The stripes are fading: My no nonsense review of "Distortion"

"Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world's garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses."

 C.S. Lewis "The Great Divorce"

People keep asking me how I can possibly be so vocal about a book written by someone I love so deeply and expect that my bias won't shine blatantly through everything.

To those people I respond as succinctly as I can: You are correct that I have fierce love, the love of a sister, for the girl who wrote this book, but my love for the Gospel she defends is even fiercer. To promote a book I thought was in contradiction to that Gospel would be a disservice both to Savior of my soul, and to the sister of my heart.

I am a millennial Christian. I have slipped into a great many sanctuaries that looked much more like movie theaters (some of them were), where people wore some form of clothing not much dressier than pajamas, and where the music (and the message, for that matter)  said nothing of God who saved us, but more of a lover who failed us. I've seen smoke machines *literal and figurative, I guess*, and I've sat through entire sermons where I could've swapped the entire transcript for the words of a new-age motivational speaker touting self-actualization or a finding of "nirvana."

How did it come to this? This understanding or rather misunderstanding that in order to be the hands and feet of Jesus we simply aren't allowed to to stand for an absolute. We're figuratively burned at the stake for being "intolerant" if we believe something is absolutely right, or absolutely wrong.  In the face of darts and stones. For the sake of "compassion" and "acceptance" we have checked our convictions at the door. We've slipped off our black and white for the sake of slipping stealthily into something gray, slipping into the back pew, and falling dangerously silent. 

We used to be an army of zebras. Maybe a little funny looking to some, but quite obviously standing out as different. Now, we are condemned by the world so much that instead of allowing our stripes to grow bolder and deeper, we are allowing ourselves to blend. The paintbrush is thick with a muddled shade of gray and stroke by stroke the stripes are fading...the stripes are fading.

The stripes are fading...

His stripes are being forsaken in my generation, for a compassion that isn't even real.

Here's the thing: It's not compassionate to let people come to harm. It's not compassionate to let people come to ruin. It's compassionate to speak the truth in love. 

This DOES NOT mean we beat people over the head. This DOES NOT mean we call them hateful names, or treat them in a way that is callous. It means we love them. Love is bright, stark, honest, love is not gray. Love remembers the stripes.

See...Jesus didn't die to leave us something gray...He died to leave us something red...red and atoning...a blood that covered our every wrong, our every transgression, and compelled us not to dwell in those wrongs anymore. I don't believe that an absolute is uncompassionate. In fact, I believe that it is because of His compassion that He gave us stripes, the ones that stood out on that tree as atoning, and the ones like a zebra...on a continually expanding gray wall.

I don't want my stripes to fade. I want everyone to know I've been marked forever. I don't want to blend, and if a dart is thrown, or a stone is cast, I want to stand firm on behalf of the reasons for it. I'm not afraid of darts or stones, but after reading Distortion it occurred to me that perhaps I had not been bold enough in speaking for the Gospel I so love, I had been timid. Not afraid, just timid.

I said a prayer after I finished Distortion.

It mimicked the cry of Jesus on the cross... sort of.

Jesus cried out for those who killed him, those who put Him on that cross.

He said "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

I prayed "Father forgive us, we knew exactly what we were doing."

I loved this book. I loved it so much, for one reason... and that reason IS NOT the fact that, for all intents and purposes, my sister wrote it. The reason is this:

I didn't earn my stripes. Jesus died for them. But, because of His death, they are mine, and they are yours, and we must consider them sacred. I love Distortion because it reminded me to live a striped life in a world where the stripes are fading.

 "That you may be blameless and innocent, children of Godwithout blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me." Phillippians 2:15-18

A resounding "Hosanna" in the absolute highest, from a girl face down in reverence, 

~Courtney