WALL-E - Printable Version
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WALL-E - DeanZF - 02-28-2011
I just watched a charming little animated romantic comedy called WALL-E, a Disney/Pixar flick. It was somewhere between a guy flick and a chick flick. All kinds of gadgetry and inventive thinking about how a thinking and sensitive robot would react to its environment. All kinds of interactions between WALL-E as "he" became totally infatuated with a very aloof "she" bot that had come to explore his space for biological life.
The message that I took away from the movie is actually very evangelical, and straight out of the Master's plan for evangelism: Little WALL-E managed to change individual lives simply by being who/what "he" was. He physically caused some to see beyond their shell and to observe not only the world around them, but also each other and their situations. Getting our eyes away from our personal spaces and simply acknowledging the presence, pleasures, and pains in another's life.
Jesus was not an evangelist, oddly. Think about how the twelve were gathered, one at a time by personal invitation or exposure to Him. Translated, He made friends and affected His friends' lives, one at a time. He did most of that not by DOing, but rather by BEing.
I've been enormously impressed of late by this technique of evangelism. A Free Baptist pastor introduced me to the concept about 30 years ago with a little, skinny yellow book on how the Master dealt with evangelism. I don't think this was Coleman's book, but one with a similar title, something like "The Master's Plan for Evangelizing".
The thrust of the book was pretty much learn how to BE. BE salt. BE light. BE Jesus to those around you. BE the sort of Christian that makes people want what you have and want to be as you are. That included happy, calm, responsive, ready with good answers for why you're different.
WALL-E and his friend EVE changed bots' existence by giving them a new focus and purpose (EVE's word would have been "di-rec-tive") and people's lives by literally removing blinders. Tenderly, sometimes accidentally, but the blinders came off and seeing, their lives were changed.
Good lessons for all of us. Both of my thumbs are UP.