What do the movies Moana, Mulan, Brave, Beauty and the Beast, Coco, and Aladdin have in common? The moral of those stories is almost exactly the same—Be you. Moana, your father wants you to be an island manager, but you are an ocean explorer—be you! Miguel, your family wants you to make the best shoes in Mexico, but your heart wants to make Mexican music—be you! Belle, Jasmine, and Mulan, you are not helpless princesses awaiting arranged marriages; you are book-reading, kingdom-running, sword-swinging warriors! Be you. Only then can we all live happily ever after.
“Be you” (a.k.a. “be genuinely you,” a.k.a. “live your truth,” a.k.a. “live authentically”) might be the highest value of modern American culture, but what does God think? Does he want you to find the unique you that he created you to be and embrace it without apology? Or does he want you to repress those desires humbly and conform to what your family/culture wants you to be?
Don’t answer too quickly, because God’s answer is tricky. According to the Scriptures, God says, “Be you!”* God exclaims, “Be you!” and adds an asterisk that says, “Terms and conditions apply.” In the days to come, I want to explore what it means to be biblically “you,” but for now give some thought to Paul’s words: “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:4,5).
