[Right: It is said that love covers a multitude of sins, which is true. It is also the case that vinyl siding covers a multitude of houses, which then look like they are covered in plastic which is supposed to look like wood, which it does not whatsover, Amen.]
I think it was G. K. Chesterton who once opined that the Fall of Man, or Original Sin, is the most well-attested of all the Christian doctrines.
I would only add to this, if there is one single fact that shows irrefutably the imperfection, the degradation, the inherent fallen nature of our world, it is the existence--and the widespread popularity--of vinyl siding.
Vinyl siding is a fake: It is plastic meant to look like wood. Now, being a fake per se is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, didn't the good Lord himself create the mockingbird and the chameleon and lite beer? No, there's nothing wrong with a fake, as long as it isn't motivated by a bad intention, and as long as it's a good fake, a convincing fake that stands in for the real thing without offending the eyes.
Vinyl siding is a very bad fake, as anyone can see, and in a perfect world, or even, one suspects, a world just a bit less vile than our own, it would not be tolerated. Yet in our world it is not only tolerated, but bought and sold by the tons every day of the week and slapped up with great abandon on houses old and new.
And it's all because of nothing but sin, brothers and sisters, or rather two particular sins from among the Seven Deadlies: Sloth (or laziness) and Avarice (greed).
The stuff itself is plainly ugly as sin, and yet when viewed through the eyes of Sloth ("I'll never have to lift a paintbrush again!") and the eyes of Avarice ("It's half the price of real wood siding!"), this baddest of bad fakes seems a Godsend and a beautiful thing.
Or maybe it doesn't seem positively beautiful; maybe we just resolve not to look at it anymore, not to think about it--we feel so satisfied in our pocket books as we sit there in the la-z-boy watching TV.
Is the story so far not depressing enough? It gets more depressing when we ask ourselves why vinyl siding has got to try to look like wood siding. Couldn't it look like itself somehow, and be used in its own way with integrity, as the non-traditional material it is, perhaps even fathering its own type of style?
But no! It turns out that mimicking wood siding makes for the perfect shape for a thin plastic siding. That zig-zag cross section gives it stiffness and stability, and a handy way for it to lock together, and it sheds the water off the wall just right. It's positively diabolical, as if Satan himself had cooked up this conspiracy: "I'll give the humans a cheap and durable type of siding for their houses, but ensure that it will look like Hell, and watch their fallen natures lead them to gobble it up like popcorn!"
"Vinyl is final," folks like to say in my neck of the woods. Ostensibly they're talking about an end to scraping and painting, but to me those words sound like the clap of doom--and I'm only half kidding.
Vinyl siding is a fake: It is plastic meant to look like wood. Now, being a fake per se is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, didn't the good Lord himself create the mockingbird and the chameleon and lite beer? No, there's nothing wrong with a fake, as long as it isn't motivated by a bad intention, and as long as it's a good fake, a convincing fake that stands in for the real thing without offending the eyes.
Vinyl siding is a very bad fake, as anyone can see, and in a perfect world, or even, one suspects, a world just a bit less vile than our own, it would not be tolerated. Yet in our world it is not only tolerated, but bought and sold by the tons every day of the week and slapped up with great abandon on houses old and new.
And it's all because of nothing but sin, brothers and sisters, or rather two particular sins from among the Seven Deadlies: Sloth (or laziness) and Avarice (greed).
The stuff itself is plainly ugly as sin, and yet when viewed through the eyes of Sloth ("I'll never have to lift a paintbrush again!") and the eyes of Avarice ("It's half the price of real wood siding!"), this baddest of bad fakes seems a Godsend and a beautiful thing.
Or maybe it doesn't seem positively beautiful; maybe we just resolve not to look at it anymore, not to think about it--we feel so satisfied in our pocket books as we sit there in the la-z-boy watching TV.
Is the story so far not depressing enough? It gets more depressing when we ask ourselves why vinyl siding has got to try to look like wood siding. Couldn't it look like itself somehow, and be used in its own way with integrity, as the non-traditional material it is, perhaps even fathering its own type of style?
But no! It turns out that mimicking wood siding makes for the perfect shape for a thin plastic siding. That zig-zag cross section gives it stiffness and stability, and a handy way for it to lock together, and it sheds the water off the wall just right. It's positively diabolical, as if Satan himself had cooked up this conspiracy: "I'll give the humans a cheap and durable type of siding for their houses, but ensure that it will look like Hell, and watch their fallen natures lead them to gobble it up like popcorn!"
"Vinyl is final," folks like to say in my neck of the woods. Ostensibly they're talking about an end to scraping and painting, but to me those words sound like the clap of doom--and I'm only half kidding.
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