely "out," but the majority of us are not quite one or the other. We are neither here nor there, entirely in, nor entirely out, entirely good, not entirely bad, entirely light, nor entirely dark. In middle school, most of us aspire to be "in," whatever that really means. And maybe it is the human desire to be "in" that leads us to draw those lines; to make the sharp distinction between in and out, good and bad, light and dark. In order to be "in," there has to be a boundary. In order to be a Washingtonian, there must be a border between Washington and Oregon; a geographic distinction of who is "in" and who is "out." If there were no distinction, I couldn't claim any special status (not that I am...), because there would be no in-group. To have an in-group, you have to have an out-group. If you want to be "in," somebody has to be "out." But what if none of us are neither "in" nor "out"? After all, it is a relative distinction. I may be "in" as a Washingtonian in Washington, but I am "out" as a Washingtonian in Oregon. You might have been a nobody in middle school, but you can still end up with prestige in your profession someday. Most of us have, I think, at some point in our lives been "out," and most of us, at some point, have also been "in." In some places we are "out," and in others we are "in." We are never always/entirely children of light, and neither are we always/entirely children of darkness. We are children of dusk.