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Wednesday, June 18, 2014

The Gospel According to How to Train Your Dragon 2

[This post contains spoilers for How to Train Your Dragon 2: Proceed at your own risk!]



If you haven't seen this movie yet, you need to go see it, like yesterday. Seriously, I'll wait. Are you back yet? Okay, great. In case you've been living under a rock and haven't seen these seriously phenomenal movies, let me give a brief synopsis. In the first movie, Hiccup, a young Viking living on a remote island discovers that the dragons that his people thought were their enemies are actually amazing, loving creatures. Hiccup befriends a Night Fury, the most deadly of all known dragons, which he shot down. Through this friendship, Hiccup learns that the dragons are actually stealing sheep and attacking their island in order to feed their evil "alpha" type dragon that controls them. Unfortunately, the rest of the people can't get out of their mindset of killing dragons, and it takes Hiccup's dragon (named Toothless, ironically) defending the Vikings bent on attacking the main nest from the evil dragon for them to realize that dragons can be their friends. The first movie ends with their little island of Berk being overtaken by these pet dragons.

The second movie opens with Hiccup missing a dragon race because he's out exploring and trying to map the world. His girlfriend Astrid eventually comes out to find him, and they go flying together only to be shot down by a dragon hunter who brings back dragons to an evil man named Drago, who is building up a dragon army. Hiccup and Astrid return to Berk to warn Hiccup's father Stoick who is also the chief of the community. Stoick immediately locks down the village and tells the people to prepare for war. Hiccup is not the type of man his father is, and rides off to try to talk to this Drago character. He and Astrid, along with some of their friends, get intentionally caught by the dragon catcher in order to be brought back to Drago, which is successful. However, Hiccup is captured by another dragon trainer named Valka who turns out to be his long lost mother. She has been rescuing dragons and keeping them in an amazing sanctuary for the last twenty years, trying to protect them from Drago and others who would hurt them. Meanwhile Astrid and the others are brought to Drago, who learn of Berk's dragons and set off to find them. Drago attacks Valka's dragon sanctuary, and destroys the good dragon who has been caring for them. Somehow, Drago controls another alpha type dragon and he sets it to take control of Toothless. Hiccup's father has tracked them down, and in an effort to save Hiccup from a mind-controlled Toothless, Stoick is killed.


The story sets up a classic conflict in Hiccup's identity: he wants to be a great man and leader like his father, but he hates war. He wants to find peace and achieve it through understanding as he did with his dragon. At the same time, he sees that a man like Drago can't be stopped by conversation. This is the conflict that Bonhoeffer dealt with in WWII, and it's the same conflict that we often deal with today. Do we use violence to achieve peace, or do we swear off violence and allow ourselves to become victims? Great men like Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. thought there was a different path to follow, and sometimes there is, if your foe is ruled by some morals. But the kind of peaceful resistance that worked on the US or British governments doesn't always work against totalitarian rulers. Hiccup and his dragon were the best, the strongest in all of Berk, and if they did the Christ-like thing of laying down their lives, who would defend those who were weaker? So Hiccup decides they have to fight to save Berk. He and his friends have lost their dragons to Drago, except the babies in the sanctuary (who pretty much don't listen to anybody), which they use to fly to Berk.


There, Hiccup confronts Drago who is riding Toothless. Toothless doesn't recognize him but Hiccup keeps reaching out to him, reminding him that they are best friends, and that it is loyalty that binds them rather than the sick control that Drago wields over him. Miraculously, Toothless is able to fight off the Alpha dragon's hold on him, and dump Drago. The Alpha dragon fires ice at them both and encases them, but instead of killing them, the ice begins to glow—it's Toothless. Realizing that Hiccup is going to die if he doesn't do something, Toothless becomes quite fanged indeed and challenges the Alpha. Despite being unimaginably bigger and much stronger, Toothless is fighting for love—to protect Hiccup, Astrid, and the people of Berk. He fires his dragon breath repeatedly until all the dragons are freed and standing behind him to defend Berk. Unable to stand a chance against those odds, the Alpha and Drago flee. The end of the movie shows Hiccup being made chief in his father's place.


Hiccup's central struggle is his identity—what kind of man is he going to be? Is he going to be a man of war like his father, or a man of peace? He wants to forge a different way. The reality is that there is some evil that can't be overtaken in this world with love and kindness. I am a pacifist at heart, and I love the writings of Martin Luther King Jr.--but was the United States wrong to join Britain in fighting against the Third Reich? I don't think so. We live in two kingdoms, as Luther wrote, and although God's way is amazing, and I strongly believe that ultimately God's power will overtake all evil so that the lion really can lie with the lamb, we live in the “not yet” part of the two kingdoms. Sometimes, as much as we like to, we can't stand by and let others fight their battles in the name of neutrality. If we aren't fighting against evil, we are for it. That raises the question of how we delineate ourselves from those who commit violence for the sake of violence?


To quote a well known question: do the ends justify the means? In other words, does it matter how you get there if you end up at the same place? Of course it does! Ultimately, Hiccup ended up in the same position as Drago—in control of a lot of people and dragons! The difference is that Drago gained his power by subjugating all those who stood in his way, not caring at all about them and doing violence indiscriminately. Hiccup achieved his power by so strongly loving Toothless that the dragon fought the most powerful dragon alive and won. And the reason Hiccup was victorious in the end is because love is more powerful than hate. There is nothing as strong in this whole messed up world as love, which can mend hearts and heal wounds the way no act of force ever could. Because love is a gift which grows with the giving. How can it ever be defeated if it only grows as it is spread from person to person, life to life? It can't be. Real power is in risking everything for another, in protecting, in caring so much about somebody else that you don't care about yourself. That's the same love that compelled God to become one of us and walk beside us all the way to the cross so that we could be raised. That's the power that is ultimately victorious over all sin, evil, and death.


Like Hiccup, we must discover our identity as Christians, which is ultimately to be known "by our love." (John 13:35) In a perfect world, talking things out would always resolve evil and transform the hearts of those who do it, but it doesn't. Sometimes we do have to take a stand. But we take our stand in love, to defend the weak; for justice, not for revenge or the kind of power which dominates others. True power is the power which frees us from the terrible tragedy of subjugation which hurts this world so badly, and we pray for that love which surpasses all our understanding even as we sometimes choose the path of conflict for the sake of those around us.

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