Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius
July 12, 2015
Spiritual Ponderings
Faith & Film: The Lego Movie

One of the images that I use when talking about the existence of God starts off with a bucket of Lego pieces. I then ask the congregation/audience what they think will happen if I would dump them on the floor. The answer I always get is “a pile of Lego pieces on the ground. I normally follow that up with the question: “Why won’t I get the picture that is on the outside of the bucket (normally a spaceship or a house, etc.)?” The normal response to that question basically comes down to the fact that Lego bricks need someone with an intelligence to put them together in order form them to form something. In much the same way I believe the universe with all its atoms, protons, etc, needed an intelligent creature to create it and put it together. The world is intricate for there not to be a grand designer.

I can almost use the Lego Movie as a similar example. The movie in my opinion is an amazing piece of writing and storytelling that one cannot fall in love with it and see the many spiritual insights coming forth from it.

The overarching insight into the movie is that we are all special in our own way and we do ourselves harm when all we do is try to fit in. St. Irenaeus of Lyon proudly proclaimed that “The glory of God was a human person fully alive.” Emmet (the main character) discovers this important truth because the more he believes that he is special the more special he becomes. A Church celebrates this type of diversity. All one has to do look at the wide variety of people who make up the Communion of Saints. St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thomas Aquinas probably had very little in common except of their Catholic faith (and even that they expressed in amazingly different ways) but yet the Church holds both of them up for role models.

In many way the villain, Lord Business, is like the Pharisees and Scribes in the Scriptures because they try to keep order by trying to make everything the same. All their many rules and regulations are not meant to glorify God but to keep order in their lives.

As the movie progresses we see that all that is going on in Lego land is actually taken place in a young boy’s imagination. The young boy has been playing with his father (the man upstairs) Lego displays. His father first looks at the boy’s imagination as bringing chaos to his pristine Lego lands. Eventually though he begins to realize that his son’s imagination is a real gift that needs to be nurtured and supported and torn down.

I have read in many books the importance of taking the time to recognize a child’s emotions. For example little Johnny becomes mad at his little sister for taking his toy. He therefore walks over to her grabs the toy and hits her. His sister goes running to mom or dad and Johnny ends up being grounded. Psychologists and family counselors suggest sitting down with Johnny for a few moments and helping him understand that becoming angry with his sister was not the problem but rather the problem was that he handled the situation wrong by hitting his sister. Experts say that if you do not take the time to validate a child’s emotion they can grow up not trusting their emotions and this can lead to many other emotional and psychological problems. The dad bounds with his son in a way that he could never had imagined by taking the time to understand his son’s emotions.

The writers of the movie also hit upon an important fact when the “Master Builders” and Emmet realize the one thing they are not good at is acting like a team. While we are all special we are still called by our God to be a part of his team (Church). As Catholics we are never saved alone. We are saved only as a part of a community.

Here are a few more insights that I gained from this movie. I also liked how the “Master Builders” were so different from one another – kind of like the saints. As Emmet and WyldStyle wanted to be “the special” we should want to be saints. Finally the next time we are upset with chaos in our world, let us realize that it beats the alternative of being frozen in place because God does not create sin or chaos but we do and God could remove sin and chaos from the world but He chooses to respect are free will knowing that it could result in bad things.