the deconstructionist narrative of ‘blankets’

I’d been wanting to read Craig Thompson’s Blankets for years, before I finally got myself a copy of the graphic novel last summer. Going into it, I expected something straightforward: a coming-of-age romance where the author reminisces about his first teenage love. And, in a sense, I got that.

But I also got something else. Something different. Something much more relatable to me and probably anyone else who was raised Evangelical.

What I didn’t know until reading it was that Blankets isn’t strictly a romance. It also centers around Thompson’s Christian upbringing, and the myriad ways it affected him. Like me, he was born to religious parents—like me, he spent much of his childhood at church or church-related functions. Like me, he once had dreams of using his creative talents to proselytize. And, like me, he eventually comes to doubt the Bible as an inerrant source of factual truth.

*** Spoilers follow. ***

Thompson doesn’t ever use the term “deconstruction.” Blankets was published in 2003, well before the word started to gain traction in Christian and exvangelical spaces. However, the facts remain -

-> His parents were devoted, fundamentalist Christians.

-> He inherited his parents’ beliefs and held to them through his childhood.

-> As he navigated high school—and began to gain life experience—he encountered people and situations that led him to question his beliefs.

-> Partly as a result of this questioning, his adult self renounces the Bible as a be-all/end-all authority over his life. He doesn’t go into detail about what his new beliefs are, if any; but he does, at the very least, stop going to church and start exhibiting a willingness to participate in things that many would consider “un-Christian.”

This, in my mind, is a very typical example of deconstruction. Although everybody’s story is unique, and there will always be individual specifics to account for, there are also commonalities.

The trajectory Thompson follows is a familiar one. You spend a formative part of your life being indoctrinated into a set of beliefs that you, for a while, do genuinely hold to. (A common misconception about those of us who’ve deconstructed is that we never “truly” believed. We were never “real” Christians in the first place. But I can assure you this is false, as I know for a fact that I believed.)

And even so, beneath your fervor—beneath your hope and conviction and zeal—there are certain small doubts you can’t seem to shake. Conflicts in scripture you can’t quite reconcile. Ways in which the Church seems infuriatingly blind to its own hypocrisy, moral failings, and capacity to inflict harm.

Somehow, someplace, somewhen… it gets to be too much. You reach a breaking point, and you can’t keep your knees from buckling. You can’t keep pretending to be satisfied with shallow, blanket answers. You can’t keep smiling and nodding, turning a blind eye, trying to convince yourself everything that’s been gnawing away at you isn’t gnawing away at you.

So. All right.

What’s next?

You brush yourself off. You seek resolution. You read, and learn, and research, and reflect, and take that first step towards deciding for yourself what you believe and why you believe (or don’t believe) it.

You tear your faith down. You rend it. You wreck it. And maybe, one day, you build it back up again; planted anew like seeds in damp soil. Or you find yourself open to other religions. Or you decide you’re an atheist, and keep it quiet so you won’t be interrogated at every family dinner.

Point being that the spiritual transformation Thompson undergoes in Blankets resonates. Or, at least, it did with me. I smiled at the all-too-accurate details he included in his illustrations of church camp. I saw people I’d met in the characters he drew. When he wrote about snippets of sermons he’d heard, I nodded in recognition.

It’s cathartic to read about experiences similar to your own. But there was one particular moment in the story—just a brief set of panels on a single wordless page—that moved me so deeply I had to set the book down. I was overwhelmed and caught off-guard, in the absolute best of ways.

Said moment requires a little bit of context.

At an earlier point in the comic, Thompson recounts an instance from his childhood where his parents discover he’s been drawing naked women. They take him into their room to scold him in private. They tell him what he’s done is a terrible, wicked thing: that it was sinful, it made Jesus sad, and Thompson should be ashamed. They tell him he should do his best to never sin (in this case, by doodling naked people) again—because every time he does, it breaks the Lord’s heart.

This should be a familiar lecture to anyone raised in a comparable environment. Don’t sin; because if you do, you’ll disappoint God; and this is one of the worst offenses you could possibly commit; and if you feel embarrassed, that’s the right response, because how dare you disobey the word of the One who gave his very life for you?

