My kids love the Disney movie “Moana.” Here’s my summary of the movie: Mother goddess Te Fiti’s heart is stolen causing the earth to die until Moana can find the heart and restore it. Te Fiti is guarded by Te Kā, a fierce monster of earth and fire. Moana must outsmart the monster to restore the mother goddess and save the day.
There’s a scene at the end of the movie where Moana finally realizes that Te Kā is a transfigured Te Fiti — the mother goddess became a monster when her heart was stolen. As Moana restores the heart to Te Kā to change her back into Te Fiti, she sings, “I know your name. They have stolen the heart from inside you. But this does not define you. This is not who you are. You know who you are.”
My kids listen to the soundtrack to Moana on repeat. So, I pretty much have all the songs memorized, including the one I mentioned above. I have often thought about how the message of that song resonates with Christian theology, especially with James 1:19-27. There are two well-known sections in this passage, the first of which is verses 23-24: “For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.”
I used to wrongly think that James was saying something along the lines of: “Just look at the requirements of God’s Law (i.e., the mirror) and see how dirty you appear in comparison! Do better!” I now think that James is not saying anything like that! In verse 25, when James talks about “the perfect law, the law of liberty” (i.e., the mirror), I don’t think he’s referring to the Law of Moses. I think he’s referring to the Law of Christ or the gospel. In other words, the gospel is like a mirror that we look into and see our own reflection. Let me explain.
In verse 19, James says to “rid yourselves of all sordidness.” That verb “rid yourselves” carries with it a sense of “taking off clothing.” I think James is developing a beautiful metaphor here that says something like: “Take off your old clothes, your clothes of sinfulness. That’s not who you are anymore. Look in the mirror. Can’t you see the image of Jesus reflecting back at you? That’s who you truly are. Don’t forget it.”
I think James has a theology that views Jesus as the truest version of humanity. Jesus, in a moral and spiritual sense, is who each of us is meant to be. The journey of Christian discipleship is one of becoming more like Jesus. As a result of following Jesus, the Holy Spirit helps us to do the things that Jesus does or, as James puts it in the other well-known section in this passage, “to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (v. 27). Call it transformation. Call it sanctification. Following Jesus involves change.
It’s a well-known reality that people resist change. Change often means losing control and introducing lots of uncertainty. It often requires extra work and can create doubt about our ability to do that work. We prefer control and certainty. We prefer the familiar path of least resistance. It’s no wonder why people don’t like change. Yet change is exactly what we are called to do as Christians. That’s not a coincidence.
We are called to do the thing that we least like doing. It’s a hard sell to convince people to change! We can try our best to give theological or biblical arguments about why change is necessary. We can give compelling reasons to our congregations about why our churches might die if they don’t embrace change. I suspect those lines of reasoning will fall short, however, because our fear of change isn’t based in logic; it’s based in deep-seated, emotional insecurities.
At the end of the day, we will never know the benefits of change until we do it. This is what Richard Rohr calls “experiential knowledge.” There are some things in life we cannot learn except to experience them ourselves. Helping people in the church to embrace change is not about formulating a good argument; it’s about inviting them into an experience. And the way we talk about that experience must be about addressing those deep-seated, emotional insecurities that cause our aversion to change in the first place.
For me, that means reminding people, as Moana and James tell us, about who they truly are. It is about reminding people of their baptismal identities — that they are God’s beloved children. It is about reminding people that God has given us the power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to live out God’s calling for us. It is about reminding people that, though God expects us to live a certain way, God’s love for us is not conditioned on our actions. It is about reminding people that God has already “given us everything needed for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). All of this together means that when we let go of our lives as they currently exist to embrace a future yet unknown, we will discover that God is holding us and caring for us. Whatever we fear we will lose by letting go (control, security, certainty), God will give to us in greater abundance from God’s own self. When we try to help people to embrace change, we must show them the person of Jesus, not a proposition.
When you look into the mirror of the gospel and you see the image of Jesus reflecting back at you, embrace that image. It’s who you were meant to be. It’s who you are becoming. It’s who you are.
