Wall- E (week 1)

Wall-E Week #1 Genesis 2: 15-25 15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will certainly die." 18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." 19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought him or her to the man to see what he would name him or her; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam [f] no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs [g] and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib [h] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man." 24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Mixer: 1.) What is your name and one thing that not many people know about you. (this is some sort of trivia fact like “I’ve never been out of the country” or even a quirky habit.) Going Deeper: 1.) The Genesis story above has obvious allusions in the film. What are some that you saw? (The girl robot is named Eve, they are the only two “people” on earth”, Eve is called “the mother of the living” in Christian tradition and the robot Eve puts the life in her “womb”. This sort of thing. 2.) Does anyone know what, Anthropomorphism means? (ask and see) It is the “attribution of human motivation, characteristics, or behavior to inanimate objects, animals, or natural phenomena.” The filmmakers have made WallE a sympathetic character, a character for which we feel pathos. We relate to him. Why is that? (They’ve made him a creature searching for connection and love. This is at the essence of what t means to be human. I think this is why we long for him to find what he is searching for.) What is Wall-E searching for? (bigger than trash – his “prime directive” is love – connection. Symbolized by his desire to hold hands with Eve.)

© Dixon Kinser 2009

3.) I think the filmmakers are asking the audience to consider what it means to be a human being (an important question for the times we live in). Would you agree that the makers of Wall-E think there is more to being a person what just having flesh and bone? Explain your answer. Is there something to the fact that the filmmakers feature a robot seeking out connection and companionship? Does ask the question about what it means to be human in a more provocative way?

4.) Consider the Genesis text, particularly the part identified as verse 2:18. What do you think God means when (if I can be faithfully provocative here) they say, “It is not good for the Man (the Adam) to be alone”? Or to put it another way, why would God say this? (I think it is integral to our humanity that we are created in the image of God. This means that we are made to image God in the creation – to be as God is and do as God does. Our God, the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob is community. Father, Son, Holy Spirit as it is later parsed out. Three distinct persons yet all one. The Orthodox Church coined a term to describe this interreationality of God, the perichoresis. The term means the dancing, flow of the three figures of the “God head” - big theology word for Trinity – in and out of and in rhythm with the others. It’s a cool notion that the relationships among the community that is God are kind of like a dance. Any one needs the other two. I think this is some of why it’s not good for Adam to be alone. Everything God has done has been “good” so far in the Genesis story but this isn’t. I think that’s because the aloneness of Adam is incomplete. He can’t image the God who made him by himself – he has to have “some one to love” to rightly image the Creator in the Creation. This is also why Wall-E’s quest is so deeply theological. In him we see our own desire to connect with and image God.

5.) Consider the vision of earth at the beginning of the movie. Is it too far fetched to believe that the earth could actually end up like this because of our bad habits? Who should be responsible for cleaning it up? If we know our current habits will lead to this why is it so hard to stop? Pray an ask God to give us courage to act upon the things we learned this morning. © Dixon Kinser 2009

© Dixon Kinser 2009