Inside Out 2

A dialog review with my sixteen-year-old daughter.

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

It’s June 26, and I’ve been away for a couple of weeks. My last post was, I think, June 7th. Right after that, I went on a little backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail in the Shenandoah National Park with a good friend of mine. As you might expect, it was soul-nourishing and physically challenging.

But it’s good to be back. Thank you for being patient while I was away.

In my last post, I took a Reader Poll to see what you all value most in this space—how I can better serve you through my writing as we journey through this culture together. Thank you for taking the poll! Here are the top two results:

• Culture and Faith posts - 34%

• Well-researched posts - 34%

Introducing The Arts & Culture Series

Over the next several weeks, I will post several articles about the arts and culture. I have four articles written, with a few more sketched. These articles are based on research I did for my book The Beauty Chasers. They will dig into the current state of the arts and entertainment in our culture, how beauty makes us better humans, and the need for Christians to advocate for artists and lead the cultural renewal for beauty, goodness, and truth. Now, even as I read this, I’m thinking, “Wow, Tim, that’s a tall order. But we can do it.”

Let me say a word about what we're doing here, both as a refresher for my long-time readers and listeners and as a brief summary of the layout of this newsletter for my new subscribers.

My goal for this Substack is to provide writing that inspires, equips, and guides you, my readers, to live a faithful Christian life in the secular world. I aim to serve this community through my writing, research, and teaching in theology, culture, and the arts. I aim to do this by cultivating this community and pouring into you all as we spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

We need a community of readers and supporters for thoughtful evangelical writing and scholarship to flourish. This series is the by-product of hundreds of hours of deep research. I’d be honored if you’d consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber.

Because of wonderful readers like you, this space can continue to thrive and grow. My ultimate goal is to make my newsletter the primary hub for my writing ministry, allowing me to equip and disciple through the written and spoken word.

So, if this resonates with you, would you consider supporting my writing ministry? We’re opening up the community for a limited time with our “The Big Forever Sale.” Right now, you can lock in your subscription for life at a 30% discount. We don’t open up the community like this often—maybe twice a year—but when we do, you benefit. The offer ends on July 16, 2024. Your support helps us keep this space a thriving resource for Christian spiritual devotion.

Ok, let’s get to it.

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Inside Out 2: A dialog review with my sixteen-year-old daughter.

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Earlier this week, it was reported that Inside Out 2 overtook Dune 2 for the biggest box office hit of 2024 ($724 million globally). It’s a smash hit and the best release ever for an animated film.

The first film, Inside Out, debuted in 2015. My family had just returned from living in England for two years, and my oldest daughter, Lyric, was nearly 8. She turns seventeen in two months. When she returned from watching the film, she brimmed with thoughts and wanted me to go see it so we could have a proper chat about it.

So, I took my youngest daughter, Zion (age 11), to see it with a friend last Thursday. On the way home from the theater, Zion laughed at me, saying, “Dad, I saw you taking notes about the movie while you were watching it.”

Guilty!

When I returned home, Lyric and I had a two-hour conversation about the long-awaited sequel. We discussed what struck us as lacking in the movie or where the philosophy behind it fell short. Before I get into the shortcomings, I must admit the cuteness of the movie. And Lyric agreed. It hearkens to a time when Pixar was at the top of its game.

But for all its cuteness and zany fun, it thrusts young viewers into the heaviness of the modern identity crisis, leaving them with an oversimplified view of their emotions and what it means to be a person.

The Modern View of Emotions

One of Lyric’s first comments was, “Well, it definitely takes the modern view of emotions.” What she meant was how central emotions are in everyday life. She observed how many people are now hyper-aware of emotions—when their emotions are hurt or ignored—and how they lead people’s thinking more so than reason.

Lyric’s intuition on this is spot on. In Abigail Shrier’s new book, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, she questions the therapeutic approach to, well, everything—parenting, education, pediatrics—and challenges parents to resist the cultural push to diagnose their children to death. Maybe our society’s hyper-focus on mental health needs challenged, especially by the Church.

Lyric picked up on this hyper-focus. She also sees how it affects teens, both her age and younger.

She observed how the main protagonist, Riley, who is now 13 and has just entered puberty, must deal with all new, more “grown-up” emotions: Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui.¹ Anxiety. Lyric reminded me that when she was 13, she didn’t even know what anxiety was, let alone a panic attack.

Late in the movie, Riley experiences a panic attack. It’s an intense scene as Riley’s playing hockey but gets placed in the penalty box. As she sits alone, her emotions overtake her. She grabs her left shoulder and can barely breathe.

Inside her brain, all of her other emotions are overrun by Anxiety, including Joy, who wrestles with her own new irrelevance in Riley’s life. It is true that anxiety can rob us of joy. Anxiety removes our gaze from the here and now, creating worry for what will come. In the film, Anxiety incessantly plans for every possible scenario in the future, which is impossible.

