Enough is Enough: Encanto Theology

On Christmas Day 2021, something very special came into our lives, and I’m not talking about the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay!

By now, most of you probably have some awareness of the phenomenon that was and is the Disney movie Encanto. In just over a year since release, Encanto has been a prominent element of pop culture. The movie soundtrack was the first animated film soundtrack in years to reach the top of the music charts, and the track entitled, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” unseated Adele to take the number spot on the charts. At one point, there was a record six songs from the film in the Top 100! The music was created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also made the music for Disney’s Moana and wrote the musical Hamilton, so this is not the first time that Mr. Miranda has hijacked our brains with catchy tunes and brilliant lyrics. In November 2022, the cast reunited to film a live, musical event at the Hollywood Bowl for release on Disney+, which revived the daily dose of these tunes in our household.

As a refresher (because I suspect the majority of you have seen the film by now) Encanto is set in Columbia, where a man and a woman with newborn triplets are forced to flee their home due to violence (Think Joseph and Mary’s flight to Egypt with baby Jesus.) As they are making their escape, they are pursued, and the man sacrifices himself so that his children, his family, and his people can live. (Remind you of Jesus?) After his sacrifice, something magical happens. (Again, Jesus?) His wife and children receive a special gift, an “encanto,” which is Spanish for charm or spell. A beautiful and magical house or “casita” appears for them to live in, a town grows around the casita, and huge mountains surround the town so that they are protected from the former dangers.

When the three children grow a little order, they each receive a magical gift that they can use to help others, and when they have children, those children also receive magical gifts. All of the offspring of the original mother, now “Abuela,” have different magical gifts – all except one. The central character, a young woman named Mirabel, is the only family member who did not get a magical gift, and no one knows why.

As the film progresses, it becomes clear that there is something wrong in the family, and the encanto that gave them all these magical gifts appears to be fading. The family members are fearful and begin casting blame on one another and on themselves, all while things around them continue to deteriorate. There is a lot that happens and I won’t give it all away in a complete spoiler for those rare folks who have not seen the film, but eventually the encanto is gone and the magical casita is reduced to rubble.

Mirabel is central to bringing the family back together, and helping them to see a way forward after the magic appears to have left the family. At the end, Abuela has a beautiful epiphany. She realizes that by trying to hold on to the magic too tightly out of fear of losing it, she had forgotten the reason that the encanto was given to them in the first place – because she and her newborns had suffered greatly and survived. In the closing song, she looks at the members of her family, and sings the line, “The miracle is not some magic that you got, the miracle is you. Just you. Just you.”

In this realization that their mere existence and the love they share are the most important things, they work together to rebuild the casita with the help of all of their neighbors in town, and the magic returns.

The story of Mirabel and her family in Encanto shares some thematic similarities to two of my favorite “call stories” in the Bible, occasions when God taps a person to complete a task only to be met with disagreement. In both Exodus and from Jeremiah, God’s commission to these two individuals is met with self-doubt and fear. God comes to a young Jeremiah, tells him how special and unique he is, and Jeremiah’s response is, “Well, I don’t know how to speak. I’m too young.” God also comes to Moses and tells him that he is the one who will liberate the Israelites from Egypt and Moses responds with, “But, I’ve never been a very good public speaker.” There are many moments throughout the Bible like these – where individuals cast doubt upon their abilities, even after God has indicated that they are personally chosen and God will support them in their mission. Moments like these exchanges with Moses and Jeremiah are some of the most authentic and human moments in scripture. These moments can help us feel closer to the figures in the Bible, because they remind us of one of the greatest lies that we often tell ourselves – that we are not enough. Moses and Jeremiah did not believe that they were enough for the tasks to which God was calling them. I am willing to bet that most of us can connect to a time when we believed that we were not enough - and believed it so strongly that we might even question the wisdom of God. Our thoughts lend themselves to an exchange that goes something like, “God, in your infinite wisdom, surely you can’t be asking me to do this because there are way more qualified people. I can give you some names.”

We all fall victim to the lie that we are not enough. And we don’t trick ourselves into believing this lie all on our own. On a daily basis we are bombarded with messages that we are not enough.

Our work is not enough.
Our bodies are not enough.
Our brains are not enough.
Our hair is not enough.
Our clothes are not enough.
Our car is not enough.
Our homes are not enough.
Our relationships are not enough.

