ugly carbon copies

Have you ever noticed that we’re all desperately striving for sameness?

Look around you. Everything about our world acts as a funnel to create a specific type of individual. You should look, dress, act, speak, vote, and live a certain way. Culture sets up a mold, and if you don’t strive to fit it, you become an anomaly.

We’re working our hardest to become ugly carbon copies when we were crafted to be the most vibrant, individual, and brilliant parts of creation.

Isaiah 64:8 states simply,

“Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”

Psalm 139 dives into even more detail about the individuality and beauty God has instilled in each of us. Verses 13-15 proclaim,

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.”

If we are fearfully and wonderfully made, why should we try to be anything else? We attempt to dim our God-instilled beauty and become a mere reflection of someone else, an ugly carbon copy. We strive to be anything other than what we are, forgetting that we were created by the One who spoke the galaxies into being, the One who can calm a storm with a single word, the One who holds this entire planet in His hands.

Lisa Bevere one said, “If you feel you are inadequate, worthless, or not enough, you didn’t get those ideas from God.” Yes, we are sinners in desperate need of salvation and grace-we’re lost on our own. However, we are still perfect craftsmanship, and we lose sight of that in a world that tells us we’re not enough.

Propaganda’s “It’s Complicated” speaks it best:

“We are becoming what we are not / But what we are is inescapable / You are a masterpiece fighting to be a silly selfie with a hideous filter / You are heaven’s handmade calligraphy / Slumming it among papyrus fonts / You are the complete and perfect works of a perfect and eternal poet laureate.”

Becoming an ugly carbon copy will never satisfy. The way to “good enough” is not found there, because God has already declared you to be wonderful. Rest in that. It’s one of the hardest things we could ever do, but knowing that our Creator thinks we are designed perfectly is where our hearts will truly learn to embrace individuality.

You’re not a carbon copy-that’s not how you were designed. Quit living like one.