Theatrical Theology | Inside Out 2 | Attack of the Anxiety Clones
It's a trap. Really. Anxiety is a trap that we can escape from with Christ.
[SPOILER ALERT. C’MON BRO. DON’T ACT LIKE I DIDN’T WARN YOU]
Anxiety is the buzzword of our generation.
Everyone waves the anxiety flag. Diagnosed. Undiagnosed. Self-diagnosed. While 40% of young adults say they often feel optimistic about the future, the same percentage say they often feel anxious about important decisions, uncertain about the future, and afraid to fail. The pressure to be successful (36%) and accomplish goals (34%) hangs a cloud over our heads where every conversation is weighty and heavy.
Is anxiety real? Yes. Absolutely. I felt anxious the other day. Otherwise, we should be able to squash it like a roach invading our home and get on with our lives.
However, anxiety is not an impenetrable fortress that requires specialized weaponry and Tom Cruise-esque acrobatics to defeat.
Inside Out 2 clues us in to how we treat anxiety. The Bible arms us to stand victorious against the attack of the anxiety clones.
2015’s Inside Out followed anthropomorphic emotions running a control room inside 11-year-old Riley’s head. With Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust running the show, the emotions go on a journey as Riley and her family move from Minnesota to San Francisco. Riley and her leading emotion, Joy, learn that it is okay to experience sadness.
Inside Out 2 expands the world and the emotions as a teenage Riley experiences puberty in conjunction with the tragic news of her friends not moving onto her new school with her. Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy, and Boredom join the crew in the control room. Anxiety pushes the original five out because “she’s what Riley needs right now.” While trying to impress her potential new friends and coach at a hockey camp, Riley deals with acting out of an anxiety mindset, even experiencing an anxiety attack at the end.
The movie ends with all the emotions realizing that we cannot only choose the best parts of ourself to define who we are, but our sense of self comes from the compilation of our beliefs and experiences.
For the Christian, our sense of self does not only derive from these but also with the understanding that we are made in the Image of God. We are worth more than the plants, animals, and inanimate objects because God deemed us better. These were “good,” but He called us “very good.”
The antagonist of the film is Anxiety. She overwhelms Riley, acting out of her usual self because she wants to succeed at all costs. Anxiety even tells Joy that Riley may never need her again.
Anxiety controls the new members, enlisting them to help her stay in charge while also warping her actions. She multiplies herself like the Clone Army in Star Wars’ Attack of the Clones. No one can overrule her. Even when she goes into an attack, she is moving so fast that no one can remove her from the control panel.
This is a great depiction of how we can enable anxiety to control our actions. It multiplies, transforming us into something that we should not be.
The problem is that we can often treat anxiety like it is an innate part of us. Inescapable. An emotion we should expect to be present throughout the rest of our lives. Just as you can be a joyful person, you can also be an anxious person. While Inside Out 2 provides a seat for Anxiety at the table of our character, the Bible argues against it.
Here are three truths about anxiety rooted in Scripture, not our emotions.
God Did Not Create Us To Be Anxious.
God did not create us to worry. He set Adam and Eve in the Garden with everything they needed. They did not want. The issue was that they thought the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil had something that they were missing. Part of them worried that they fell short in God’s design, so they ate.
Psalm 23 states that God, as the Good Shepherd, makes us lie down in green pastures. We eat at the table in the presence of our enemies. This would be a place to worry, but the Psalmist pictures that we do not. In Revelation 20-22, we see multitudes of people resting in the New Heavens and New Earth. In the presence of God, there is fullness of joy. No one wants anything. They are filled with the fulness of joy. Anxiety is nowhere to be seen.
Anxiety is not part of the Imago Dei. It is a result of sin because it is an absence of trust. While Inside Out 2 shows anxiety as a necessary emotion at the beginning of puberty, this is not the truth. No single gene 🧬 that has been studied connects directly anxiety or depression. It is not required.