Thompson visualizes his guilt by imagining a portrait of Jesus turning to look at him, becoming distressed, crying, then looking away. Thompson is alarmed by this: by the outright gesture of rejection, of disappointment. He reaches out to the painting in supplication. Please, we can imagine him begging. I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again! Please forgive me, Jesus. You still love me, right? Please don’t be mad at me. Please don’t turn your back on me!

He vows to never draw a naked woman again. And thus, his parents’ guilt-trip is effective.

Later, at a much further point in the comic, Thompson—now a teenager—sleeps with his then-love interest at the time. Being in high school, the two aren’t married. And sex outside of marriage is something most Christians are quick to condemn. If anything, it seems like this would be a sin worthy of disappointing Jesus: more than enough to make him turn away from Thompson in sorrow and disgust, the way he did all those years ago.

A painting of Jesus hangs in the room where Thompson and his love interest lie side-by-side. It’s the exact same one, Thompson notes, that used to hang in his parents’ room.

Thompson’s partner falls asleep. Sitting upright in her bed, he’s compelled to turn and face the painting. There’s an obvious visual parallel—we can assume he’s anticipating a similar reaction from Jesus as the one he imagined in his childhood. We can speculate that he may be bracing himself for impact. For the coming shame. For the rejection.

This time, though, Jesus reacts differently.

Instead of crying, the portrait of the Savior simply meets Thompson’s gaze… and smiles.

It’s a kind smile. An exuberant one. Warm and uplifting, without any trace of condemnation. And unlike the guilt Thompson is wracked with as a child, here Jesus gives no indication that those involved should feel at all mortified about having committed their “sin.”

I flipped back to this page a couple times after finishing the comic, because again, I just found it so incredibly moving. Without the need for dialogue, it communicates a concept I find difficult to explain—that maybe, in our current iteration of American Christianity, too many people have become more concerned with enforcing rules than practicing love. Maybe too many of our Church’s adherents, as well as its pastors and leaders, have more in common with the rule-lawyers of Jesus’ day than they do with the person of Jesus himself.

Maybe, just maybe, God doesn’t care so much about whether we say “fuck,” whether we wear shorts, or whether we have sex as he does about whether or not we’re loving people in the way he explicitly commanded.

Maybe, almost certainly, our priorities have become vastly skewed.

- - -

I remember the first time I said “shit” out loud, alone in my car, when I was frustrated at the slow-moving traffic around me. Like sex outside of marriage, cussing was something I’d always been taught was wrong. It was sinful. Filthy. Un-Christlike. And when the word tumbled out from my mouth, clumsy and hushed, I irrationally expected some kind of backlash.

Was this it? The beginning of my “slippery slope?” I panicked. Okay, sure—today it was “shit,” but what would I say tomorrow? Would I graduate to the f-word? (Gasp! The scandal!) Would my speech patterns and personality change? Would I begin to cuss like a sailor, morphing into the kind of person who couldn’t go three sentences without tossing in 40 obscenities?

But, of course, nothing happened. There was only quiet. I took a breath, calmed down as the traffic eased up, and was thankful that Jesus hadn’t deemed it necessary to smite me.

I felt a similar underlying fear when I borrowed R-rated movies from the video rental place I frequented as a high schooler. (Yes, this was a brick-and-mortar store. DVDs and VHS tapes. Before streaming was a thing.) I was interested in classic film at the time, and wanted to watch stuff like The Godfather and Taxi Driver—but, again, had always been taught that “we should not conform to the world,” and part of how we stayed “pure” was by abstaining from “secular” media.

I’d heard youth pastors advise that whenever we started a movie, it was helpful to imagine Jesus sitting next to us. If, at any point, we found ourselves becoming uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus seeing what we were seeing, it was time to turn the movie off.

And so, I sat in the dark of my room, seventeen years old and trying to parse what made Taxi Driver such essential viewing, wondering how Jesus might feel about the scene where Travis shoots a pimp.

This constant self-monitoring—this practiced way of thinking that obsessively sorts everything into “sinful” or “not-sinful” boxes—can lead to a lot of mental anguish. It did in my case. I would feel a self-loathing, an inner unrest, every time I found myself enjoying something I thought people at my church would’ve called “too worldly.”

Songs with innuendos? Those R-rated movies? Gory, profanity-ridden video games? Anime that featured Eastern spirituality, or else utilized Christian imagery for no other reason than because “it’s foreign and it looks cool”? (Which, by the way, is why I only recently got around to watching Evangelion. Teenage-me worried that it would cross the line into blasphemous territory.)

