Daily Broadside | Esther 4:14
“For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”
It’s Monday and we’re off into another week which happens to be the last one in May. “Turtle dove” sounds like the best combination of chocolate in the world.
Next month is June, which is the first month of the summer season and the month in which the longest day of the year occurs. It’s also the month now celebrated as Pride Month. Just in time to celebrate, toymaker LEGO has announced a brand new box set called “Everyone is Awesome.” The 346-piece set offers 11 figures with each assigned a color of the rainbow.
CNN quotes creator Matthew Ashton, who says, “I wanted to create a model that symbolizes inclusivity and celebrates everyone, no matter how they identify or who they love.” Mind you, this has nothing to do with building things with plastic bricks; it has everything to do with making people feel like they belong. When you don’t feel like you belong, you feel left out or alienated from others.
People (especially kids) feeling alienated or left out is a common experience. Listen to Ashton describe his experience:
“Growing up as an LGBTQ+ kid – being told what I should play with, how I should walk, how I should talk, what I should wear – the message I always got was that somehow I was ‘wrong’,” he said. “Trying to be someone I wasn’t was exhausting. I wish, as a kid, I had looked at the world and thought: ‘This is going to be OK, there’s a place for me’. I wish I’d seen an inclusive statement that said ‘everyone is awesome’.”
The alienation is real, so the problem he’s trying to resolve is real. But, as Albert Mohler observes, the alienation is misplaced — “the primary alienation is the alienation of the creature from the Creator.” And that can’t be fixed with a model toy that tells you, “you’re awesome.”
(Somewhat inexplicably, the Lego set is targeted at the eighteen-plus crowed. If you believe that it won’t be bought for children at much younger ages, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.)
The other thing to note here is the title of the set: Everyone is Awesome. Returning to Mohler, he says,
What exactly does “awesome” mean? Even if you understand how the word has been devalued in our society, is everyone awesome? Is everyone awesome all the time? Are you going to speak of everyone is equally awesome? Does it have anything to do with sexual identity? And as everything is awesome, everything really is awesome. I don’t think so. It’s a branding message but it’s also a branding message that fits into the model confusion of our time. We don’t actually believe that everyone is awesome as defined by character, as defined by behavior, as defined by any number of things. We do believe that everyone is equally made in the image of God and every single human being bears equal dignity and thus infinite worth. The statement, “Everyone is awesome,” basically sounds like the understanding that everyone must have a trophy.
For those who long to be affirmed as having “worth,” the message “you’re awesome” is very appealing. But relationships and circumstances and cultural norms change. What happens when the people who tell you you’re awesome aren’t around any more? When the job tells you to start looking for other opportunities? When what you ‘identify as’ becomes “the norm”?
Where do you find lasting affirmation?
Who you are is the core issue, and the Bible tells us we are all made in the image of God, but that image has been marred by sin in everyone of us. That’s the issue that we have to address, and we can’t do it by looking to others to provide the affirmation we need. In fact, sometimes rather than affirming someone based on their sexuality, we need to affirm them based on their dignity in the eyes of an all-loving God.
The “Everyone Is Awesome” Lego model is just a continuation of the moral degeneracy that we’re suffering as a nation. It’s one more burr hooked into the lining of our national moral framework. True affirmation comes not from those around us, but from the One who made us.