Anxiety shouldn’t have its comfy chair in our hearts, taking turns with joy at the steering wheel of our lives. God is joy everlasting. He is never anxious, so we should not expect anxiety to be an essential emotion. He didn’t create us to be anxious. He created us to have a relationship with Him in eternal rest and worship.
Anxiety is the Absence of Trust, Not the Presence of Something True to Us.
Sin is often described as the absence of God. This is how evil was not committed by God, even though it is present. In the same line of thinking, anxiety is not its own being. It is the absence of trust. We experience anxiety when we declare reality is finalized before it is even close to coming. If we turn down a job, we declare we are never going to get another chance. If we are dumped by a boyfriend or girlfriend, we cry, thinking there will never be another person like them.
Even in Christ, we mess up and sin, and our hearts speak against us, saying that we have failed and Jesus won’t take us back.
We worry that people won’t like us, that our move was a mistake, or that we will never fulfill what God made us for.
God did not impart anxiety in our hearts as a core characteristic, but God uses anxiety to test us and drive us to depend on Him.
God sovereignly rules over all things, but He also offers free will under the blanket of His reign. He allows us to act and make decisions that may or may not align with His character. This is how sin came into the world. He did not force Adam and Eve’s hand, but He also was not caught off guard by their actions.
The same goes for anxiety. Saul is a tragic character entrapped by decisions made in anxiety. Saul acted rashly because he gave into his anxiety over trusting in the Lord.
Read 1 Kings. Over and over again, he is his own worst enemy. He impatiently gave an improper sacrifice, enlisted a witch to conjure the spirit of the prophet Samuel, and tried to kill the future king and his own son multiple times. This wasn’t simply because Saul was an anxious person. He had trusted the Lord before, ruling in His approval.
But once trust fled from his heart, he fell into the traps of his anxiety.
Riley makes dumb decisions in the movie because she does not trust that she can make friends without doing certain things: abandoning her friends, lying about her favorite band, sneaking into the coach’s office to read her notes, and selfishly not sharing the hockey puck on the ice.
We must realize that anxiety is not the presence of something true to ourselves, but it is the absence of something greater than ourselves. We should trust the Lord with everything we have (Prov. 3:5-6).
This is why God clearly commands us to not be anxious. God cannot command us to not do something that is essential to our being.
Philippians 4:6-7: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Joy is Our Strength. Anxiety is Our Weakness.
The end of the movie points to something true: Joy is our strength and anxiety is our weakness. Joy lifts us up. Anxiety tears us down.
After Anxiety has finally released the controls, particles begin to float from Joy to the console. Sadness states, “Joy. Riley wants you.” Joy slowly walks up before moving across the board. Riley finally feels joy again after days filled with anxiety. She lifts up, enjoys hockey, and reunites with her friends.
While Inside Out 2 is not coming from a Biblical worldview, it does shadow the biblical truth. Joy is what we need. Joy is steadfast. It is greater than temporary happiness.
Can we be happy all the time? No. This was the point of the first movie. But it does say that we need joy in our lives.
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). Joy keeps us up in suffering (James 2:1-4). The joy of the Lord is our strength (Neh. 8:10). Joy is everlasting delight in the truth that Jesus loves us, died for us, and now lives again for us. Joy-filled lives give us the opportunity to glorify God in all we do: work, play, families, friendships.
Anxiety robs us of this joy. It tells us that we aren’t good enough and that we need to be something other than ourselves. Joy tells us that we aren’t good enough, but that Jesus came to be something greater and that we can have joy in Him.
Reject anxiety. Humble yourselves enough to give God your anxiety. You can’t deal with it alone.
1 Peter 5:6-7: Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.
Anxiety will attack you, overwhelming your senses and rationality to believe lies. Instead, call on someone greater than it and ask God to give you the joy you need. He cares for you.
Inside Out 2 shows the attack of the anxiety clones and that we should just put it in a comfy corner in our minds. Jesus shows us that anxiety can be crushed like the serpent’s head, and that no matter how many clones come after us, the Master of our minds and hearts will win the day in the end, and we can live in that victory.