Eight Shades of Crayola

by Rebekah Mays 

As a child, I used to spend hours coloring paper doilies. I’d click my Lion King cassette into the tape player and line my markers up, single-file. I could sit like this for hours and color for a whole afternoon, filling in the spokes of those doily wheels with the shades of the Crayola rainbow. Beaming, I’d present the finished work to my parents, who would marvel over my creations and hang them on the wall.

I’m thankful to say I never had to worry about how they would react. I never had to worry they’d say it was a stupid way to spend my time, or that the doilies weren’t good enough for our refrigerator. I wasn’t afraid they would reject my gift – they were my parents after all, and they’d love whatever I gave them. It was my offering, and they accepted it.

It’s funny that I felt so confident expressing my love to my parents. When I later developed into a devout Calvinist, I became a big believer in TULIP and resonated in particular with the concept of total depravity. The idea was that I was so hopeless on my own that I needed God to swoop in and carry me, kicking and screaming, to the foot of the cross. After that, any good things that came out of my life were, apparently, all because of Christ and not any action on my part.

For a myriad of reasons, I’ve since distanced myself from my Calvinist upbringing. I’m Catholic now, and if there’s one difference in my faith, it’s how I see myself in relation to God. I still believe it’s God’s grace, not my own works, that have saved me. I still believe that ignoring Christ’s call and instead living only for my own desires would be an enormous mistake, to put it mildly.

The fundamentals of my beliefs are all the same. But here’s the big change: instead of seeing myself as a worthless sinner haunted by my past and future failures – which I tended to do in my early years – I now see myself as infinitely valuable. The world and I are extravagantly loved by God. And therefore I imagine that God doesn’t see our devotions and offerings as disfigured by our “total depravity.” We’re made in his image and glorify him by our mere existence. And when we love him, we glorify him even more.

A declaration of the Vatican described it this way:

“The good works of the justified are always the fruit of grace. But at the same time, and without in any way diminishing the totally divine initiative, they are also the fruit of man, justified and interiorly transformed.”

If you’re skeptical, think for a moment of the woman who anointed Jesus’s feet with perfume. The disciples were shocked, criticizing her for her wasteful actions. This expensive perfume could have been sold, they say. But Jesus didn’t rebuke the woman. He saw the extravagant ritual for what it was – an act of love, a “beautiful thing.” Certainly God’s grace working in her life prompted her to honor the Lord like this. But she was also a woman in love, interiorly transformed and willing to do something profligate. And the fragrance of her devotion, we are told, filled the entire house. 

Many denominations in the Protestant church, as well as many parishes in the Catholic Church too, for that matter, have long started moving away from language that focuses on how terrible we are and how imperfect our worship is. I think this a step in the right direction. By dwelling too much on our sinful habits instead of honoring God with the incredible lives given to us, we’re missing out on a host of opportunities.

The way I see it, God loves our limp, bleeding paper doilies. He takes them in his hand and examines them. He doesn’t criticize our offerings and our attempts to love him, and so we don’t need to dwell on how unworthy they are, either. Because the longer and more deeply we love him, the more intricate and the more gorgeous our lives will become. Our love won’t be confined to eight shades of Crayola, but to colors even the naked eye can’t see. 

Rebekah Mays is a Barnard College graduate originally from Austin, Texas. She currently works and writes in Prague, Czech Republic. You can find more of her writing on her blog The Prague BLOG or follow her on Twitter @smallbeks.

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Mad Men and the Power of Sin

Beautiful. Cynical.

by Lyndsey Graves 

I was never going to watch Mad Men. I caught about ten minutes of an episode once, channel surfing on vacation with friends, and there was some sort of affair going on and everyone in the TV was clearly terribly unhappy. I didn’t want to host such misery in my own television.

Then I agreed to watch “just the first episode” and of course I was hooked. The first season (that’s all I’ve seen) of Mad Men is beautiful, artistic, witty, and addictively voyeuristic. But the first word I’d use to describe it is cynical. I watch the show out of love for the characters and writing, not because it makes me feel good.

One of the most fascinating and frustrating aspects of the characters’ intertwining storylines is that they are all a little bewildered by their own unhappiness. Behind webs of words and actions, deceit and hidden motives, successes and failures, lie carefully hidden layers of sadness, need, and that distinct feeling of unbelonging – along with a kernel of hope that these unexpressed desires will be fulfilled somehow. For each character this dilemma is unique, but most of their stories also share a sense that they can’t quite do what they want to do – what they know is right. The depth of the show’s cynicism lies in the fact that no one is pretending their lies or affairs or petty behavior are right; it is just how things are.

Depravity in motion

Mad Men strikes quite the contrast to the almost aggressively bright outlook on humanity I’ve encountered from a good many people in churches. The show’s characters are usually sympathetic, but they are not “good people”, and at least some of them know it. This is exactly why we sympathize – because they so evidently struggle against themselves. I think we can fairly label this human tendency toward such selfishness, intentional or not, as “sin”, and the writers are counting on the fact that we can all relate to it for many of the show’s moments of greatest tension and pathos.

Could it be that pop culture is more willing and ready than we think to admit something about human depravity? Just how mad do we think the men involved in this show could be? Or what about Mad Men's cable cousin, Breaking Bad? The entire concept of that show is the slow, steady devolution of a man. Or The Walking Dead, another AMC show, that utilizes the time-honored zombie motif as a way to explore the depravity of humanity. In each case, there seems to be a deep brokenness to the world, to the relationships and the characters inside of it. The world is going crazy and they’re drawn inexorably into it. 

While this deep darkness permeates these shows, the same isn't true in much of pop culture. Instead, there is a constant push to refrain from calling certain destructive habits “sin” and a reaction against value judgments overall. I understand the desire not to condemn, to look for the best in people, to offer hope and affirmation rather than despair and finger-pointing – and yet, at least in the social circles where I currently find myself, the word “sin” is an unfashionable conversation-stopper to a degree that I find dishonest.

Good or bad?

It seems frustratingly glib to pretend that there is nothing really wrong with anybody, that the sinful are really just unfortunately misguided or environmentally disadvantaged. At its worst, it feels absurdly privileged (a word I normally don’t like using) to assert that people really aren’t all that bad. I don’t know any victims of generational poverty, of child abuse, of addiction, of gang violence, who would say that.

 
I still bristle whenever I hear the messages of condemnation hurled down by the holier-than-me. I’m certainly not here to say that people are 100% bad, incapable of doing good – or that sin carries no elements of environmental influence or simple misunderstanding. Neither does Mad Men think so. But this world and the people in it are in dire need of redemption at some fundamental level; somewhere far beyond our own attempts to set things right. I think the world Mad Men speaks to – desperate for authenticity, for the truth beyond the layers of advertising we are all wrapped in – won’t reject us for admitting it.

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.