Label Lies

I came across an ad campaign, called "Labels Lie," that does a heart wrenchingly amazing job of showing how devastating the lies we believe about ourselves can be and how they can destroy our lives. Some of the images brought tears to my eyes as I felt the pain they evoked. I'm not sure which hurt more, realizing that I have believed some of these things about myself and wielded the Sword of Lies against myself, or realizing that, knowing how hurtful and destructive the cuts from that sword can be, I have turned that blade on others.

The images in the ad campaign are easily the types of visions we'd have if stopped long enough to truly picture a physical manifestation of what happens spiritually and emotionally when we tear someone down with our words.  One of my mother's favorite verses on the subject of how we speak to and of others is Ephesians 4:29, "Don't use foul or abusive language, let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them." (NLT) Mom would use this verse as a scalpel to slice away the teen tendency to even jokingly use cut downs in our church youth group meetings. Someone would say something not so nice about another and before another heartbeat passed her words would ring out, "4:29, that's not acceptable." It mattered to her how we talked because my Mom understands that words matter and knows the damage that labels can do. It something that Jesus understands as well, and we all need to. 

These images reveal our deepest wounds, our failures, our fears, our brokenness. They are heartbreaking, and because they contradict what God says about who we are they are also lies. Jesus was described repeatedly as having compassion. God loves us as we are, and not as we should be. Jesus loves us broken and wounded and full of fear and failure and doubt. He doesn't see out mistakes and call us trash. He see our mess and promises to wash it away, all the while declaring that we are not the mistakes we've made. Those are events. Who we are is something different. We are His children, His beloved. He precious treasure that inspired Him to give all that He had in order to attain.

  The good news of the gospel is that God knows all the things about ourselves that we try to hide and wish we could change about ourselves and, as outrageous as it may seem, loves us anyway. If we want to change the way we feel about ourselves, we need to be honest about two things. First, we need to truthfully acknowledge how we see and define ourselves. Then we need to hear and believe what God says about us. These labels are lies about who we are. God sees us, all of us, as beautiful and loved. Not because He can't see the real me and the real you. Not because we can ever hide those dark and shameful things from Him, but because He sees deeper. God is love, and love sees the truth that we are who He created us to be, regardless of the corruption that followed that creation.

 My wife and I love to ride the motorcycle down little farm to market roads and look at the houses. Quite often we'll see an old house in disrepair falling apart. One of us will comment about how it's a shame the house is in the shape it is in. We can see the ghost of beauty it once had, but now it is ugly and would be dangerous to live in. It simply needs to be condemned. But a carpenter could look at that house and see exactly what needs to be done to restore it and improve it. 

We're like those old houses. The winds of time and lack of care have let us broken, leaky and falling apart. But the Master Carpenter doesn't see that as the end of who we are. He doesn't condemn us. He has the knowledge, skill and power to fully and completely restore us to what we were created to be. We are not the peeling paint, leaky roofs and dry rot.

We are His workmanship, His masterpieces. And no matter how much mold has grown up and become a part of our make up, no matter how many termites have eaten away at who we are, He can restore us. He declares us His beautiful masterpieces and to believe any other label is to believe a lie. Any labels that contradict how God describes us, wound us and destroy a part of us. That's why we must be careful with the words we use, both in reference to ourselves and to others. We have to be honest, and if we don't see our own peeling paint we can't seek a new paint job from the Creator. But while we need to admit our need and allow God to come in to those broken and damaged areas of our lives, we shouldn't allow ourselves to be defined by these hurtful images and lies. And we shouldn't define others by them.

Jesus didn't come calling us losers and worthless. He came to tattoo the label of loved on us. Jesus' love for us came with radical acceptance and unconditional love. He embraced us, the wounded and the broken. Sure, as He heals, restores and saves us, declaring us forgiven and clean, He gently calls us to follow Him and sin no more. But when He tells us to leave our life of sin He is not doing it as a condition of His love, or as if He is having second thoughts about the work He did in us. He's not saying don't take this gift for granted or I'll take it back. It's not even a command for us to get our act together and shape up. It's a declaration that it is now possible for us to live differently than we have in the past! He's giving us the permission and promising the power to be different than we were because of our encounter with Him! No one wants to live a life of brokenness and emptiness when they've just encountered the very wholeness and fullness of love. Jesus is saying, it's OK, I see who you are, what you've done, and all the mistakes you've made. I know the truth of how you feel about yourself in the deepest depths, when the lights are out and the distractions have faded away. And I love you anyway. I love you so much that I will give you Myself so that those things that you have always been powerless to change can be changed. Today, because of Me, you don't have to hate yourself, and you don't have to fall short. You don't have to stay broken and a mess. "Go and sin no more," isn't a phrase Jesus wielded to make sure we get beat up when we fall short of the ideal, for His mercies are new every morning and His grace is sufficient. It is an invitation to leave our hurt and broken identity behind and to see ourselves as God does.

Repentance and new life in Christ isn't pretending we don't have wounds and that we aren't broken. It isn't about deciding from here on out to do the right thing. If we determine to live right, it won't be long until failure will heap all that condemnation right back on the walls of hearts that Christ washed clean. It's about making the choice to let the truth about who God says we are and what God says about us define us, determine our value and control how we think, feel and react. It's about seeing with our Father the masterpiece project in progress rather than the condemned wreckage we've been looking at, declaring the restored work is the truth about the person in question, not the thoughts and feelings associated with needing that restoration. We are loved unconditionally, and realizing that we are loved like that changes everything. As we begin to see that truth and understand what it means, we will find ourselves living differently, not because we have to but because we can, and we can have the courage to show that same radical grace to those around us too.

This is the dangerous truth of Christ, the beautiful good news of the gospel.  that as messy as we are, God loves us. We don't have to get cleaned up or straighten up first. He loves us. We don't have to change. He loves us. And when we catch a glimpse of ourselves through His eyes and see how beautiful He sees us as, and want to be who He says we are, we can accept that love and let Him come into us and do the restoration work. He can change those things that we never could before and never will be able to in the future. He can relabel each and every one of us. When we recognize and come to trust the truth of God's love for us and everyone else, it becomes impossible not to be changed and not to change the lives of those around us.

You are loved. Right now. No matter where you are at. No matter how far away you feel. No matter what you have done. You are loved. Don't ever forget that. What you choose to do with that love and how you respond to that love is up to you. But if you accept it, it can destroy those labels that feel so permanent and make you new.