The Lie They Tell About Emma Watson and Me

by Lyndsey Graves

Today I went to the grocery store, the nice one here in Atlanta, and unlike the bargain-box store in my Syracuse neighborhood, it had rows and rows of magazines on the checkout line. I stood in that checkout line holding a can of beans and, for two full minutes, I stared at Emma Watson, wishing to be her. I tried the whole time to talk myself down, telling myself the picture was photoshopped and I don't have to have her cheekbones to be happy. But I really only felt one emotion: a nameless fusion of mild envy and despair.

This is why I normally don’t let myself look at magazines in stores, fixing my gaze instead on anything boring in order to avoid them - because they lie. Maybe one day I will have the serenity to glance at Emma's pixel-perfect skin and merely think, "Good for her," but I don't really think so; I don't think that's how the lie is supposed to work.

I'm not supposed to be content with myself. I'm supposed to buy serums, concealers, pastes, powders, relaxers, intensifiers, shields, infusions, masks, and moisturizers. I'm supposed to buy Zumba classes and Spanx and self-help books. It is important that I believe there is something wrong with me.

For years and years, I’ve believed the lie. In fact, I used to think that it would be prideful or dangerous for a Christian to be happy with him- or herself. Self-improvement has been a religion of mine for as long as I can remember – if you don't focus on your flaws, you're deceiving yourself; if you flaunt your strengths, you'll be an embarrassing show-off; if you're not good at something, you'd better work ceaselessly toward reaching your full potential.

So for me, it comes from everywhere. It comes from media messages so pervasive that I have taken to physically dodging them, and from the slightly-twisted brand of "pursuing holiness" that I've adopted: this deep-down belief that I cannot ever be content with myself, that I cannot ever know rest. More specifically, that failure to be and do everything perfectly is failure at all of life. That real people have no weaknesses, need no help, admit no failures. That I'll try harder tomorrow.

The truth is, I can't be and do everything. And neither can you. And this should be obvious to us, but it's not. We think that the perfect version of ourselves would be a carbon copy of some romantic-comedy-protagonist: good-looking, intelligent, hardworking, outgoing and funny, but also deep and profound; fit beyond belief, but also able to enjoy a big buttery meal. We think we can be creative and organized, have a best friend who's slightly uglier than us, be perfect mothers and daughters and friends and employees and girlfriends. 

But the thing about romantic-comedy-protagonists is that they're somehow entirely forgettable. More than that, they're not real - they're little gods. And that's really what we're trying to be. Flawless. Bigger than we are. Gods.

I've spent days and months of my life beating myself up for not being extroverted, ten pounds lighter, an early riser, more photogenic, more spiritually disciplined, concerned about strangers, or for not having a louder voice. And if I’m honest, in these areas of my life, if I can only accomplish the bare minimum, that’s me doing really well. 

You have your own list, too, of all the million things you think you should be. And I think it's time we all said, “I'm just not.”  God has those things, and he did not give them to me, and someone else will have to be them because I can't. I am not infinite. I am just me. And I trust that God doesn’t require me to be infinite, so I will not continue on the soul-crushing slog of pretending that I am.

I am not a detail person, and I used to think I should be. I used to think that every one of the ‘good’ people, the people who were doing it right, noticed and remembered everything. I would berate myself with terrible anger and derision whenever I forgot to bring a knife with my cake to an event, or missed an obvious step in some long math problem, or called the kitchen "clean" when others could point out the crumbs by the toaster and the pots on the stove.

But when I started my new job this year - only because I knew I'd let people down - I stopped trying to keep track of all the details. I learned to make lists and re-make them when I lost them and double-check them again, but I also learned to ask for help. I just looked at rooms full of people and said, “I can't do details.” I stopped being embarrassed when people reminded me of things that should have been obvious. 

And guess what? No one cared. No one looked around and said, "Where did we get this awful intern?" They only rarely laughed at me, and more importantly, they liked my big-picture, abstract, creative approach to my job.

Some things aren't so easy to own. It's a little counterintuitive to value introversion in the U.S. - people are always trying to fix your "shyness." Sometimes, I still feel deficient when every job description I read wants applicants to be a “creative planner, great at envisioning, and outside-the-box thinker” as well as “detail oriented to the core.” I worry whether taking a break from volunteering would make me a selfish person. And of course, the Vogue covers will always try to mock. 

