The Incredibles

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of power, of love, and of self-discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7 NIV)

It’s been a wet week in Atlanta. Almost every day I drive by the neighborhood pool and tennis courts. Even when the pool has been open this week, the lifeguard has been a solitary figure – getting paid to listen to the radio. The cloudy skies and uncommonly cool air have not motivated folks to seek out water.

Sadly, this wet week included Monday – the Memorial Day holiday, and the first Monday of “no school” for my kids. At mid-morning their capacity for creative play hit a lull. I’m not proud to admit it, but I did what many please-let-me-rest parents do. I put in a movie. But it wasn’t just for my kids. I love this movie. This movie looks like it was made for the kiddies, but it wasn’t. Sure, kids love it, but grown ups have good reason to love it too. I’m talking about The Incredibles.

The Incredibles is about a family of super heroes living in a kind of exile. Public opinion has taken a peculiar turn, and “supers” are no longer esteemed and loved. Their exploits on behalf of the common good are no longer regarded as honorable. They are considered to be a nuisance, a threat to the public welfare. “Supers” are forced to go underground, to assume “normal” lives and conceal their powers.

Among these many exiled “supers” is a family of five, the Parr family. We don’t learn until late in the movie of the baby’s special gift or power, but the rest of the family can’t contain themselves, try as they might. Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible) is a hulking man of enormous physical strength. His wife Helen (Elastigirl) can stretch and contort to almost any shape. Their daughter Violet makes herself invisible and radiates force fields at will. The middle child is Dash who, true to his name, moves with lightning speed.

I don’t want to spiritualize The Incredibles by finding some “hidden” meaning where none exists. Still, while there may be no theology to speak of in the movie, there is gospel – good news. And the good news in this movie is about power and identity; themes shared in common with our scriptures and with our faith. The Parrs are a family trying hard to conceal who they are. They possess power that they won’t use. But as long as they are living this way, their lives are constricted and flat. It isn't until the Parrs begin using their powers in a large and worthy cause that they become their truest selves.

The picture that is lodged in my mind is the image of Bob Parr – Mr. Incredible – driving home from work. His massive frame is shoved into a tiny little car, his body wrapped around the steering wheel. That image of Bob Parr bulging in the confines of his little car has come to reflect for me the way many of us live our life in Christ. We don’t live with a sense of power. There are moments, even if fleeting, when we sense that the life we’re living isn’t the abundant life Jesus came to give us. Our lives seem constricted, ordinary and routine. We too move about shoved into tiny boxes of day to day just-getting-by patterns of life.

Bob Parr, hiding in his cubicle and his little car, was a frustrated, disengaged, bored man. The good news, the gospel, comes to him as an invitation to once again be Mr. Incredible. The outfit he used to wear has been hidden away, hung like an artifact in a museum. But a moment comes when he clothes himself in the outfit of a “super.” He is re-born.

Paul reminded his protégé Timothy that God has not given us a spirit of fear or timidity, “but of power, of love and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7 ). His words sound like a call or challenge to Timothy to embrace who God had called him to be, an invitation to his true self.

What would it mean for us live with power, love and self-discipline? What would it mean for us to open the closet where our truest self had been safely tucked away, and become the people God has called us to be?