It took some time to realize it wasn’t necessarily the media itself that made me feel guilty. I couldn’t imagine Jesus would be scandalized much by my choices in entertainment; after all, if he was omniscient, I reasoned he had seen much worse. Rather, what inspired my sense of dread was the idea other people might find out what I enjoyed, and judge me for it.

I worried that pastors and peers would see what I consumed—the things I watched, read, and listened to—and classify me as “too worldly” to be trusted. Conformed to secular culture; unclean and un-Godly. I worried I might be shunned, or lectured, or not allowed to play on the worship team, or told I wasn’t passionate enough about following Christ. To a young woman whose entire identity and sense of self-worth revolved around trying to follow the Bible, an accusation like that would have been devastating.

My actual character didn’t matter. How I treated the people around me didn’t have any bearing on it. I wasn’t worried that I wasn’t a “good enough Christian” because of how I loved (or failed to love) my neighbors. I was worried that I wasn’t a “good enough Christian” because of entirely superficial things: the movies I watched and the songs I happened to have downloaded on my iPod.

If that isn’t a clear sign the religious environment I grew up in—the theology I absorbed, the worldview I was taught—prioritized legalism over grace, then. Well. I’m not sure what to say.

I keep coming back to the idea of the Fruits of the Spirit. In a perfect world, Christians are supposed to embody the traits found in Galatians 5. Love, joy, peace. Patience, kindness, goodness. Gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. “Against such things,” Paul writes, “there is no law.” And when Jesus is warning his followers of false prophets, he tells them: “you will know them by their fruits.”

It’s a pretty straightforward concept. “Good” things should, broadly speaking, produce good fruit, and “bad” things should bear bad fruit. This is part of how we’re supposed to discern what’s true and what’s right and what isn’t.

The problem is that so much of what evangelicalism has taken to be “good” results in, uhh, some absolutely horrendous fruit. Take purity culture, for instance. The idea that people should wait until marriage to have sex isn’t, like, an “evil” one, in and of itself. Often, the intentions are good. And there shouldn’t be any issue if it’s a decision two consenting adults are arriving at mutually.

But when you take a step back and look at what sort of “fruit” this mindset is bearing, it… it isn’t great.

Stories of abuse and manipulation run rampant. Repression, frustration, and a culture of secrecy can incentivize people to express their sexuality in unhealthy—or downright dangerous—ways. Women (and men, to a lesser extent) are made to feel as if their value as a Christian and a person is tied directly to their status as a “pure,” “unspoiled” virgin. The taboo nature of the topic, as well as a lack of age-appropriate/comprehensive sex education, can make it easier for predators to target young children; because if you’re 6 years old and don’t have the vocabulary to describe what’s happening to you, how are you supposed to ask for help? Or even recognize that what’s being done to you is wrong in the first place?

Teachings about hell, the Rapture, and the inevitability of the End Times have left countless with crippling anxiety and long-repressed trauma. The framing of queerness as an intrinsic sin that can be “cured” or “overcome” has resulted in so, so much tragedy. Conversion therapy. Physical and emotional abuse. Higher rates of homelessness and suicide attempts among LGBTQ+ teens. An entire population of people who believe themselves to be destined for hell, irredeemable and abominable, all due to a facet of their personhood they can’t consciously control.

Those are just a couple of examples, but—none of this is “good” fruit. None of this is indicative of the kind of change Jesus wanted his followers to bring about.

You know what is good fruit?

What the Fab 5 does on Queer Eye.

Here is a group of people who, by every standard I grew up believing, should be objectively bearing “bad” fruit. They’re out. They’re proud. They’re not church-going Christians in the sense most evangelicals would think of someone as a church-going Christian. (Truthfully, I don’t know what their religious beliefs are, if any. But does it matter? Short answer: no.) They dance and cuss and make sexual jokes, and quip about things that would make my own parents uncomfortable.

They would be seen as too “worldly” for most churches to embrace them. They are, hilariously enough, the kind of people fundamentalists warn will “corrupt” you if you go to a secular college.

But they’re also some of the most thoughtful, loving, joyous, gracious, and kind-hearted people I’ve ever seen. Whether or not they intend to? They exemplify the Fruits of the Spirit.