It’s been said that keeping joy in our lives becomes more difficult as we age. Is this true? If so, why? And does it apply to the Christian life? I wrote extensively about joy in my doctoral research and my book, The Beauty Chasers. I want to include a snippet here and encourage you to consider whether or not the Christian view of Joy connects more to emotions or God’s love—things transcendent and brimming with life:

When we sense that mysterious vitality in the world we inhabit, we become hunters for its source. Joy reaches beyond mere feeling and reminds us that something deep within us resonates with our experiences of beauty in this world. Joy speaks of the life within life. It awakens our desire to discover the place from which all the beauty comes.

Joy is the “exhilarating moment when one is drawn out of oneself by the lure of something grander, higher, and elusive.”² When we reach beyond pleasure, we discover the prismed world of joy. It’s a forgetful world, one where the worry of “self ” falls away, replaced by the beauty of presence. It is the resounding moment of life being lived.

Joy shakes our hearts and our hands as we steady the camera or phone in order to capture the first steps of our child, the first kiss of wedded lovers, the final moment of a graduation. Joy looks like an elegant collection of fine friends gathered in one place. Joy calls through the resounding landscape. You and I dip into joy’s world, and we feel strangely at home.³

So, you see, when I watch the Inside Out movies, I’m not just rooting for Joy the entire time, but I’m waiting for her to reveal her true identity. That she’s not just an emotion similar to happiness. That she comes from another place entirely. That she’s the movement and vitality of all life—that she comes from God.

I know, I know. I’m an idealist and dreamer, what can I say.

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The Big Forever Sale

Would you consider supporting my writing ministry? We’re opening up the community for a limited time with our “The Big Forever Sale.” We don’t open things like this often, but when we do, you benefit. Lock in your subscription for life. The offer ends on July 9, 2024. Your support helps us keep this space a thriving resource for Christian spiritual devotion.

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Me and my little philosopher, Lyric, chilling at The Salty Dog

The Missing Spiritual Element of Humanity

Lyric and I agreed that the movie gives a narrow view of what it means to be a person. The movie caricatures the imagination, framing it as a place for fun, whimsy, silliness, and creativity.

But the reality is that the imagination works with our intellects to give meaning to everything in our lives. The brain—or control center—is far more complex than a table of buttons governed by emotions with minds of their own. Our imaginations process reality and help govern our emotions.

The movie misses a golden opportunity to tell the story of the self as a created marvel. I know this is wishful thinking, but by omitting the spiritual element of the self, Pixar's writers present young people with a partial sketch of what a person consists of.

You don’t have to believe in the Christian God of the Bible to know that human beings are more than base emotions. Thriving as a human does not equal how well we manage our emotions. C.S. Lewis understood that the head and the heart must work in concert, governed by something higher than mere human will and emotional whim.

The film communicates to young and old alike that you are the sum of your good and bad experiences, and life is how you navigate those memories. There is no character who represents the spiritual side of the self. Along with the spiritual self missing, there was zero dialog about virtue and how striving for the Good in how we respond and act to circumstances in our lives shapes and matures our emotions.

This spiritual omission jumped out to Lyric right away. Is it that big of a deal? Yes, it is.

For the last several weeks, I’ve been returning to my former studies on the spiritual disciplines and what the Apostle Paul meant when he compared the Christian life to athletic training. The pursuit of godliness includes training your mind. In our culture of permissiveness, it’s en vogue to brush entertainment aside as harmless. But do we believe that the entertainment we consume has little to no impact on our hearts and minds?

It’s scientifically proven that the intentional practice of anything, especially in the young, changes the way we think and even changes the physical aspects of the brain. You can become an expert at almost anything with enough repetition and purposeful training. People don’t realize that when it comes to what our imaginations consume, each time we sit in front of a television, phone, or movie screen, we engage in the purposeful practice of entertainment consumption.

Our cultural education matters.

In Conclusion

Is it wrong to go watch Inside Out 2? I would not say it is wrong, per se. But I would say to any Christian parent to use the opportunity to talk about emotions: what they are, why God created them, how they’re shaped, what should govern them, how they interact with our imaginations, and the reality of the spiritual life.

I’d also say that it’s okay if your child does not know what anxiety or panic attacks are. It’s not that you keep it a secret; it’s that you become the antidote through affirmation, engaging play, and inspiring their imagination.

I think Pixar has done some great work in the past. To me, their magnum opus is UP. With the last two sequels, this one and The Incredibles 2, I felt like Pixar was trying to force the issue with all the psychological aspects of growing up and maturing. In UP, the movie itself was an odyssey of growing up—from being afraid and child-ish to being brave and weathered.

I’m going to do an experiment over the next couple of weeks. I’m going to re-watch UP with the family and get their reactions and comparisons to Inside Out 2. I’ll report back with my findings.

My gut tells me the floating balloon house will illicit applause, captivate imaginations, and win the prize. We shall see.

In the meantime, remember, adventure is out there—not in your brain. {Sorry, I couldn’t resist}

Notes for the really curious.

1. Ennui: a feeling of being bored and mentally tired caused by having nothing interesting or exciting to do: “Ennui,” June 12, 2024, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/ennui.

2. Wesley A Kort, C.S. Lewis Then and Now (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 124.

3. Willard, Timothy. The Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine (pp. 209-210). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.