Pixar Theology – UP: Adventure is Out There (How Following Jesus Invites You Into Freedom, Joy, and Abundant Life)

Do you ever just feel like life has you trapped? Perhaps you used to feel so alive and everything was fun, but now it’s just a repetitive grind of checking everything off the list. Life used to be full of possibilities, but now it just happens and you're just along for the ride, like a…

Pixar Theology – The Incredibles: Strength in Diversity and Working Together

The Parr family isn’t your average family. Sure there’s a mom and a dad, three kids and a bunch of family issues. But they are different in a pretty major way. They have super powers. But they have to stay hidden, because the world they live in is skeptical of “supers”. They are seen as…

Pixar Theology – Coco: Our Purpose is Bigger Than Following Our Dreams

Coco is a beautiful film that centers on the importance of family and the power of music. And it is directly between those two spaces where we find Miguel, torn in two directions by his desire to love and honor his family and pursue his gift for music. Miguel is ambitious, and usually a film…

What it Means to Love Your Neighbor

“Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” Fred Rogers was pure love in action. Very few people have embodied the spirit of Jesus Christ more humbly and…

The Gospel According to Pizza

I have been moved to worship through the consumption of delicious food a number of times that could only be considered sinfully high. I'm working with the Lord on my idolatry of good food, and part of that process is confession, so... here we go. I once wrote a letter to Chipotle asking them to…

Cake and the Feeling of Being Let Down by God

There's a chance that your view of Christianity is completely wrong. Christianity in America is likely wrong about many ideas. Progressives and conservatives are each probably wrong about stuff. I (one who refuses to subscribe to either of those labels) am probably right about everything wrong about a lot of stuff too. But the goal…

Pixar Theology – Finding Nemo: A Loving Father’s Relentless Pursuit of His Lost Child

We have this idea in our heads that when we feel far from God, or disconnected from Him, He’s the one who is lost. We feel like we need to go searching for God, or go on a spiritual exploration, or find our faith. But what if it’s the other way around? What if in…

Pixar Theology – Inside Out: The Necessary Partnership of Joy and Sadness

Happiness is arguably the primary goal of American culture. Get rich, have a hot body, go to a good college, drive a nice car, have power and authority, live in a big house, buy more stuff, be a winner, work towards a bigger salary; do all this (and whatever else you want to add to…

I Will Never Not Cry When I Watch These Videos

There are a lot of videos floating around on the internet. According to data from YouTube, 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day. So yeah, there's a lot out there. I spend a lot of time watching YouTube and I'm…

Pixar Theology – A Bug’s Life: Overcoming Oppression with Creativity and Unity

What does it mean to experience oppression? Throughout the world there are terrible, unjust things happening to people: violent governments, terrorism, systematic racism and sexism, human trafficking, religious persecution (both by religious majorities and against religious minorities),  and more. The horrible examples of oppression that we often hear about in the news could be overwhelming…