Because I live under a rock, I was completely unaware of any controversy when I saw the new Disney movie Beauty and the Beast. This post isn’t about that. All the drama over any suggestion of cross-dressing or homosexuality disguises a far more powerful message. It’s the message of immobility, intractability.
The Beast and his household are cursed because of his vane cruelty. He must learn to love and be loved before the final petal falls from the rose. If he doesn’t change, everyone will be stuck in their enchanted forms forever.
In the recent release, the household members find it harder and harder to resist their inanimate selves. The wardrobe finds it more difficult to stay awake. The clock finds it harder to keep from chiming. When the final petal drops, the life goes out of them. Without hope of being revived, what difference is there between their sleep and death?
This is the image that stuck with me from the movie. Because this is where the movie touches on something real and deep. We all have an inanimate self, a self that is essentially dead. The Bible puts it this way, “Once you were dead, doomed forever because of your many sins” (Ephesians 2:1).
If we don’t change, our status won’t change. Our future won’t change. We will be doomed forever. Eventually the dead self will become our whole self.
Maybe you don’t agree with me. You think, “Ok, I make mistakes, I mess up sometimes, but I’m a pretty good person. Surely these little things don’t really matter.” My response is this: A little yeast soon works its way through the whole batch of dough (Galatians 5:9). A tiny seed becomes a mighty plant. Whatever seeds we allow to grow within us eventually are big enough for a harvest (Galatians 6:7). And what will we harvest?
When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, your lives will produce these evil results: sexual immorality, impure thoughts, eagerness for lustful pleasure, idolatry, participation in demonic activities, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, divisions, the feeling that everyone is wrong except those in your own little group, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other kinds of sin.
Galatians 5:19-21
You might start at the beginning of the list and say, None of these describe me. But how many of us can continue to say that all the way to the end of the list? “Other kinds of sin” pretty much covers it all and leaves me without excuse.
We can refuse to change until eventually we cannot change. Or we can throw off that old nature, the sin that so easily trips us up, and take a chance on something new, a new life, a new beginning. The thing is, we aren’t going to live happily ever after if we never begin to live in the first place.
But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so very much, that even while we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead.
Ephesians 2:4-5
There is already Someone who loves us. Someone who sees past the beast inside of us. When we fall in love with that Someone, our future is changed. We are changed. The old, dead self is gone without a trace. We’re more ourselves than we ever were before, more alive than we ever were before. It’s beautiful.