In a lot of ways, liking yourself can be a pretty radical decision - but I'm learning to do it. I'm learning that I don't have to be the airbrushed blonde or the sinless saint to be enough. I'm more of a normal-looking supporting character, the one with the quirky flaws and lame catchphrases who needs help, and I think, just maybe, God is wild about me anyway.

At least sometimes I do. The rest of the time I'm trying to fix my trust deficiency.

Lyndsey lives and works in Syracuse, NY. She majored in theology at Lee University, which is like eating cake or listening to thunderstorms - too enjoyable to be called work. Also, no one will pay you to do it. You can follow her on Twitter @lyndseygraves and you can find more of her writing at her blog To Be Honest.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.
 
You might also like:  

• Intertwined With the Poor: What the Missional Movement Lacks
• Because It's Not My Tragedy
• Let's All Talk About What We're Tired Of (A Response to Tony Jones)

Review: Faith, Doubt, and Other Lines I've Crossed by Jay Bakker and Andy Meisenheimer

Jay Bakker

by Ben Howard

When I first heard Jay Bakker speak in January of this year, I was immediately captivated by his honesty, his vulnerability and his intense desire to find hope in love and unity. So I was more than happy to find out that Jay was releasing Faith, Doubt, and Other Lines I’ve Crossed in February along with his co-writer Andy Meisenheimer.

As a pastor’s son and, for lack of a better term, recovering evangelical, Bakker’s thoughts inevitably trace their way through the theological minefield that many like-minded people have also found themselves navigating. He begins with the struggles of doubt, the realization that doubt is a part of faith, rediscovering the Bible as a living document instead of a list of rules, and a recasting of what atonement and salvation really mean.

To be honest, the first five chapters reminded me of similar books, like my first experience with Rob Bell when I was in college, or Brian McLaren’s early work. Though they were familiar, I found myself drawn in by Jay’s openness. Whereas Bell and McLaren’s work showcased the positives of this new way of believing, Jay’s work shows the darkness and the pain of the struggle. He does not sugar coat the fact that this transition has been difficult, or really that life in general has been difficult, and this transparency helps to form a bond between reader and writer.

Read this book

Though the first half of the book may seem familiar, the final three chapters send the book into the stratosphere. In Chapter 6, Jay lays out his view of grace. He opens the chapter with the following quote from Brennan Manning:  “[Grace is] not cheap. It’s free, and as such will always be the banana peel for the orthodox foot and a fairy tale for the grown-up sensibility.”

From there, Jay begins to lay out an understanding of grace that is so self-evident and simple, yet simultaneously so difficult to swallow that it forces the reader to confront their own prejudices. He embraces the idea that when we say grace is for everyone, including those we hate, including those who hurt us, and including those who don’t deserve to be offered grace. Even if it offends us and we cannot offer grace ourselves, grace is for all.

He continues by showing that grace also extends to us, and that means that it extends through and beyond our own inability to accept what we find as “unacceptable” in our lives.

In my favorite passage in the book Jay lays out what happens when we accept ourselves:

“When we see and accept the unacceptable in our own lives, we recognize the unacceptable in other people’s lives and yet accept those people anyway. Then we are truly able to help others, to lead them to grace, to help them to grace, to help them discover transformation.”

This vision of grace and acceptance extends into the final two chapters which explore the world of the marginalized and the church’s call to seek the lost and the excluded. In these chapters he speaks over and over about how Jesus ate with the tax collectors, who were hated for their traitorous work for the Romans, and the sinners, who were ostracized by society. He loved people because society was allowed to hate them. He was on their side because they needed someone to love them too.

In the final chapter especially, Jay explores the need to accept gay and lesbian people into the church. He relates his own experience with this acceptance and how it led to him losing his job in Atlanta. How he did what he felt he had to do, because it was right, regardless of the pain and the cost.

Free, offensive and wonderful

That’s what I love about this book. It does not shrink from the pain of doing the right thing. It understands that a quest for loving unity, acceptance, and grace will lead to a lot of pain from those who are afraid of the implications. 

Additionally, I appreciated the way Jay came to his beliefs. He did not attempt to twist scriptures or re-contextualize them to make them say something that he wanted them to say (a temptation I am all too familiar with), instead he seems to have looked at them with fresh eyes and has been able to see through the grit and grime of a mountain of bad interpretations.

We love because it’s so obvious God loves us. We give grace because it’s so obvious the grace we’ve been given. We do what’s right because it’s so obviously the right thing to do, even when it hurts.

If this is what it looks like to cross the line, then I can’t wait to follow.

Peace,
Ben

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

Contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com.