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?One of my favorite movies of all time is the LEGO Movie. The whole movie is a story about a LEGO guy who doesn’t know where he fits in (which you would think would be easy for a LEGO). He wants to be creative, to think outside the box. But the prevailing wisdom of LEGOland is that there’s one right way to build. So Lord Business, the lord of LEGO works hard to keep our little LEGO guy in line.
It’s a fun critique of what LEGO has turned into – rather than buying a giant bag of bricks and building whatever you can imagine, you buy a kit to build a pirate ship or the Millennium Falcon or whatever, and you follow a specific set of instructions and hopefully don’t have any parts left over.
The movie is a smart, fun take on LEGO as a toy. But the really cool thing in the film is that we go to the ‘Real World’ and learn that our little LEGO main character is a real boy who loves LEGO, and Lord Business is actually his dad, who has built a huge LEGO city and doesn’t let his son play with it.
The whole story becomes this multi-layered metaphor about parents and children, passing on our passions to the next generation and how legalism can get in the way of love.
Not bad for a toy movie.
At the heart of it all is this question that’s sort of about LEGO and sort of about life: what story do you believe? Do you believe the one where there’s one right way, and you have to follow the rules or you’re lost? Or do you believe in love, creativity and beauty?
Technically, both are ‘correct’ ways to play with LEGO. And we know lots of people who follow both philosophies in life. The LEGO Movie has a clear position. But it leaves it up to us to choose: which story are we going to live out?
I love this idea of choosing the story we’re going to live. Today, we’re going to explore a couple of different stories about what Church is and what our role in it is. And like the LEGO Movie, we’re going to have to choose one of these stories to live out.
