The Gospel according to "Inside Out"
If you haven’t seen the Oscar-winning animated film, “Inside Out,” let me spoil it for you (spoilers to follow).
It’s a Pixar film about what it would be like to be in a 12-year-old’s head named Riley. This experience is portrayed in an elegantly simplistic array of five emotions in five different colors: joy (golden-yellow), sadness (blue), anger (red), disgust (green) and fear (purple). Memories are also categorized in the same color-coded format. Memories are literally tinted by their related emotion. The overt premise of the movie is, “What’s the point of sadness? What’s the point of blue memories (literally getting the Blues)?” Behind that question is the ever-present social narrative of our culture, “Doesn’t everyone just deserve to be happy (no matter what the cost or obstacle)?”
Joy, the self-appointed leader of the emotions, struggles to even understand why sadness is around at all. Sadness is the perfect distillation of all that makes Debbie-Downer, a downer. The overt message and narrative of the film seems to be a battle between Joy and Sadness. Joy must triumph over and replace all sadness. Yet, I believe the film’s ultimate point is much subtler, something I must confess I missed in the first few viewings.
I believe the key to understanding the movie is probably the part you have tried hardest to forget: the recurring gum commercial and jingle. Based on the constantly angry response of every character to this tiny jingle, we should be surprised that the memory color is GOLDEN-YELLOW, not red. Yet, perhaps Smashmouth was wrong, maybe not “all that glitters is gold.” I believe that this jingle, this unsolicited, surface-level jolt of joy and happiness serves as a cypher to crack the code and meaning of the film.
As Riley grows and matures, her understanding of joy moves from childish to mature. Early on, Riley and her corresponding memories are colored by rather simple understandings of emotions. Yet, at the climax of the movie, we realize that old approach to emotions is childish. We realize that, like the horrible gum jingle, many of our previous conceptions of joy were not golden, but fool’s gold (pyrite, not the Matthew McConaughey film). We realize that deep, lasting, and meaningful joy comes from love and acceptance when we are sad and struggling. The character, Joy, realizes that it was deep and honest sadness that signaled Riley’s friends and family to comfort her when she missed a goal in her hockey playoffs game. Joy only remembers the comforting part of that memory, but Sadness helps paint a deeper, more complete picture. Mature memories were not simply purely golden and happy ones as our culture might desperately try to make us believe; instead, mature memories were comprised of a swirling mixture of joy and sorrow.
I believe this presence of joy in the midst of struggle and sorrow is crux of Christian joy and contentment. Paul described it this way in Philippians 4:12-13:
“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all THIS through Him who gives me strength” (NIV 2011).
I believe we have superficially treated Philippians 4:13, “I can do all THINGS through Him (Christ) who gives me strength” (ESV & NIV 1984) the same way that advertisers treat a jingle. We only accomplish a shallow and inconstant measure of joy, because we never bother to mine the depths of this mysterious verse on biblical joy and contentment. Notice the difference in translation between the first and second versions of Philippians 4:13. The first one says I can do all “this,” while the second (and more popular) rendering says I can do all “things.”
There’s a big difference. The first one begs an antecedent, a reference to something said before. The second one is a bland “all things” with no reference point or direction to what might be included in “all things.” I believe that we gain incredible freedom and peace when we read Philippians 4:13 rightly, as referring backwards to contentment in any and every situation, “whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want,” whether our lives are full of yellow happy memories or blue sad ones. This deeper understanding of joy is what led James to say the unthinkable, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be MATURE and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:2-4 NIV 2011). We can have a deep and lasting joy that will withstand the storms and trials of life when we lean on God’s version of contentment instead of our world’s. Our joy is not defined by circumstances, but by the person and work of Jesus Christ.
May the Joy of the Lord forever be your constant strength, your “hope and stay,” your “anchor within the veil,” your “solid rock,” and your “strong tower.” Amen.