I don’t know them personally. I don’t know the nitty gritty of their lives—and it’s always possible they could fail to live up to the wholesome image they portray. Even so, when I was first made to watch Queer Eye (thanks Tori), I couldn’t help wondering: what does it say that a group of five “secular” queer people is more loving than a lot of Christians I do know?

It says what I interpreted Thompson to mean with his panels of Christ’s portrait smiling.

That the Church’s priorities are not often God’s; and he smiles on his followers so long as they love, and do their best to carry out that simplest commandment. It’s so easy. And that’s part of what makes it so difficult. The straightforward nature of the gospel is part of why I believe it’s so tempting to complicate things, until we end up less with “love God and love your neighbor” and more with “hey, don’t show a bra strap or you’ll be kicked out of church leadership.”

So what if a budding artist draws naked women? So what if someone cusses, or hangs out at bars, or gets tattoos, or likes Game of Thrones (sans the trainwreck of a final season)? Those are extraneous things. They’re neutral, neither inherently sinful or inherently virtuous.

At the end of the day, it’s the fruit we are bearing—and the character we are striving to cultivate—that matters.

- - -

The question, then, becomes: what “fruit” did Thompson bear when he slept with his love interest in Blankets? Why was it not a big deal to Jesus’ portrait, and why did the painting smile at him instead?

In one sense, it’s a visual representation of a turning point in Thompson’s spirituality. The fact he no longer sees his own failure to “save” his virginity as something to feel guilty about speaks volumes. His mind is changing, and he’s seeing the world differently.

But I also believe it means Jesus wouldn’t have minded very much in actuality, because the act itself was borne of consent and a mutual desire to provide comfort.

The idea of comfort is a running theme in Blankets, often symbolized by the object of a blanket itself. When we think of blankets, we think of warmth and reprieve—but they can also be used to hide. They can become a shield from the world and its harshness. Similarly, in life, the things we use to comfort ourselves can also be a means through which we avoid harsh truths. (Such as, say… strict religious worldviews? Which provide comfort in one sense, but also allow us to burrow our heads in and say “we do not acknowledge the world”? Hint hint?? Wink wink??? Nudge nudge????)

In the moment Thompson and his partner sleep together, they aren’t aiming to take advantage of one another, or to manipulate each other for their own personal gain. I mean, yeah, sure—they’re teenagers. They’re impulsive and hormonal. But they’re also both vulnerable, hurting in their own ways and each feeling like the other person is perhaps the only one in the world who understands them.

They want to give one another a small comfort. So, comfort one another they do.

It’s an expression of love. And in the grand scheme of things, with the violences and injustices happening every single day the world over, is a quote-unquote “sin” such as this one really worth chiding? Does it really hinder Thompson’s ability to love God? To love his neighbor? To be a generally kind, decent person?

In other contexts, it could. Sex is one of those inherently neutral things, able to be weaponized for harm by the wrong people. But here, in Thompson’s scenario, it’s something sweet and ordinary: a thing that’s impromptu and human, stemming from a place which may be immature but is also honestly felt.

It is, in its own way, pure.

And it is, in its own way, something kind of beautiful.

There was a time I would’ve read Blankets and been totally unreceptive to it. I would have shaken my head at so many of its scenes, and been offended by the portrait of Jesus smiling. This isn’t right! I would’ve thought. The good Lord our God hates sex! I would have been sad that Thompson walks away from the church, because I used to think church and its rules were the only place to find goodness.

But what Thompson learns—and what I’ve discovered over the course of my late 20s—is that sometimes “good” fruit is borne by the people and places you were told to avoid. And “bad” fruit can absolutely be borne by the people and places you were told you could trust.

This is one of those posts I have no idea how to wrap up, so I’ll just end with a recommendation. If you’ve been on your own journey of deconstruction, and you like graphic novels, Blankets might be worth giving a read. Its art alone is reason enough to pick it up. A couple parts of it are iffy or otherwise outdated (Thompson uses the r-slur once to refer to a character with a disability), but again, I was surprised by the ways in which it proved resonant.

No matter where we each end up in our own individual journeys, whether it’s back to Jesus or onward to elsewhere, hopefully it’ll be at a place of greater love than wherever we were at before.

(Oh—and also, Happy New Year! Excited to continue my tradition of posting on this blog maybe once every five-to-six months. Cheers.)