Who told you that you’re ugly?

Every few years, I like to re-read a children’s book called “You are Special” by Max Lucado. Most recently, I read it for one of my creative worship night talks as the theme for September was healthy identity. 

To summarize the book: There is a group of wooden people called Wemmicks who live in a village. They all go around giving each other stickers. They give gold stars if they have positive opinions about you, and gray dots if they have negative opinions. The beautiful, talented ones get stars, and the ugly, dumb ones get dots.

The main character, Punchinello, is one of the most gray-dotted Wemmicks in the village. But he meets a girl, Lucia, who has no dots and no stars. Stickers just don’t stick to her. She tells him that she is that way because she visits the wood carver who made them, Eli, every single day. After consistently visiting him, the stickers stop sticking because no one else’s opinion of you matters except Eli’s. 

It’s such a simple but profound story, and that’s why it’s stuck with me for most of my life. 

What occurred to me this time is that, one of the major ways we as a society got to be a place where we brutally rank each other with stars and dots is, unfortunately, because of the arts. Those of us who grew up with insecurities that we’re ugly and inadequate watched TV shows and movies that showed us standards of beauty, talent, and success. They told us, “You see those people? They are worthy of love and acceptance, and you are not. But if you work hard enough, maybe–just maybe–you can get kind of close.”

That insecurity causes us to compare and rank where we fit, and compete with others for “scarce” resources. This has the domino effect of devaluing others who rank “below” us, causing a whole cycle of insecurity and pain. We hide our true selves behind edited profile pictures while God asks, like He did in the Garden, “Who told you that you’re ugly?”

I’m at an age where most of my friends are married. They all started to get married in my mid-20’s, and it hasn’t stopped. When I was younger and insecure, I looked around and thought I wasn’t getting married because I’m not worth pursuing. Besides TV shows and movies showing me how not-blonde and not-thin and not-cute I am, there’s the added layer of certain family members commenting on how I look for most of my life. 

But cultivating a deeply personal relationship with God (free of religion and legalism) helped me heal so much over the years that I can say I’m a Lucia, and the stickers don’t stick (…mostly). I realized that so many around me have the same insecurities I did, even the ones who appear confident and good-looking. (This even includes a friend of mine who was once a Miss Universe contestant!) Many of them just learned how to dress to gain social acceptance, but are actually deeply depressed.

This is one of the reasons I see a calling to the arts as being so important to the Kingdom of God. Imagine if Kingdom-driven artists made movies, TV shows, songs, and books that, instead of promoting insecurities, they instilled confidence that who YOU are, what YOU look like, YOUR skills, and YOUR quirks are so, deeply valued. That someone like YOU can be loved without fundamentally changing who you are. That instead of relationships being “scarce,” there’s actually an abundance of people who could be drawn to you exactly the way you are.

Imagine a world where the arts told redemptive stories to paint a picture of that world. That is the value of the arts: to create beauty in such a way that disciples our hearts. That way we can be confident enough to step into our life’s purpose and even recognize the love already available to us (without having to compete for it). That is why I’m an artist.