Coloring inside the lines

Yesterday at Marc's I bought three Bible stories coloring books for 99 cents each. The drawings probably aren't great art, but the stories of Noah, David, Adam and Eve, Moses and Job are accurate and faithful to Scripture. A Christian who knows the hope of a Redeemer for sin and how that story is woven through out the Old Testament can use this book easily to explain things to children.

I loved coloring books when I was a kid, and it didn't squash my talent at all (you are born with talent and no amount of "expressing" yourself throwing globs on canvas will create what isn't there). I drew and wrote stories all the time--especially about horses and dogs. I particularly enjoyed coloring as a group activity where we could discuss and debate the colors, and why you chose to do something a certain way. It was only the academics in art, teachers and the critics who decided learning to color inside the lines was bad for creativity. Hey! Not everyone can be a leader--this world needs some good followers, too!

Here's another example of "inside the lines" working outward. Mary Polin was a professor education steeped in the radical assumptions of deconstructivism--advancing her career by deciding authors didn't really mean what they said, and that truth was simply a social construction bound to culture and gender which today's academic could set free.

Then in 1993 she met Jesus and was really set free from radical feminism and secular humanism. She then began to write the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs out by hand, word for word, and as she did so, her mind began to heal. That's a beautiful story (found in "A professor reconstructed," A faith and culture devotional, by Kelly Kullberg and Lael Arrington, Zondervan, 2008). Kelly is on Facebook and so are the fans of this book. And I see her husband regularly at the coffee shop.