Moana: The Human Heart

This kind of builds on the identity theme that we looked into in the previous article based on The Lion King and its many lessons.

As beautiful as the film is, Moana (2016) also has some really beautiful lessons to teach us.

We’ll be considering the heart of humanity here and where that leaves us (or rather, where we’re at).

Gramma Tala – Her (Te Fiti) heart held the greatest power ever known. It could create life itself. And Te Fiti shared it with the world.

The film begins with Gramma Tala’s narration about the beginning of their world and how Te Fiti’s true purpose was to create life itself as the Mother Island. She shared this with the whole world because she had true love to give and this brought life, and unity to the world. All of this emanated from her heart (her core) because when this was lost, her power to grant life was also lost and in its place arose the power of destruction in the form of Te Ka, the lava monster that turned everything it touched into ash. It wasn’t just Te Ka who was affected; this power of destruction began destroying the world that Te Fiti had poured her love into. This affected the people of Montunui as well. It caged them on their little island with little hope for long term survival. Love was no more all because selfish interests (we’ll relook at this later on in this article) had taken precedence when Maui had chosen to displace the heart.

Gramma Tala – But in time, some began to seek Te Fiti’s heart. They believed if they could possess it, the great power of creation would be theirs. And one day, the most daring of them all voyaged across the vast ocean to take it. He was a demi-god of the wind and sea. He was a warrior. A trickster. A shapeshifter who could change form with the power of his magical fishhook. And his name was Maui.

Isn’t this what the Bible talks of too? We were placed in a position of care and nurture, not just for one another but also for all of creation. We were supposed to be conduits of God’s own love and care into the universe. Our hearts, as received from God, were what led us to care for His creation and each other in the beginning of time. But selfish interests took hold and humanity chose to reject that heart and spat in God’s face. Since we abandoned God and all knowledge of Him, we lost our hearts. Instead of love, all that came out of us was destruction – sickness, poverty, pain, inequality, death and the list goes on… When we chose to reject our true purpose, we fell infinitely short of God’s glory. Humanity, the crown jewel of God’s creation, was no longer a beacon of life and hope, but became the harbinger of destruction and pain not just for one another but also for all of creation. God wanted to bless all of creation through us but when we chose to throw the heart of God away, we rejected our purpose. Just as Maui was no longer a hero and instead cursed the entire world because of his choices, we are almost a curse to ourselves and to everything we influence because we have lost the heart that God has given us.

Gramma Tala – But without her heart, Te Fiti began to crumble, giving birth to a terrible darkness. Hiding in a darkness that will continue to spread, chasing away our fish, draining the life from island after island until every one of us is devoured by the bloodthirsty jaws of inescapable death!

Our heart is what dictates our path in life and often when we choose the wrong path, we forget our truth and the truth of where we’re headed. We forget our true selves just as the people of Montunui had forgotten the truth and had also forgotten who they were.

Gramma Tala – Years have passed and we have forgotten who we are.

We try and go from day to day and try to fill it with as much happiness as we can because we realise that happiness is fleeting and what we’re really looking for is purpose. Some of us might choose to derive that from our relationships or self-gratification or power or money or whatever else catches our fancy. What we’re really doing is focusing on unimportant things that can only bring us meaning, joy, and pleasure in the short term. If we’re honest with ourselves, what we might really be longing for is love – something or someone to pour our love into and for us to be loved and accepted in return. But none of what we do lasts – including our relationships with people. The truth is we forget what love really is because we’ve forgotten our experience of it. Of course, this is in the context of life itself but it is also in the context of the little everyday things that we partake in. We confuse sex for love. We confuse money for happiness. We confuse high grades for intelligence. We confuse power for truth. And so on. We are just a confused and lost lot. We’ve all become Tamatoa.

Tamatoa – Well, Tamatoa hasn’t always been this glam. I was a drab little crab once. Now I know I can be happy as a clam, because I’m beautiful, baby!

Really, Tamatoa? Hate to break this to you but external beauty doesn’t just change with time – it fades away. We’re no different from him. We’re told that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but that’s what we do when we often confuse behavioural change with actual change. I can stop myself from hitting someone, but that does nothing to change my desire to hit them. My desire is internal while me deciding not to act on that desire is external. We get that confused and are often shocked when someone we look up to makes a mistake. We’re all human. We’re all broken. We’ve all fallen infinitely short. Our desires aren’t always good even if our behaviour seems to be. Tamatoa didn’t understand this either. He wanted to be beautiful because he thought that was where his worth came from. He thought that’s what mattered most. This is not just about external change (in this case, beauty). This is primarily about our hearts. Just as the Bible is not about some rules and laws or some dos and don’ts but what it’s really about is our hearts. Sadly, even those of us who claim to have a relationship with our ever-loving Heavenly Father forget that. We are so focused on the dos and don’ts that we forget we’re all in the same boat.

