When I was a little girl I didn’t play with Barbie dolls. I wanted a Barbie, but for whatever reason we didn’t have Barbie dolls and I didn’t ask for one. Why? Because I had learned to not ask for what I wanted. Asking for what I wanted was a dangerous place to go. A land full of rejection.
Maybe Barbie is just that person who has figured out what doesn’t get rejected. Stereotypical Barbie for example; Be pretty. Dress right. Everything looks perfect on the outside. Her house is perfectly clean, never a speck of dust or juice box in the wrong place. She drives a big SUV, wears the right sunglasses, carries the right water bottle, is a member of the school board. When stereotypical Barbie’s kid gets a B instead of an A they ask the teacher for the A and teacher Barbie in an effort possibly to be stereotypical Barbie adjusts enough grades here and there to bring the kid’s overall grade up to an A. Barbie’s world looks perfect…but at what cost?
The fear of rejection creates a need to not need, in which case we go about living actions of need to look as if we need nothing.
Yes, this is based on a true story, the first paragraph my own, the second paragraph brought home by my daughter from school a piece at a time. I know this scenario is not everyone’s life, but a need to look good and not be rejected, propels at least some of our actions.
When we live out our idea of what is perfect we reject who our true self is and in the process reject others and we become stereotypical plastic Barbie’s.
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Sometimes Barbie is blamed, among other things, for women’s unrealistic expectations. The need to be thin and pretty, and perfect.
Maybe its not Barbie’s fault. Maybe Barbie is just an expression of who we already are, who we desire to be. The idea of the “ideal” woman existed for many years before Barbie made her appearance on the shelves of American department stores. She is a plastic doll we dress up with who we want to be, who we already are. We created Barbie and then we blame Barbie.
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The movie begins with Barbie waking up and greeting her neighbors. When she wants to go downstairs for breakfast she doesn’t walk down the stairs, she floats through the air. Every morning her toast pops out of the toaster and onto her plate at just the moment she walks by. When she sits down to eat her breakfast and drink her juice, her juice cup for example just tips in the air and no juice comes out.
Jesus doesn’t give us empty cups or plastic bread and He wants to lead us OUT of the land where we lay down our own lives so we will not be rejected by others.
Jesus gives us cups that run over with the Spirit of God and His very own self…the Bread of Life to feed our souls. Jesus power does not stop at the spiritual level it walks right into our physical lives changing our actions.
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My oldest daughter had a LOT of Barbie stuff. The Barbie house, the car, other accessories I can’t remember all of them, a ton of Barbies of course and a big blue tub of Barbie clothes. When her younger brother was old enough she pulled him into playing Barbies with her. But the question is, were the kids happier because they had LOTS of Barbie?
Some of you may remember Imelda Marcos. Her husband Ferdinand Marcos was the president of the Philippines from 1965 To 1986. Imelda had a collection of 3000 shoes. But clearly there is no peace found in an Imelda Marcos size shoe collection, because if peace was found in shoes then one pair sitting in our closet would bring us peace. The reason we end up with Imelda Marcos size shoe collections is because shoes don’t bring us the peace they promise and so we always need another pair.
While my oldest daughter and her brother spent hours playing with Barbie stuff, the most laughter that came from the bedroom was when they played what they called “slide bed”. They figured out if they took the top mattress and slid it off the end of the bed when the end hit the wall the other end was still up on the bed and it created a slide. And they would jump and run around and jump again and slide and they would laugh and squeal like kids do when they are having true fun.
I didn’t have to buy them Barbie stuff and then more Barbie stuff for them to have fun. They had more fun, more laughter, more joy, with something we already had. Jesus has already died for our sins. The gift of salvation is already there. All we need to do is accept it and use it.
When we receive peace from the one true God….all we need is the one true God. We don’t have to have all the other gods we serve in the belief that they are serving us. Because if they served us well we would only need one pair of shoes.
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Barbie chooses to move from Barbie world into the real world and become real. She leaves her old self behind and accepts the reality of death. But it also changes her into a real person, who she was really meant to be. In Barbie world they talked about living out the truth of who you were and yet it was imperfectly done because they did not have a clear understanding of what it meant.
There are equal rights laws for women, they are written on paper but that does not mean they are written on the hearts of people. Old plastic ways of living, our ideas of perfection are still there in hearts and so the laws on paper get lived out imperfectly because we can’t really see them clearly. We don’t fully understand equal rights because unequal rights in our favor benefit us and it seems fair and right.
The very last thing Barbie does in the movie is go to a gynecologist. She is now a real person and she goes to visit a doctor. Exactly where we need to go when we become real people. The church is a place for the sick and those who need help, the church is not a place for plastic perfection masquerading as truth.
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Matthew 13:45,46
45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, 46 who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.
Spiritually speaking what did he sell so he could have the one pearl of great price? What did he part ways with? Self…the lies of who he thought he was for the truth of who God said he was. No amount of money can buy the truth, the fact is that money usually buys lies. But let’s take that one step further, it is the love of money that buys lies.
Money is an inanimate object which is neither good nor evil, but it is like a truth serum which has the power to reveal what is written on our hearts.
When we sell all we have for the one pearl of great price, the light goes on in our hearts and we start to see the writing of who we are written on our hearts, the words of God giving us equal rights with His Son Jesus and equal rights lead to equal actions.
In the end Barbie parted ways with the lies she believed to be true until she met the truth and the truth set her free.