Blurred Lines

Blurred Lines

How do we make sense out of good and evil in this crazy, mixed-up world?

The night was thick with questions, and the city never gave straight answers. You had to piece them together from scraps, cigarette smoke, and shadows on the wall. Life doesn’t hand over truth on a silver platter. It leaves it in back alleys, half torn, waiting for someone stubborn enough to chase it down.

I sit at my desk, files spread out before me. Four leads, four suspects. Taoism. Deconstruction. Noir. A book that swears it keeps things simple, but doesn’t. At first glance they have nothing in common. But I know better. I know every case starts with scattered clues that look unrelated until the light hits them just right.

So the question isn’t whether we have enough to go on. The question is bigger, heavier. What’s really going on with how we understand good and evil, and the lives we’re trying to live?

Case File 1: Tao Te Ching 5

Heaven and earth are impartial

In Taoist philosophy, the universe is not understood as a moral judge. The familiar human categories of “good guys” and “bad guys” do not dictate its workings. Instead, the cosmos continues in its ceaseless rhythm of spinning, storming, growing, and breaking down, without preference or sentiment. Lao-Tzu expresses this bluntly in the Tao Te Ching: “Heaven and earth are not ren (仁).” The term ren, often translated as “benevolence” or “humaneness,” is central in Confucian ethics, where it represents the highest form of moral virtue. By declaring that heaven and earth are “not ren,” Lao-Tzu suggests that the natural order does not operate according to human categories of compassion or justice. To label this indifference as cruelty is itself a human projection; the Tao simply is, unfolding in accordance with its own patterns, beyond praise or blame.

They see the ten thousand things as straw dogs

Back in ancient China, “straw dogs” were woven figures used in rituals. For a moment they were treated with reverence, but once the ceremony was done, they were tossed aside. Heaven and earth treat everything like that. Things rise, shine for a time, and then fade. Not because the universe is cold, but because it makes room for the next thing.

The wise are impartial

If the universe doesn’t cling, then the sage doesn’t either. The wisest people don’t force their preferences on reality. They let things be what they are, and they don’t get hung up on favourites. That way, when it’s time to show compassion, they can do it without strings attached.

They see the people as straw dogs

This one stings. People, too, are part of the cycle. We get our moment, then we pass. The point isn’t that people are worthless, but that they’re not the centre of the cosmos. A wise leader doesn’t use people up when they’re useful and then forget them. They work with the flow of the people’s needs and timing.

The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows

Think of a blacksmith’s bellows, pumping air into a fire. That empty space in the middle isn’t useless. Rather, it’s the very thing that gives it power. Same with the space between heaven and earth. It looks like nothing, but it’s where everything is happening.

The shape changes but not the form

A bellows opens and closes, changes shape, but it’s still the same tool doing its work. Life is like that. Everything around us changes constantly, but the deeper pattern stays steady.

The more it moves, the more it yields

Pump the bellows and more air comes out. The emptier it is, the more it can give. Emptiness isn’t a lack, it’s what makes life possible.

More words count less

Talk too much, and you lose the thread. The Tao isn’t about piling on explanations. Say enough, then stop. Let the silence do the rest.

Hold fast to the center

The centre is where the strength is. It’s the calm in the middle of the storm. To “guard the centre” is to protect your own balance. When everything around you is pulling toward extremes, stay grounded. That’s where you’ll find life that lasts.

Where does that lead us?

Taoism tells us the world isn’t split into neat lines of good and evil. It’s one whole, always shifting, always breathing. The trick isn’t to control it. It’s to stay centred so you can move with it.

Case File 2: Deconstruction

But Taoism isn’t the only one holding a dossier on this case. Let’s pull another file from the cabinet, stamped in bold ink: The Hebrew Bible.

Yahweh: Sovereign of Everything

In the oldest layers of Israel’s scriptures, Yahweh is not a God who shares power. He takes credit for everything, both the blessings and the bruises. Isaiah 45:7 says it outright: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Amos 3:6 puts it even plainer: “Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?”

For the prophets and poets of ancient Israel, God wasn’t just the author of good fortune. He was also behind famine, plague, defeat, and exile. In that worldview, if something happened, Yahweh signed off on it.