That’s not to say that what we do is unimportant. It is. But our behaviour should always be taken in the context of our hearts because God looks at the heart of man (1 Samuel 16:7). In their paper Moral Alchemy: How love changes norms, Magid, R. W., & Schulz, L. E. (2017) claim that while many acts (behaviours) are morally inconsequential, we often care about them because of love – for instance, the love for a child will lead us to care about the words someone directs at our children even though those words in and of themselves are morally inconsequential. In the same sense, God loves us first and then looks at everything through His love for us because it is His love that has dictated what He has done for us and what He continues to do. Now, for those who choose to accept His love, He freely gives it to them and then it is through that lens of God’s love that we then navigate every little aspect of life. Once accepted, it’s His love that is restored into our hearts. It’s that missing piece that we’ve all been craving. Love, by itself, is not external and tangible, but the proof of it certainly is. It is an inside-out thing and not the other way around. Sadly, this was lost to both Tamatoa and Maui who worked to earn love and acceptance. It doesn’t work that way unless you’re in some completely unrealistic cliched romantic text.

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; Ephesians 2:8

None of us can work to earn this love. Nothing we ever do can make us worthy of that love. So, then what? We just live lives of defeat and purposelessness and keep moving from one passion to another until our dying breath? Nah!

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

That’s the thing about God. He knows we cannot fix our own hearts. He knows that we threw it away and cannot find it. So, He doesn’t expect us to either. He took it on Himself to cross the big bad ocean of sin and fight the lava monster of death itself. He chose to cross the furthest horizon of death itself because that was the only thing that would fix our hearts and restore us to Himself and His love for us. It’s not ours to earn…but it certainly is ours for the taking!

Moana – I have crossed the horizon to find you. I know your name. They have stolen the heart from inside you. But this does not define you. This is not who you are. You know who you are… who you truly are.

Our hearts have been stolen and have been lost to the point we don’t remember ourselves. We don’t know our truth because it has been buried under uncountable layers of destruction, selfishness, pride, and even fear. We don’t know who we are but we certainly can if we just listen. Moana called out to Te Ka to restore her heart and God calls out to us to restore ours.

At the end when the heart is restored, Te Ka, the lava monster is revealed to be just a shell, with the true Te Fiti underneath it. In a sense, that’s our condition too – darkness rules our hearts but if we just allow Jesus to restore His Spirit within us, we’ll be renewed. We’ll come out of this not as monsters of our own making that only bring destruction but rather as beacons of hope and bearers of life. We know that we have passed out of death into life – 1 John 3:14

We breathe love into the world around us. We love, because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19 Look at what Te Fiti did once her heart was restored. She didn’t punish Maui, when he was the one who created this whole mess. On the contrary, she restored him and his powers. She gave him back his hook. He didn’t deserve it but Te Fiti did it anyway. That’s grace and mercy because of love. Without love there is no grace or mercy. There is no judgement in true love. We don’t deserve to be restored since it is our choices that have driven us away from God, but being the ever-loving Father that He is, He restores us out of love and now that we’ve experienced true love and grace, we finally know what true love is. Maui did everything just to feel loved and accepted. That’s why he stole the heart in the first place. Do you think after all this, especially after Te Fiti shows him love, that he’ll want love from anywhere else? I think not.

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10

The truth is this – true love never destroys. It heals and restores. True love frees!

Maui, who once was burdened by his past and his desire to earn acceptance and love, was no longer bound by these chains. There was nothing he could have done to earn it. This was long-lost truth that he now understood out of a personal experience of love, grace, mercy from Te Fiti.

When Moana held the heart up, Te Fiti cannot help but be attracted to it. In the same way, the truth calls out to us even in periods of worst despair when all hope seems lost. Even when we sink into times of unimaginable darkness, The Light still reaches out. The question is – will you listen to it and be healed or will you ignore it and go on destroying yourself and everything around you?

When you lose your heart, what takes its place is something that only destroys – both you and everything you influence. The heart must be restored for life to be sustained. Love is our true heart. God is Love. We didn’t just lose our connect with Him, but we threw our relationship with Him away and sin took over. In the place of love, destruction reined its ugly head. It destroyed our lives, and through us, it destroyed creation itself. We need our hearts restored. We need Love back. We need Him back.

This isn’t just for those among us who might not even believe in God. This is for all of us – including those of us who claim to be children of God. Please don’t look at this just in the larger context of eternity, but also look at this as an everyday thing – we need our hearts renewed every day. We need God’s love; we need a filling of God’s Spirit in us every single moment of every single day. We were so far gone that we need to be reminded of God’s infinite love everyday and He never tires from doing that, if we just believe.

If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former way of life, you are to rid yourselves of the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Ephesians 4:21-24

That is the only way to go from destruction to life. From darkness to light. From hopelessness to unshakable hope. From meaningless passions to true eternal meaning.

It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It is never too late because God has conquered insurmountable odds and done the impossible just to restore your heart.

Come back to Love.

Remember who you are.

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. Romans 8:19-22