What can Christians learn from one of the highest-grossing animated films of all time?
Turns out, quite an important lesson. Or at least I did.
I was shocked to hear that Pixar’s 2024 film, Inside Out 2, had earned such prestige. And then I watched the movie. Again and again. Granted, my daughter was sick, and it was the only thing she wanted to watch.
But watching Inside Out 2 on repeat helped me see an incredibly important Christian lesson at its core, which is perhaps the real reason for the movie’s popularity and success.
Something struck me each time we watched the movie, and it prompted me to think more and more about the virtue of humility and its necessity in my life.
The movie, in a nutshell, is about 13-year-old Riley and her emotions. Joy has been the dominant emotion for most of her life, carefully crafting Riley’s “sense of self” by discarding any and all bad memories contrary to Riley’s belief that she is a good person.
But this is all uprooted as Riley begins to experience new emotions like Anxiety and Envy. The movie is quite dramatic in portraying how, as we get older, we have less room for Joy as Anxiety takes more and more control of our lives.
In fact, Anxiety discards Riley’s “sense of self” and works to create a brand new one. The climax of the movie hits me in the gut every time. It comes when Riley’s new, distorted sense of self is finally created through Anxiety. Riley’s face drops as we finally hear her new sense of self: “I’m not good enough.”
We hear it over and over again: “I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough.”
That scene hit me so hard because it is heartbreaking to think about how rampant anxiety is in our culture and world. Anxiety seems to take hold of people at younger and younger ages, and it is so sad to think about the lives and families hurt and destroyed by a false sense of self created by anxiety.
I also recognized how I can be tempted to hear that false sense of self in my own head. When focusing on and only seeing my failures and shortcomings, whether in the spiritual life, with my family, or at work, I can easily tell myself: “I’m not good enough.”
This is an area where the virtue of humility is so important. Thomas Aquinas explains that “humilitas est veritas” (humility is truth).
This means that—contrary to popular belief—humility is not thinking less of yourself, but is actually thinking properly about yourself. Humility is about seeing yourself as you really and truly are.
Easier said than done. The world, the flesh, and the devil have made it so hard to see ourselves as we really are, which is to see ourselves as God sees us. Real humility isn’t an attempt to humble ourselves by focusing on our shortcomings; rather, it is the virtue (and the grace) by which we can see the truth about ourselves, which is to see ourselves as God sees us.
The fact is, who we truly are can only be seen through the light of Christ.
Who we are is not about what we do, not about what we own, and not about what we accomplish. Who we are is really about whose we are.
As long as I see myself through the lens of what I do, no matter how hard I try, I will always have that false sense of self that says: “I’m not good enough.” That is why we need humility, real humility that sees the truth about ourselves. And the truth is that Jesus loved me enough to die for me. The truth is that I am first and foremost and always a child of God.
That is the only true “sense of self,” and that is the powerful lesson that Christians can find in Inside Out 2.
It is summed up well in the words of Pope St. John Paul II:
“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.”