“I think it really pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” I think it really annoys God when we don’t see the wonder that is in front of our faces. It think it grieves God when the people of God fail to understand who God is and what God does. That’s the sentiment that Shug Avery shares with Celie in the novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker. “I think it really pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” (p. 167)
Shug is an African American jazz singer alienated from her family and the community of faith, largely because of her exuberance for life. But Shug still knows who God is. Celie is a woman beaten down by her stepfather’s incest, her husband’s harsh treatment and the loss of the 2 children she has borne. She is still part of the community of faith, but she is struggling to know who God is. We listen in on the way in which Celie relates conversation (pp. 167-168). Shug says:
Listen, God love everything you love—and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration.
You saying God vain? I ast.
Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.
What it do when it pissed off? I ast.
Oh, it make something else. People think pleasing God is all God care about, But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.
Yeah? I say.
Yeah, she say. It always making little surprises and springing them on us when us least expect.
You mean it want to be loved, just like the bible say.
Yes, Celie, she say. Everything want to be loved.
Everything wants to be loved; and God wants to be loved most of all; because God wants to be in relationship with us; to be loved as God loves us. God is aching in and for relationship with God’s own people.
That’s why God is so intent to go to such lengths to pursue us, to seek us, to find us—even when we try so hard not to be found. We are worth everything to God: “I think it really pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” (The Color Purple, p. 167)
And that pursuit, that search for even, or more significantly, especially, the littlest, the lowest and the least is not a habit, or a formality, or even just something to do. It is God’s very nature—God’s very nature is to seek us and to want so badly for us to seek God—just as it is the shepherd’s very nature to care for the sheep with the corresponding result that losing a sheep is a loss of something of the shepherd’s being, a loss which must be avoided at all costs, and remedied if at all possible. It is God’s very nature to seek us and to want so much for us to seek God—just as the marriage dowry which a woman wore in the form of coins was part of that woman’s very personhood; and the loss of even just one coin, a loss to be avoided at all costs and remedied if at all possible. It is God’s very nature to seek us and to want so intensively for us to seek God—that when we turn our back on God, God grieves. “I think it really pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” (The Color Purple, p. 167)
Many years ago, three students were walking in the French countryside. As they walked they spoke boldly to each other of their passionate atheism. How foolish the idea of God was! How much harm was caused in the name of religion!
When they came upon a small country church, two of the students turned upon their friend, daring him to test his courage of conviction by entering the church and telling the priest about their conversation. And the third student did.
“Well,” said the priest, “you have been bold enough to accept the dare of your friends? Would you accept another challenge from an old priest?” And the student did.
“What I want you to do,” said the priest, “is to go to the sanctuary of the church, look at the crucifix, and say 3 times ‘Jesus Christ died for me and I don’t give a damn’.”
Reluctantly now, the student did as the priest challenged. Looking upon the crucifix, twice, the brash, young atheist repeated the words: “Jesus Christ died for me and I don’t give a damn. Jesus Christ died for me and I don’t give a damn.” But he was unable to continue, unable to make the bold proclamation a third time as he faced the effigy of God’s search for him. He returned to the priest, asking him to hear his confession. [An adapted story]
That young, brash atheist student was the soon-to-become famous Sri Lankan evangelist, D.T. Niles, the author of the hymn “The great love of God”:
The great love of God is revealed in the Son,
who came to this earth to redeem every one.
It’s yours, it is ours, O how lavishly giv’n!
the pearl of great price, and the treasure of heav’n.
Daniel Thambyrajah Niles 1908–70
Listen, God loves everything you love—and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God loves admiration. Is God vain? Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.
I think God grieves for us to pursue God as much as God pursues us; and that when God finds us and we find God, when even just one of us is found by God and finds God, “there is joy in the presence of the angels” for God aches in and for relationship with God’s own people, us.
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