Shrek with Paul McDonald and Britt Mooney
In week 3 of the summer blockbuster series, Paul McDonald and Britt Mooney tackle their first animated film, Shrek. We look at how we often feel like Shrek, expecting people to run away if they really knew our true self. Or maybe we relate to the Princess, getting frustrated because things don't look like we think they should. In reality, our goal should be to emulate the hero of the movie, Donkey, by showing love, acceptance, and forgiveness to those around us. Join us as we discover our stories in this movie.
Quotes
Internally, we can go to some pretty dark, ogre-like places.
What religion does is try to get rid of the magical of fairy tales and the freaks, because they don’t fit in.
We do get a fairy tale. It just doesn’t look like everyone else’s fairy tale.
We need the Donkeys in our life to tell us, “That’s not a big deal.”
Christianity has all the elements of a fairy tale, except it is true.
If there’s one group of people on planet Earth that should not be turned off by the darkness inside of people, it’s the Church.
“It’s the people in the Church who loved me no matter what that brought me into the Kingdom.” No one has ever been lectured into the Kingdom, but loved there because love is the foundation of the Kingdom.
The main characters (except Donkey) all have the same issues of hiding who they really are.
Humility is a sign of someone who knows God. You can’t stand in God’s presence and be prideful.
The problem with trying to maintain a manufactured image is that you can’t keep it up. It will always eventually crumble.
The only thing Donkey brought to the table was his love.
Here’s the gift in knowing you’re a freak—you can love others who are freaks too.
God shows up in the times we are thinking, “This is not how it’s supposed to go.”
When we receive God’s kiss, He tells us we’re beautiful (despite how we think we look).
The world needs the church who won’t run away, who will love them regardless.
It’s only after truth is revealed that there can be resolution.
Misunderstanding and untruths divide us and cause conflict.
The cure for misunderstanding is forgiveness.
“I know, God forgave me, but I’m still trying to work off my debt.”
Donkey both showed grace and called to grace with Shrek. He called Shrek to something higher.
I don’t need to prove to someone that they are more than chemical reactions, more than a product of their environment. But I need to treat them like they’re not.
We can miss the happy ending if we hold too tightly to our manufactured idea of what it should be.
Salvation and revelation (the revealing of who we are) tend to not look like we think it should.
Themes
What do we do when we don’t look how we think we should?
We all have ogre parts of us.
We all have a lie we are afraid of--“If people really knew me, they wouldn’t like me.”
Both Shrek and Farquad try to tell us fairy tales aren’t real.
We fear if our true self is exposed, then we’d be rejected.
Donkey is the secret to the movie: He accepts people, is not ashamed of who he is, is not afraid to ask questions, humble.
The contrast in the movie is not Farquad and Shrek, but between Farquad (control, kicking out the freaks, most perfect king, compensation, tries to hide his deficiencies, all about manufacturing his image) and Donkey (accepts the person, sees them for who they are).
Shrek refuses to see himself in any other way than an onion. He is not a cake or parfait that everyone would like. He is an ogre, an onion.
The One who knows everything about you is also the One who loves you the most.
We get caught up in our own small story and can miss out when Jesus shows up because He doesn’t look like we thought He would.
Sharing the truth of what we are going through builds community.
We think we have to be cleaned up and perfect for God to use us, but we just need to show up as who we are.
Stories become satisfying to us when the truth is revealed.
Friends forgive each other.
Fiona wants her true self to be known by the one who is her true love.
What Fiona thinks is hideous, Shrek says is beautiful. God is the same way with us.
Fiona still got the fairy tale, it just didn’t happen the way she thought it would in the way it would.
God takes things that are not and calls them as they are.
Resources
“Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.” - GK Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles
“It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name....That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still.” - Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
Questions
How do we get past the image culture we live in?
Crisis/conflict questions: What’s behind that? What am I saying about myself? What do I think is true in this moment? Why am I reacting like this?
Where has misunderstanding caused you division and conflict? What happened when the truth was revealed?
Where do you need to receive/accept forgiveness from someone?
Who is someone you might need to forgive?
What do you call hideous that God would call beautiful?
If you had the perfect life, would you know it?
What is failure? What does that look like?
What is success? What does that look like?
What does your happy ending look like? Perfect job? Perfect kids? Perfect marriage? What if you had it and didn’t know it?
What life are you trying to manufacture? Job? Marriage? Kids? Ministry? Relationships?