Wild and Free
I did a drawing of a woman at Starbucks today. I didn’t know her. All I knew was she was writing on her laptop and had a journal style book open with writing in it. She did some sort of writing I assumed, but didn’t know what sort.
What Was She Thinking?
I was Periscoping as I was drawing, so I was talking out loud to my viewers. As I finished the drawing I added a thought bubble above her head. I asked my viewers, “I wonder what she is thinking” and a thought occurred to me. What if I had the woman I was drawing fill in the thought bubble above her head instead of me making something up? I thought it would be a pretty cool idea. And so I asked her. What would she choose to say she was thinking?
This is what she wrote, “I want people to know the wild and free love of God. Because he loves them!”
Atypical
I asked her some questions at that point, about the seeming contradiction between typical Christian talk and the words ‘wild and free’. Wild and free are not two words typically thought of when considering Christianity. As a matter of fact, most of the time those words would scare many Christians. They would make many a Christian wary of what was really meant by those words. Are they code for sin and licentiousness? Are they a way of avoiding personal accountability? What exactly do those two words mean when attached to God and the love of God?
Dreary Morals
I am pretty well-versed in the vocabulary of Christianity but I was sort of at a loss about what she meant. Then I saw the drawing below again, which I did a few days ago but had not posted, and it clarified it for me.
Purchase the original | purchase a print
Love and Joy
For me it’s about love and joy. It’s not about making your life, or the life of others, one of drudgery and obedience for no reason. It’s not about legalism, it’s not about a list of rules, it’s not about a set of cosmic instructions you must obey or you go to hell. It’s about enjoying and sharing your life, your creativity, your interests. It’s about acting as if you believe that.
Hate and Hurt
What it’s not about is giving yourself permission to hate, to be immoral or to hurt. If those things ever do feel ‘free or wild’ to someone, they are temporary and at the expense of others. That isn’t true freedom. And it isn’t being wild in a positive sense either. Being wild in the positive sense is about being courageous enough to be who you want to be, even if it seems ‘wild’ to someone else. Even if they disapprove. Because an individual’s disapproval is not your own disapproval and it’s not God’s disapproval.
Drawings and commentary © 2016 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
Quote by Robert Louis Stevenson