All of it, every bit the consumer-driven, capitalist society we find ourselves in constantly reaffirms this lie that we are not enough – and if we didn’t already, eventually we start to believe it.

One of my favorite academics and authors is a woman named Dr. Brené Brown. I invoke Brown’s scholarship, and memorable quotes with great frequency. Brown’s research is in the field of social work and her focus is on shame, vulnerability, and human connection.

Brown talks about how, in the United States in particular, we live in a culture of perfection that constantly feeds the belief that we are not enough. This belief interferes with our ability to form authentic human connections. The fear of not being enough puts our guards up and builds walls that prevent us from forming real connection with one another. She also notes how this combination of the drive to perfection and the lack of authentic connection also then contribute to our being the most in-debt, unhealthy and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history. Our never-ending pursuit of happiness through perfection usually makes us really unhappy, and sometimes sick.

Brown notes how when We live in a culture of never enough, there is only one way out of this scarcity trap and that is what she calls “enoughness.” At some point, we just need to say “Enough. I am enough.” Who I am is enough, and what I am doing is enough.

We need to allow ourselves to BE ENOUGH. Our mere existence. Who God made us to be.

Now, Brené Brown may or may not know that her work actually aligns closely with a very important theological argument for rejecting the “big lie” that we are not enough, and I want to share with you a little it about my own discovery of this Christian concept of enoughness. When I was 26 years old, I decided that I wanted to attend divinity school, and the admission essay asked us to respond to a famous sermon given by renowned theologian Paul Tillich called “You Are Accepted.” It’s one of his most famous sermons, and was published in his 1948 collection called The Shaking of the Foundations.

As Tillich notes, even in his time in the first half of the 20th century, the message that we are not enough was prominent. Tillich wrote:

“We are wont to condemn self-love; but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves in the love with which we are loved eternally. He who is able to love himself is able to love others also; he who has learned to overcome self-contempt has overcome his contempt for others. But the depth of our separation lies in just the fact that we are not capable of a great and merciful divine love towards ourselves. On the contrary, in each of us there is an instinct of self-destruction, which is as strong as our instinct of self-preservation.”

Tillich is naming that destructive power of our own self-doubt that arises from believing we are not enough. It was present in Jeremiah and Moses, and it is present in each and every one of us.

However, there is a segment in this same Tillich sermon, and it is the very segment that I was prompted to respond to for my admissions essay, that points to a theological truth that has the power to pull us out of the places we are stuck in our self-doubt and to wake us up from the lie that we are not enough.

Tillich says:

“Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!" If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.”

It is a radical act in this world to believe that you are acceptable and accepted. It is radical to believe that you are enough, just as God made you, and to know you don’t need to be anything more than you are, or have anything more than you have, or do anything more than you do to be worthy of love – the love of others and the love of God.

Let that truth just sit with you. Because to be a person of faith, you can’t believe that that’s just a nice thing to say. Believing that you are enough, dismissing all the messages to the contrary that we receive all of the time, and truly internalizing the belief that God made you, God loves you, and you are enough is an essential starting place for us as people of faith. All of the work we do for others in the world around us and all of the love we seek to give to others is stunted if we do not start from a the radical yet essential and fundamental belief that we are enough. It is a belief that seems so simple, and yet it is one of the hardest tests of our faith. As God told Jeremiah – I made you. I’m with you. And you are enough.

And one last thing. Believing that we are enough does not mean that we can’t also strive to grow and learn and seek out new things. As Dr. Brené Brown reminds us, “You can strive for growth and improvement and at the same time be happy with your current version.” She says that “Working on your personal growth doesn’t mean that you dislike yourself. On the contrary; it means that you respect yourself so much that you further invest in your best possible version.”

So this is my question to you, my friends. Do you believe, way deep down inside, that you are enough? Is your faith firmly rooted in the theological truth that God not only knows you, but formed you to be who you are?

As the world around us tries to exhaust us and separate us by appealing to our fear of not being enough, remember that God made you to be “enough,” and it is from that wholeness that we freely give and connect with one another.

As Abuela sings at the end of Encanto, “The miracle is not some magic that you got, the miracle is you. Just you. Just you.”

Enough is Enough. And you are enough.

Amen.