Recently, I came across a video of an interview with Taylor Swift. She was talking about being in New York for Fashion Week and shared how she was intimidated by the models. Taylor Swift, Time’s person of the year for 2023, was intimidated by fashion models! What does this say about society’s expectations and perceptions around beauty, value, and identity?
Our culture has a lot of ways to tell people they are not good enough. There are entire industries that profit from promoting resources for the purpose of helping us conform to some social ideal of what people are supposed to achieve. To be clear, I am not talking about those products and programs that genuinely support health and wellbeing. I am talking about all the things the world tries to sell us to help us better ‘fit in’. What these industries never seem to tell us, however, is that no amount of beauty products, clothing, self help books, home renovations, vehicle and technology upgrades, or anything else that is sold will actually enable us to truly feel as though we are good enough by society’s standards. There is always a push for more. That is how these industries make their money.
That sense of not being enough has pervaded human history for millennia. One of the things Jesus continually combatted were human perceptions that defined people as less. He was criticized for eating and drinking with outcasts, lepers, and tax collectors, the unsavoury individuals of his time. There are a lot of ways human society has left people feeling as though they are not good enough throughout the entire arc of human existence.
Lord, you have searched me out and known me…You trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways…For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I will thank you because I am marvellously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well.
Psalm 139 happens to be one of my favourites. In it, there is this incredible reminder that God’s ways are not the same as humanity’s ways. God does not judge us based on some arbitrary human ideal of beauty, and worth. With God it doesn’t matter if we have brand name clothing and the latest technology. With God it doesn’t matter what our shape, size, or ability may be. God made us as we are. God knit us, in all our glorious imperfections, while we were still in our mother’s wombs. God continues to seek us out, to know us in ways beyond anything we can ask or imagine because, quite simply, God loves us. God loves the precious child God has created in each one of us.
Knowing this, we can choose to diet, exercise, read books, play games, learn new things, garden, care for others, or any other things that may be meaningful for us trusting that God will not judge us by some arbitrary sense of our success. We can sing and dance like no one is watching because the psalms tell us to make a joyful noise to the Lord. There is beauty in joy. The love of God sees us in ways beyond our knowing and loves us as we are. There is nothing we can do or fail to do that will change this. In God, who knit us together in our mother’s wombs, we are already good enough.
In God, who knit us together in our mother’s wombs, we are already good enough. This is true for everyone here. It is also true for those who find themselves particularly marginalised because they fall short of society’s standards of what makes someone beautiful, valuable, and worthy. Every Black, Indigenous, and Person of Colour has been fearfully and wonderfully made by God. Every Queer and Trans individual has been fearfully and wonderfully made by God. Every disabled individual has been fearfully and wonderfully made by God. Every migrant, refugee, and person living in poverty has been fearfully and wonderfully made by God. And everyone is good enough and loved by God as we are.
In God, who knit us together in our mother’s wombs, we are already good enough. May that message bring hope to each of us today and inspire us to share with others, especially those on the margins, that this is also true for them as we go forth in faith this week. This we pray as we sing: For all the Children