The Lie That Haunts You

"You are enough," someone writes, prompting a typically angry social media retort: "No, the point is you'll never be enough...we're all sinners." And the Twitter back-and-forth lasts a few hours until it inevitably fizzles. I see it and sigh.

We're adept at missing the point, aren't we? What's fascinating to me is that this very idea is in contention in the first pages of Scripture. The serpent slithers up to Adam and Eve saying, "Did God really say, `You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" And in that very moment, their hearts start beating faster, their faces redden, and they wonder to themselves for the first time, "Did we miss something? Are we missing something? Did got not give us everything we needed? Can we even trust God?" We're not told how long they sat in their primal shame and anxiety, but they eventually grasped. And we do too.

We grasp because we also live in the lie that we're not enough, that God isn't enough. God created us in his image, with deep dignity, a beautiful sense of belonging, a profound purpose. And yet, the serpent's lie calls it all into question. St. Augustine confesses, "You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you." Somehow, we believed the lie that God's presence with us and to us wasn't enough, that our divine design wasn't enough, that we'd have to go it on our own.

At least part of what it means to abandon this lie once-and-for-all is to remember and reclaim your belovedness in God. You were created in-and-for love. Love is your design, Love is your inheritance, Love found you when you were lost, and Love is your destiny when all things are made new. Love is enough.