Bears, Burgundy, & Punk-Ass Youth

This weekend, I assumed when I dyed my hair that I would get a rich, deep red-brown—something I didn’t think would be that hard to obtain considering that was the current shade of my hair. However, after thirty minutes of processing my request, Garnier Nutrisse assumed I wanted more of a black cherry hue.  And by ‘black cherry’ I mean ripe eggplant. 

(my new office look)

Which I didn’t mind so much, other than the fact that it sent me spiraling into that dark place all novice philosophy students and stoners encounter—“what if the blue I see is really your green, and your green is really my yellow but we all go on calling them blue and yellow and green and never know the difference?!”  *GASP!* I know, ridiculous.  So “what,” you ask, “does a literary girl do when she encounters such crises that threatens the shell which encases her inner beauty and the sanity of her mind?”

Well, I handled it like I handle all things—I headed to dictionary.com.

I typed the word “burgundy” into the search field with all the ferocity and desperate hopefulness a teenager shakes a magic 8-ball with, and was blindsided when it responded, “Burgundy (lowercase) a grayish red-brown to dark blackish-purple color.”  I looked at my hair (purple), I looked at the model on the box (red), I looked at the definition (diplomatic) and then repeated said action for longer than necessary, trying to bridge the disconnect between what I wanted and what I got. I asked for burgundy, I got burgundy…but apparently burgundy is less of a color and more of an umbrella under which a large range of colors reside.  You may laugh at this, but it parallels a feeling I often encounter when approaching the Bible lately. 

Currently, I only seem to read it when I want comfort, and then am often disappointed when I pick it up and it hands me unbridled truth.  In all honestly, I want it to be relevant to me, at all times, and tell me what to do about my life’s decisions.  I want it to be a compass and a dictionary and magic glasses that helps clarify and sort out the world for me.  I want it to tell me that my red is red and purple, purple. But the truth is…the Bible reflects truth.  And not all truth is black and white (or red) or convenient, much less comforting.  Sometimes you pick up the Bible, flip up to a random page hoping God speaks something directly relevant to your life and you get bat-shit crazy things like 2 Kings 2:23-25,

²³ From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. “Go on up, you baldhead!” they said. “Go on up, you baldhead!” ²⁴ He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. ²⁵ And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria.

Does this mean the Bible is irrelevant or God doesn't care? I don’t think so.  I think it means punk-ass kids should fear bears…and I should stop trying to shake affirmation out of the Bible by asking it random questions and forcing God into compact divine ‘conversations.’  Don’t get me wrong, I think asking God for direction, comfort and input is key, but that is just a facet of the dynamic relationship we should have with Him.  Sure, God talks through random moments and passages and wants to comfort us sometimes, but that’s not how he rolls all the time.  Restricting him to satisfying only certain parts of our lives is kind of manipulative—like only visiting a lover when you want to hear you look pretty. Or, you know, when you want to hear that your hair is in fact purple and not red like you intended...but hey, you look sexy anyways.  Which may be true and awesome, but is downright shitty.

Life is more complex than that, the Bible much more real than that—God much deeper than that.  And He wants to be more to us than a search engine or horoscope.