Everyone is Awesome
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Everyone is Awesome

Everything, and everyone, really is awesome!
Everything, and everyone, really is awesome!

In today’s Acton Commentary, “Everything Really is Awesome,” I make a connection between the LEGO movie and the latest film release by the Acton Institute, “For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles.” My point of departure is the ditty that appears in the LEGO movie, “Everything is Awesome.”

Another implication of this connection is that everyone is awesome, in the same way that we recognize with the Psalmist:

O LORD, our Lord,
     how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
     Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
     to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
     the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
     and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
     and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
     you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
     and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
     whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O LORD, our Lord,
     how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Everyone and everything is awesome because of the creation’s reflection of the glory of its Creator. The human person, the crown of creation, reflects in the image and likeness of God the overflowing grace of the triune God.

I was a the Grand Rapids premiere of “For the Life of the World” earlier this week, and episode six explores the wonder of creation.

It’s all grace; it’s all gift, pointing us to the Giver. And in that way, everything, and everyone, is awesome.

Jordan J. Ballor

Jordan J. Ballor (Dr. theol., University of Zurich; Ph.D., Calvin Theological Seminary) is director of research at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, an initiative of the First Liberty Institute. He has previously held research positions at the Acton Institute and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and has authored multiple books, including a forthcoming introduction to the public theology of Abraham Kuyper. Working with Lexham Press, he served as a general editor for the 12 volume Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology series, and his research can be found in publications including Journal of Markets & Morality, Journal of Religion, Scottish Journal of Theology, Reformation & Renaissance Review, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Faith & Economics, and Calvin Theological Journal. He is also associate director of the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research at Calvin Theological Seminary and the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity & Politics at Calvin University.