Toy Story 3 with Paul McDonald and Corey Stumne
Coming up on the Men at the Movies podcast, we conclude our Toy Story series with Toy Story 3. Times of tragedy and trauma can cause us to misinterpret the heart of God. Many times we turn to control the situation, looking for a world without owners, a world free from rejection. As we, and the toys, discover, in building our own idea of heaven, we find ourselves in prison, slaves to the world we created. Grab your tissues, and let’s discover God’s truth in this movie.
Quotes
Lotso is what Jessie could’ve become.
Every toy in this series is struggling to figure out how to deal with the idea of being loved.
We misinterpret the heart of God because we misinterpret our situation. God’s heart gets a bad rap because we are poor judges of what is going on around us.
We reject God because we think like Lotso, “No owner, no heartbreak.”
Different circumstances, or new roles, or a change of scenery can be enough to alter our allegiances.
In our time of abandonment, relationship becomes less important, and being played with becomes all that matters. It doesn’t matter who plays with us.
We give our hearts to things that don’t handle it very well.
When God hurts or disappoints us, we don’t go to Him with the hurt, but take it in our own hands to fix/soothe/recover. We try to create a life for ourselves that don’t hurt.
No matter how hurt or how broken you become, God will always give you the opportunity for full restoration.
When you accept healing or restoration, you have to accept you can’t do it by yourself.
Themes
Recap:
Toy Story 1-What desire drives our hopes, fears, and actions?
Toy Story 2-What sets us apart is the name on our souls.
Three characters:
Woody-Irrational fear of being replaced
Buzz-Identity crises (too important vs not important)
Jessie-Afraid of opening her heart again
Transition:
For children, moving away from toys, from childhood to adulthood. For adults, it’s about redefining the relationship and identity with the children.
We identify with the toys during times of transition, when we don’t know where we’re going or what we are doing—it’s very easy to misinterpret the heart of God
Lotso and daycare as a God substitute and voice of the world today :
Controlled, easy life, no fear of rejection. “No owner, no heartbreak.” Lotso opens their eyes to hundreds of Andy/God substitutes—things that feel like God, look like God, and sometimes even act like a loving owner—but the toys don’t have to worry about rejection.
“We don’t need owners.” The toys get played with, but its nothing like being played with by their true owner.
Offers the same things the world offers us: “You’ve been through a lot. We’ve all been abandoned, rejected.” Relationship became less important, and being played with becomes the goal.
They got played with by people who didn’t care about the toys, and didn’t know how to handle them well.
What they thought was heaven actually became a prison.
Hurt toys hurt toys.
The things Lotso offers are intended to pull you away from your one true owner.
Lotso smashes the heart he is offered. Healing and restoration come at the cost of our pride.
“Toys are just pieces of plastic.” Destined for the trash.
“Where’s your kid now?” Lotso mocks the toys when he has the power to save them.
Resources
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” - 1 Corinthians 13:11 (NIV)
This film—this whole three-part, 15-year epic—about the adventures of a bunch of silly plastic junk turns out also to be a long, melancholy meditation on loss, impermanence and that noble, stubborn, foolish thing called love. - A.O. Scott, NY Times
“For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.” - Romans 8:19-23 (NLT)
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” - Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)
Moana podcast
“That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.…I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness? As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end. But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.” - Romans 6: 12-14, 19-23 (MSG)
Questions
How do you see God’s name written on your soul?
What “hat” do you feel worthless without? What is your reason why God can’t love you or use you to advance the Kingdom?
How have you forgotten who you really are? What is the result?
How have you tried to find safety in a box?
When have you felt forgotten by God? How did you feel remembered?
Who is a Jesse in your life? How can you reach out to them?
How has God shown you a third option when you felt like there were only two?
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Edited and mixed by Grayson Foster
Logo and episode templates by Ian Johnston
Audio quotes performed by Britt Mooney, Paul McDonald, and Tim Willard, taken from Epic (written by John Eldredge) and Song of Albion (written by Stephen Lawhead).
Southerly Change performed by Zane Dickinson, used under license from Shutterstock.
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