“Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

A few weeks ago I was in the Lego Store with my family and saw their Bumblebee set. I’m not talking about the bug. I’m talking about the Transformer, great warrior, and loyal friend of Optimus Prime. It may be one of the cooler sets I’ve built because it actually transforms from a VW Bug to a robot. It’s sitting on my desk in robot mode now, but I switch it up every now and then just for fun. I love Transformers. I also love cartoons. Because of this, I was most excited to see the new Transformers movie, Transformers One. I didn’t get to catch it in theaters because life, but I finally got to watch it recently. Let’s talk about it.

I’m going to keep this fairly short because I don’t have much time today. The movie is available for free on Amazon Prime if you haven’t seen it. If you don’t like 1980s cartoon classics brought to the big screen in beautifully animated form, it’s probably not going to be for you. If you’re a guy who grew up in the 80s, what are you waiting for?

From the initial previews, I’ll admit I wasn’t all that excited about the film. It looked okay, but just okay. My youngest went to see it in theaters with a friend and I didn’t push all that hard to go with him. I am happy to report that I was wrong. It was terrific.

The animation was great. The story was fun. The voice acting was on point. Chris Hemsworth is no Peter Cullen, but when the end arrived and he was fully the Optimus Prime we all know and love he did a pretty compelling job getting close to Cullen’s rich baritone. The movie has its fair share of silliness—it was made for kids, after all—but the overall tone was just what it should have been. Some of the character transformations we knew were coming felt like they came a bit too quickly and weren’t as well earned as they could have been, but they made sense all the same. Overall I’d give it at least a B+.

The movie tells the story of how Optimus Prime, the great and noble leader of the Autobots, and Megatron, the ruthless and evil ruler of the Decepticons, became who we know them as today.

Both started out as best friends, D-16 and Orion Pax, who were lowly mine workers who couldn’t transform. Orion (who becomes Optimus) is an incurable optimist with an eye for adventure and a deep seated love for his fellow bot. D-16 is more committed to following the rules, but shares Orion’s respect and adoration for Sentinel Prime, the noble leader of Iacon, the home of the Transformers.

To condense a long story into a few words, Orion and D-16 set out with a couple of extra friends unexpectedly along for the ride in search of a MacGuffin called the Matrix of Leadership that will help bring life and flourishing back to their planet. Along the way, they gain the ability to transform and learn that everything Sentinel Prime has told them is a lie.

Orion and D-16 both want to take Sentinel Prime down for his deception and the oppression he uses it to inflict on the other Transformers. But while Orion wants justice, D-16 gets entirely consumed by a desire for vengeance. He sets himself on a path of making sure he isn’t ever deceived again by taking all the power for himself and violently putting down anyone who opposes him including, eventually, his former best friend.

The film does a nice job setting up the contrast between choosing justice with forgiveness in response to an offense, and choosing vengeance and hatred. One approach leads to real change and positive transformation. The other leads to pain and destruction that often eclipses the original offense.

There were several points where the Gospel intersected with the story, but the one that stood out most to me came when D-16 took his first major steps down the dark path that would lead to his becoming the evil Megatron. He gets captured along with a number of other rebels against Sentinel Prime’s stranglehold on Iacon. Orion manages to avoid capture along with Elita-1.

As the former ponders what to do, struggling with feeling like he has lost, like he should give up in the face of overwhelming odds, and that the whole mess is his fault for breaking protocol rather than just staying in his lane, Elita-1 gives him a little pep talk.

“I’m better than you in every way except you have hope. You always have. You went back into the mine to rescue Jazz. You snuck up to the surface to find the Matrix of Leadership.”

“Yeah, and how’d that work out?”

“My point is, that your instincts tell you to break protocol for a reason. This blind optimism that you have is why you make such bold and courageous choices, that are also extremely stupid.”

“First time giving a pep talk?”

“You’re inspiring. You can envision a better future that no one else can see. And if we ever want to see B and D-16 again, that is the Orion Pax that we need right now.”

Now, there’s a bit to quibble with in there in terms of defining hope as followers of Jesus – most notably that our hope is some kind of a blind optimism; it’s not – but in terms of laying out the power of hope, it’s pretty right on the money. A person of hope is a powerful thing. He is able to keep moving forward through difficult and even dangerous situations without getting completely dragged down by all the scary, overwhelming what-ifs toward a clear and compelling goal. More than that, he can motivate and inspire others to move toward that goal as well.

A person who has hope – real hope, and not merely some kind of a blind optimism (although even blind optimism can be pretty potent in terms of keeping someone moving forward through challenges) – is also a person who has joy and peace. His vision of a better future that most people can’t see gives him confidence in the face of what seem to be overwhelming odds. As Paul writes here in his second letter to the Corinthian church, hope enables us to act with great boldness. It enables us to act with great boldness in pursuit of Christ and the advance of the kingdom of God.

When we know beyond a shadow of doubt that God’s kingdom will come in the end, and that, in Christ, our place in it is secure, then there is nothing in this world that really poses any threat to our efforts to proclaim and live out the Gospel. Persecution? We’d rather not, but so be it if it comes. Mocking and derision? That’s just people who have blinded themselves to the truth and who accordingly reject it. And why would a person who can see be threatened or even mildly offended by someone who is blind?

We don’t have to be “like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from gazing steadily until the end of the glory of what was being set aside [that is, the Law by Christ], but their minds were hardened. For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains; it is not lifted, because it is set aside only in Christ. Yet still today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts, but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.”

Got all that? Apart from Christ, there is no solid, reliable, unassailable source of hope. Hope is a vision of a future that is going be better than the present. Our culture doesn’t have hope on its own. Just look at the stories we tell. They are all dystopian. Our stories almost never end with a true happily ever after anymore. I would argue part of the reason is this loss of hope that comes from a forced retreat of the Christian worldview and its inherent hopefulness from our cultural imagination.

But in Christ, that veil is lifted. It is removed. We are able to see what really is. Being able to see allows us to act with boldness in ways being blind does not even begin to allow. There is freedom in being able to see, in having Gospel hope. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

Until Orion Pax and D-16 and Elita-1 and Bumblebee, along with all of the other oppressed Bots were given a source and reason for hope, they were not able to transform. Hope is what allowed their transformation. In the same way, when we turn to Christ and gain the hope of the Gospel, we too are transformed by that into people of hope.

If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a person of hope. That’s part of the gig. To live otherwise is to either live a lie about who Jesus is and what He has said, or else to reveal that you haven’t really turned to Him in the first place. If you are not a follower of Jesus, but you are longing for a hope that is solid enough to support the weight of your life, the invitation is clear: You can find that hope in Jesus. You can find hope and life and peace and joy and love that will completely transform your life at every point. It won’t necessarily make it easier. In fact, Jesus promised it won’t. Living as a person of hope in a world without hope is not going to be a smooth ride. The people around you won’t understand why you are different and some of them will hate you and hate on you for it. The hope of the Gospel is strong enough to sustain you through that. The one who gives us Gospel hope is strong enough to sustain you through that. He is strong enough to sustain you through anything this world will set on your path. Gospel hope is powerful stuff. May you embrace it – embrace Him – and experience it for yourselves. You will unquestionably be glad that you did.