The Color of God

A friend once remarked me that grace is blue. After my initial surprise at this slightly odd statement, I pondered upon why he said this.

What is to follow is a window into my ponderings, for I think that the rabbit trail they follow leads to a valuable conclusion. But ye warned, this is my rabbit’s trail and they do not always follow the railroad tracks. Some might object to the impending verbosity, to which I say what good is a destination if you don’t know how you got there? However, if your concern lies solely with the end, there is nothing but good sense to stop you from just scrolling down to the last paragraph.

My first response to my friend’s rather abrupt statement was “Can an attribute of God have color? Isn’t He spirit which, by all definitions I have ever encountered outside of fantasy literature, has no color?” But I do not think my friend was talking literally. Therefore, let us journey into the wonderful land that is metaphor where much can be made clearer which cannot be fleshed in the land of science.

What is color? Aside from the definition of light waves reflecting in various patterns, color is how we express ourselves. For example, Goths have claimed the color black. Why? Sadness, evil, rebellion, angst…all of these emotions which are the foundation of the Goth mindset connect with that color. (Now I have nothing against the color black, or Goths, for that matter; this is simply an observation on the use of color by people with certain tendencies. Back to the scheduled rabbit trail…) The Goth affinity to this color makes sense given that black for the Western world is the color of mourning. As an interesting side note, in Asia mourning’s color is white, though I dare not make any conjecture as to why, being wholly unqualified.

My point, as it may have gotten lost, is that our minds connect certain colors to certain emotions or states of being. Personages more schooled and scholarly than I am have undoubtedly spent hours as well as forests speculating why, so I will not do so here. Except to say that I do not think it is as strange as some might like to think.

After all, the same thing is done with words. We have all played the word association game in which one person says a word and another says the first thing that word makes them think of. How could one word draw up such colorful responses if there was no emotion, whatever it may be, connected in the responder’s mind to that otherwise meaningless string of sounds? We connect our emotions to things, be they words or colors, sights or sounds.

Here we reach a difficult ledge. As with all connections our minds make, there are always exceptions and caveats, because concepts are too unwieldy to be contained by single words and words are too useful to be restricted to single ideas. Going back to our example of black is an example of the latter for black is also the color for classy. See “little black dress.”

But, with God, it is the former. Because He is the Creator. And because He created everything, He is above everything. And because He is above everything, no one thing below Him or even conglomeration of things can fully describe Him. However, they can partially reveal Who He is because He created them and therefore left a mark on them.

When Moses asked for a name to take back to Pharaoh, he received a statement of being, which became the most sacred name for God in the Old Testament. But it still does not encompass completely Who He is. Throughout the rest of the Scriptures, God continually gives His people names for Himself.

If God can have names why not colors?

Now that we have that established, why is grace blue? Not any color of blue, the shade of blue the sky is when there is no storm on the horizon, the sun is shining, and all that is ahead is the promise of a good day. It makes sense, for that is what grace is…God has taken my sin and guilt away; He has given His Son; He has made me new. Perhaps that is why going to the park on a Saturday and lying on the grass, looking up at the sky is so relaxing.

I think the problem I often have with grace is that I begin to go about my life in this new day and forget to look up at the sky. I leave my house, go to work and come back home, forgetting that all the while the sky is blue. I remember that Christ has taken the punishment for my sin, but I forget that guilt has been washed away as well. If guilt were to remain, the sky would be grey. I think that I must work off my guilt. But that is not the color of grace; it is a gift, just like a good park day, and I can no more earn it than I can a day of pleasant weather with clear skies. But I can enjoy it to its fullest, and that is exactly what I must do with grace, to praise God for it in every way I can and to encourage others to do the same.

Yes, grace is blue.
And love is green.
That one, dear reader, I shall leave to you to ponder that one down your own rabbit trails.