Jared Matthews’s Reviews > Everything in Color: A Love Story > Status Update

Stalvey reflects on a reoccurring dream about wanting to move back to her old house, representing a time of innocence akin to paradise, which was sharply interrupted upon waking up. This dream only stopped when she had her child.

Sometimes our desire to return to an innocent paradise can feel hopeless. But we can become innocent and at home again. Not by going to the past, but by participating in the new creation

A huge part of her struggle is feeling safe with her own desires.

So much of purity culture, and conservative evangelicalism, perpetuates the idea that what we want is deathly opposed to what God wants.

While there may be cases where what we want is not good, and must be corrected, this overarching principle is typically spoken of as the norm, not the exception.

Cognitive dissonance can’t help but follow.

For a book that is built on embodied theology and an emphasis on experiential knowledge, a graphic novel format was really the only option, it wouldn’t be the same book without that choice.

The experience is visual, where the reader doesn’t have to get into her head to understand what’s going on. It brings her counterpoints from cold theological equations to lived inconsistencies observable by the reader.

This book is actually so underhandedly funny for those who grew up in American evangelicalism. How often penal substitutionary atonement is given as an answer (and dismissal) for any kind of struggle is too real.

PSA seems to minimize the bad behaviors of those who should be held accountable, while condemning those who have done nothing wrong.

The whole framework of a moralized anthropology is so twisted.

Being raised as a “church kid” often means being shielded from complexity, and being told that certainty is the right way to live.

“Everything was black and white, sacred or secular”. This may be accepted by the children that are taught this, but it renders them “unprepared to grow up enveloped in gray”.

Chapter one paints a picture of an American Christian upbringing that is frighteningly familiar, yet so far from the heart of Jesus or the gospel.

It teaches children to stay within the safe boundaries that you are placed in and to stay away from the realities of normal life (including the human body). It teaches that Christian life is about making sure you don’t sin, out of a fear that god may send you to hell.