We need friends like air, food and shelter. We can survive a few more years without friendship, but won’t we really live, now or forever, without finding a good friend?
This basic emotional (and spiritual) need runs, like a Randy Newman soundtrack, below each animated image in the Toy Story series. Now Woody, Buzz and the rest of the toy box are back (with new friends), nearly a quarter of a century since the day we met them in Pixar’s first film in 1995. The fourth part of the beloved series (which some feared because we didn’t want them to spoil what we like in the first three) is really good.
- What makes Toy Story 4 a hit (no spoilers here) is the same thing that made all the other movies so successful.
- Pixar makes films that struggle with the complexities of life that humans struggle with.
- Making us think.
- Laugh and inevitably cry.
- Toy Story 4 is no different.
- Going through pains that only adults know.
- While capturing the hearts and imaginations of children.
- I was nine years old and my eyes opened like plates the first time I heard Buzz say.
- “By infinity and beyond?!Over the weekend.
- I took my own family to the movies.
- Now I see (and feel) the layers of the narrative and yet I realize that.
- One way or another.
- I also see less than my three-year-old son.
All the important characters (a rope cowboy, a space soldier who speaks with a built-in laser, a Little Bo-Peep doll, and a dozen others) are plastic, but they often look more human than the flesh and blood with which we interact. Everyday. They honestly struggle with their purpose and identity. They take risks, fail and take risks again. They experience anxiety and pain through the changes in life. They sacrifice themselves. They make new friends and say goodbye.
Do friendships make movies?because God made us love and be loved
Woody organizes this toy story all the time, from the team’s first reunion at the dreaded birthday party (the day he met Buzz Lightyear), to heartbreaking adventures at Pizza Planet, Toy Toy Barn and Sunnyside Daycare, to the day andy said goodbye. and met his new owner, Bonnie, Woody leads as a friend, the best of friends?First Andy, Bonnie and many toys in between (including Little Fork, a nervous, insecure and needy character, who appears in the new film).
Woody never leaves a friend in need and never leaves a friend behind. The cord sheriff is repeatedly distinguished by his lack of selfishness, often putting himself in danger by others. Others may be smarter, bigger and stronger than him, but there is no friend. like our cowboy. We love Woody because we all need Woody. We all feel that friendship is at the heart of humanity. And friendship is close to the heart of mankind because of God.
It was God who said from the beginning that it was not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18). Then, in the fullness of time, God sent his own Son into the world, not just to be a friend (John 15:13), but to make and have friends (Mark 3: 13-14). Jesus became friends with the humble and despised in society (Matthew 11:19). He shared the deepest intimacy with twelve disciples, and in particular with Peter, James and John (Mark 5,37; Matthew 17,1; Matthew 26,37). These three saw him exalted on the Mount of Transfiguration and saw him kneel pleading with the Father the night he was betrayed. And then, more particularly, Christ himself turns not only to the twelve, but to all of us, and says: “Are you my friends, if you do what I command you? But I have called you friends, because I have done? Did you know everything I have heard from my Father? (John 15: 14-15). Before God even made friends in the flesh, did He know some kind of deep and mysterious friendship within the eternal divinity? Father, Son and Holy Spirit loving and being loved by each other forever.
Is it the Christian gospel that God, by himself, is our friend in Christ?And he calls us to be faithful friends. Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment: can you love one another; just as I loved them, who love each other too?(John 13. 34?35). Friendship, as common as it may seem, is neither peripheral nor complementary to reality, but it is at the heart of who we are and why we exist.
At its best, Woody was a sweet whisper from the friend we have in paradise and a fragile replica of the love with which we are called to love our friends on earth.
However, despite all the admiration for the way Woody loves his friends, he is a complicated cowboy. In cinema, it oscillates, sometimes wildly, sometimes incomprehensibly, between taking risks for others and doing whatever it takes to be loved more. Do you often have trouble finding yourself, your identity, your purpose, your courage?in the eyes of a child. After all, isn’t that why you made a toy?
Watching movies is lost in the confusion between loving others at a good price and simply risking being loved Where do loyalty and vanity end?Woody, yes, but what about us?In marriage, and now as a father, I feel this tension in me much more than ever. Or just try to promote myself? Distinction can make friendship subtly dangerous.
Christ’s disciples are not at all afraid of the depth and beauty of true friendship. The Apostle Paul writes in a place for his converts: ??My brethren, beloved and much regretted, do my joy and crown, yes, beloved, stand firm in the Lord?(Philippians 4. 1; see also 1. 7?8). But as endowed with joy, sacrifice, and affection paul may be, he remains remarkably free from those whom he loves and serves. He said elsewhere, “Am I now seeking the favor of men or God?Or do I try to please men? I still like men, wouldn’t I be a servant of Christ?(Galatians 1. 10). The beauty of true friendship, of the pious friendship, of the friendship that exalts Christ, is in the apparent contradictions: immense affection and coherent instruction, dependence and always freedom, a great love and always the courageous truth.
The danger to Woody, or Paulo, or to you and me, is to let our friends define us Do you have a value and purpose beyond what your spouse, children, co-workers, or friends think?We were made for friendship, but not just for friendship. When our friends become our lives, it’s only a matter of time before they ruin us, in this life, or when they die. As we enjoy friendship and separate our hearts, each of us must be rooted Christ, our greatest goal, our deepest joy, our greatest love.
Woody’s greatest joy was to be Andy’s favorite toy, which may be good for toys, but his intense emotion and agitation can serve as a warning to those who wish to feel loved, if God’s love for us in Christ does not rest our hearts (Matthew 11:28), our friendships become fertile ground for temptation and , eventually, for our destruction.
However, the secret ingredient of Toy Story’s success is the sadness of farewell. The energy of the first scene of the first film comes from the fear of having to say goodbye. Will Andy forget about us for his new toys? Each significant relationship throughout the series carries the tension of finite and temporal love, of the inevitable farewell.
Woody fears losing Andy to Buzz. Andy fears losing Buzz and then losing Woody too. Toys deploy the idea of losing Woody to a toy museum in Tokyo. Everyone’s afraid of what’s going to happen when Andy goes to college. Touching moment (at least until now) occurred in the landfill incinerator, while the family toys tried, in their last moments together, to shake hands (before being suddenly rescued). And then, goodbye to Andy. same minor tone.
Sadness sows the impressive power of this animated film because we all know the pain. Do we all know the unbearable pain of loss? Or the fear of one day losing a husband or wife, parents or children, or a close friend. He is more familiar to us than Christ to his friends. He lost all his friends on the way to the cross (Matthew 26. 31). When Judas, who would make him suffer more than anyone else, came to abandon him, Jesus said, “Friend, why are you here?”(Matthew 26:50).
But will friendships end, whether with life changes, betrayal or abandonment, even death, all of which are going to end?At least for a while. All but one. When God befriended Christ, He befriended us once and for all. When the credits of this creation finally arrive, we will find our Creator, Savior, Married, and Friend.
“Here is the tabernacle of God with men. God will live with them. They will be God’s people and God Himself will be with them. And every tear will be wiped out of his eyes, and death will no longer exist, there will be no more. Mourning, no tears, no pain, because the first things have passed?(Revelation 21. 3,4).
This friendship will never ever die. Will it only grow, deepen and expand for all eternity?If Christ has called you a friend, you will always have him as a friend and with him, a family of eternal friends bought with blood, our favorite toy companions for each year, and we will never have to say goodbye.