There’s a short film I’ve watched over and over. It’s brilliant and profound. It speaks to something we all long for, and yet receive precious little of: Validation. That’s also its title.
The film opens with a sad, bedraggled man bringing his parking ticket to the attendant for validation. “Ah,” I thought the first time I saw it, “this movie is about that kind of validation. The parking lot kind.” But the attendant does much more than stamp his ticket. He also looks, really looks, at the bedraggled man, and says, “You… You are awesome. You have an amazing face. You’ve got powerful features, man. … It may seem like sometimes that people don’t understand you. But someday, someday, people are going to see you for what you really are.” The camera captures the man’s face making a complete transformation from limp despondency to hopeful joy.
Clearly this parking attendant takes his job to provide validation to be a literal mandate.
The movie goes on to even more validation plot twists, including a romantic element – all packed into 16 minutes. Those 16 minutes are worth your time. (And go ahead, take a break from reading this to watch Validation – you won’t regret it. Links on Vimeo and YouTube. Just come on back when you’re done.)
Just like our Sad Bedraggled Man, we are all transformed with validation. When someone sees us, really sees us, seeming to recognize the spark of humanity within us, and then speaks kind words with warmth – we respond. We melt. We are revived.
Of course, hucksters have known for millennia that this is the way people respond. Those with ulterior motives, wanting only to manipulate others into serving their wants, have spoken sweet words to many a parched and vulnerable heart.
Proverbs 5:3-4 speaks to this very thing. In warning a young man about the dangers of sexual sin, the writer says:
“For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.”
Words of validation may be desired and delightful, yet simultaneously disastrous and full of unpleasant consequences. You have been warned.
Take the contrast between the friend and the foe in Proverbs 27:6:
“Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.”
What the friend said may feel like a wound, but it was exactly what we needed to hear. The enemy’s words feel like a bunch of kindly kisses, but they leave a nasty bite mark.
So we need to be wise and discerning. That is especially true if we are not receiving validation in the regular course of our lives. The very next verse in Proverbs 27 states:
“One who is full loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet.”
That is, if our work and efforts are not being appreciated and affirmed, then we’ll be hungry for validation, and will be susceptible to pretenders.
Nobody in the Bible was more susceptible in this way than the woman Jesus met at the well in Sychar, recounted in John 4. She was a Samaritan – considered to be innately inferior by nearby Israel. She had been divorced and was currently living with a man – in a culture that censured both. And she was a woman – in a misogynistic world.
And yet … Jesus saw her, really saw her, and spoke with her in a way that acknowledged her humanity and her value. Here was a woman whose life was restless and who had repeatedly been rejected. And Jesus made it clear he was glad she existed. He gave her the stamp of validation.
With every person we encounter, may we do the same.