Readers of the Bible are sometimes surprised by the warning not just against being too wicked, but also against being too righteous (Ecclesiastes 7:16-17). The above diagram, which came to my attention on Facebook, seems to me to explain the point well. And it turns out it connects naturally with something that I have said in the past about the idea of the “narrow road” and the “slippery slope.” These phrases are used most by conservatives, about sticking to their (admittedly genuinely narrow) way of doing things, and avoiding any shift away from their extreme. But what if the healthy narrow balancing act actually takes us down the middle, avoiding unhealthy extremes on either side?
When I came across the chart below, it reminded me of the verse in Ecclesiastes, and my previous thoughts about the narrow road as a middle path rather than one along an extreme. What do you think of it? Does it do a good job of illustrating, and persuading, that virtue is to be found in balance rather than at one extreme or the other?
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