The Incredibles – Strangers And Aliens

Theme: We were made for more than this
Bible refs: Hebrews 11 vv 13-16; 1 Peter 2 vv 10-12
Similar clips: Contact – Restless Hearts (to be posted soon)
Location of clip: 11 mins and 5 secs to 16 mins and 26 secs

Film Description:

Mr Incredible and Elastigirl are superheroes. However, not long after they get married their career is outlawed due to the spiralling number of lawsuits taken out against superheroes that rescue the wrong people. So they become Mr and Mrs Bob Parr, married with kids, living in suburbia.
This is not easy for either of them, but especially for Bob. He hates his job and feels hemmed in by his boss, his tiny car and his inability to what he was originally designed to do.

Clip description:

Bob sits in his tiny office, amongst a ghetto of identical tiny offices, a giant of a man in a little cubicle. He now works for an insurance company and is supposed to do all he can to make a profit for them. But Bob keeps breaking the rules – he keeps helping the clients. When one helpless old lady comes to visit he whispers a solution to her. When his diminutive boss comes around he gets another roasting. One of these days he’s going to punch that guy through the wall.
He later drives him in his matchbox car, stewing in his own froth and anger as he dawdles through the mother of all traffic jams. When he gets home he slips on   skateboard and in a fit of rage picks up the entire car. He is about to hurl it into next door’s garden when he spies next door’s kid watching him. He smiles sheepishly, gently puts the car down and sneaks away.

Thoughts:

Ever felt like you don’t fit? Ever been frustrated because people don’t get you? They don’t understand who you,  are or what’s going on inside? We’re all unique and that makes it difficult anyway for even your nearest and dearest to really understand you, but becoming a Christian doesn’t help. As far as the wider world is concerned – we’re weird. As hard as we try to communicate that we’re just normal people, it has to be said that when we get together in church – we’re weird. We don’t operate like non-Christians. Fitting in has always been hard for me, I often feel like a fish out of water, especially with people I only know on a surface level.
Are you ever frustrated because you want to do things you can’t? Do you ever sense there is more inside of you – untapped potential that God has placed within you, which is wrestling to burst out? Bob was made for more than the office, he was trying to live with that tension and it was tearing him apart. The moment we turn to Jesus we glimpse another world, another way of living that is far superior to what we’re stuck with. It’s a tension we’re all stuck with, and maybe that frustration is a good thing, because it stops us being complacent. We want more than this. We were made for something else.

Questions:

1. I wonder if some of our strangeness is unnecessary, that as Christians we have adopted some unusual practises that are not really important to our faith. What do you think?
2. Do you have people who you really click with?
3. What has made those relationships grow?
4. Men often find it harder to be honest about their struggles. Do you think this is true?
5. Did the clip make you think about anything else?

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