The Shift: Post-Exilic Judaism

But later on, the file starts to look different. After the exile in Babylon, new theological systems began to scrub God’s fingerprints off the darker parts of the story. The sharp edge of sovereignty dulled into something more manageable. By the time you get to late Judaism and then Christianity, the picture is far cleaner. God is holy light. Evil belongs elsewhere.

This is where dualisms creep in. Instead of God doing both good and harm, evil starts to get outsourced. Now, the disasters aren’t His responsibility. They’re blamed on cosmic enemies.

Outsourcing Evil: Belial, Satan, and the Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls give us a clear picture of this shift. In texts like the War Scroll (1QM), the world is divided into “the Sons of Light” and “the Sons of Darkness,” with Belial leading the enemy camp. The fight is no longer inside God’s sovereignty, it’s outside Him, between good and evil armies.

Later apocalyptic writings sharpen the image even more. By the New Testament, Satan has become a full-fledged adversary. Evil has been moved out of God’s house and into a rival’s.

Beliefs Evolve

The case file tells us something simple but profound: beliefs evolve. The God of the Hebrew prophets is not the same figure you meet in the creeds of Christianity. As it turns out, Jesus Christ is not the same yesterday, today, and forever. Theology shifted. Systems changed. Ideas developed over centuries, shaped by exile, empire, and survival.

Case Connexion

And here’s where it ties back to our case. If theology itself evolves, then questioning what you inherited isn’t betrayal. It’s detective work. You’re not “falling away” or putting yourself under divine punishment. You’re just following the evidence trail, the same way generations before you did.

The case doesn’t close with condemnation. It closes with freedom.

Case File 3: Shades of Grey

In the world of noir, there are no neat moral boundaries. The good guy drinks too much, lies when it suits him, and sometimes takes payment from the wrong people. The villain may cradle a child with tenderness or weep over a lost love. The line between them is blurred, and that’s the point. Noir refuses to tidy life into “good” and “evil.”

Characters live in compromise. They survive by bending rules, cutting corners, making deals with devils (and sometimes angels). It’s a far cry from Sunday School morality, but it feels more honest. Because in real life, we’re never just saints or sinners. We are messy mixtures, walking contradictions, constantly negotiating the tension between shadow and light.

This is why noir has endured: it forces us to stare into the murk without recoiling. It teaches us to accept ambiguity as part of the human condition.

And it’s why I’ve written Nick Grayson: The Truth in the Lies. Grayson is no plaster saint. He’s flawed, bruised by life, often drunk, and not above bending the rules when truth demands it. But he’s also dogged, stubborn, and unwilling to let the lies win. He lives in that hazy territory where right and wrong overlap, and so do we. I can’t wait to show you more with his next novel, “Pure Evil,” which I hope to have available for purchase by Thanksgiving.

Case closed? Not quite. Because every shade of grey is also a clue: a reminder that morality is lived, not theorised, and that truth often hides in the shadows.

Case File 4: Stephen Skinner’s Keep It Simple Series™ Guide to Feng Shui

Stephen Skinner’s Keep It Simple Series™ Guide to Feng Shui was written back in 2001, and at first it really does live up to its title. The explanations begin simply enough, introducing tools like the luopan and the pa kua mirror. But before long, Skinner moves into the former and later heaven sequences, the East and West life formulas for people, calculating kua numbers for male and female, and system upon system piles on until the “simple guide” feels anything but simple.

That is the irony. Books meant to clarify often end up entangling us in complexity. The more I read, the less certain I became of how to apply any of it with confidence. If everything in this book can be taken at face value, I would probably have to hire an expert to Feng Shui my home rather than attempt it myself.

And perhaps that is the deeper lesson. Life does not need more complicated guides, more formulas, or more ways of questioning whether we are doing it “right.” What we really need is clarity. A way of living that steadies us amid the mess rather than compounding it.

The Clues Come Together

Life isn’t about clean divisions of good versus evil, sacred versus fallen. Both Taoism and noir teach us to face ambiguity. Deconstruction shows us how theology itself evolved. Even flawed guides remind us that simplicity is not always found in systems but in living honestly. The case is closed: you’re free to walk away from rigid frameworks and live fully in the blurred, complex beauty of reality.

Another night, another case cracked. The fog never really lifts, but that’s alright. We know how to walk in it now. Lao-Tzu whispered that the way that can be named is not the eternal Way, and maybe that’s the point. You don’t need all the answers; you only need to live the mystery.