Painting the Roses Red

In Wonderland there are two key ruling figures: the king and queen of hearts (there are in fact other kings and queens in Wonderland, but that is not relevant to our story here).

The Queen is a ghastly figure. She is harsh, vengeful, law-enforcing, her-way-or-the-highway kinda gal. If you don't do things her way, if you cross her, it's "Off with your head!" She is feared. She is obeyed. She is oppressive.

The king is a wimp. He is completely and utterly compliant to the Queen's wishes (moreso in the movie than in the book but that too is besides the point). He is a pacifist, a dear fellow, a doormat, and, although he is kind, he is uninvolved.

 

 

In Alice in Wonderland there is a scene where Alice comes upon 3 gardeners painting white roses red and singing, "Painting the roses red and many a tear we shed because we know they'll cease to grow, in fact, they'll soon be dead and yet we go ahead." They admit to painting to roses red out of self-preservation and fear of the Queen. Makes sense considering who the Queen is.

But who is the queen to us?

I have a theory: Either we view God as the queen figure and we view the Church as the king figure OR we view the Church as the queen figure and God as the pacifist king. Regardless of who/what holds which title, we feel the need to cover up the truth for appearance and appeasment sake.

There are truths in our lives, things that are what they are because they simple are. This could be anything from a secret dream, a worldview, a habbit, a hobby, to an opinion, and so on. But the Queen (whoever your queen may be) has set a standard saying, "This is what color roses should be. This is what I like, what I want, what I demand." And so we paint these truths, we mask them, so as to have the appearance of what is demanded, liked, esteemed, or wanted by our queen figure. We know they're really white roses underneath, but we're hoping it's enough to grant us a pass. But are we aware of what it's doing to the roses as the gardener's were? "Painting the roses red and many a tear we shed because we know they'll cease to grow, in fact, they'll soon be dead and yet we go ahead."

I can't be too specific here because we paint so many things to meet what is expected and demanded of us. Here's an example from my life:

I grew up wanting to be an actress and for many years I heeded and fed that desire. Then one year I felt like I was supposed to be a missionary and suddenly I didn't know what to do with my white rose. So I did what was demanded, esteemed, and wanted by my queenly figures; I put it on a lower shelf and painted it to look like what was expected of a Christian Actress. I painted it over and over until I lost intrest in this ghastly shade of compliance, abandoning it altogether. But it was God Who gave me my rose back and it was not remade in the demanded color, but it was gifted in the beautiful shade of white that it always was underneath the paint.

I met a guy one time who was DJing at some function and he had an incredible story of having been one of the most saught after DJ's in the state until he got saved and felt that he had to give all that up. He sold all his equipment and painted what was left of his roses red. Last I saw him, he was working on recovering his equipment and getting back to where he was musically before he "gave it all up for Jesus"; as if Jesus was asking him to give up his gift and his passion- no, that was his queen figure talking.

God is not the Queen of Hearts, nor should your church behave as one. And God is not some whimpy king in the background echoing the demands of your church. He loves white roses and He'll tell you so Himself.