Good morning, everybody. Hi, Connor. I’m one of the pastors here. You may not know this, but I am a child of the ’80s—I was born in the ’80s. A lot of baby boomers contend that the ’60s was when music was perfected, and honestly, it’s kind of hard to argue. It’s subjective, but the ’60s were pretty rad for music.
In the same way, I think millennials—those of us born after 1980—can claim perfection in movies. I believe the ’80s is when we reached peak movie. Any film from the ’80s looks like a modern film. Movies from before 1980 are a crapshoot—some look like garbage, others like modern films. It’s all over the place. The ’80s narrowed it down. Look no further than the popular movies from that decade: the Back to the Future trilogy, the Indiana Jones trilogy (the fourth one doesn’t count), Stallone making Rambos and Rockies all decade long, the Ghostbusters movies (still popular today), E.T. (maybe one of the greatest movies ever made), and John Hughes producing Vacation movies, The Breakfast Club, and Sixteen Candles. All classics from the 1980s.
One notoriously absent, of course, is Top Gun, which I don’t think was very good. It was okay. The aerial dog fights were fun, but honestly, the soundtrack was better than the movie. Can I get an amen?
This is not the pinnacle of cinema in my opinion. So I wasn’t particularly excited about the new Top Gun movie that was coming out, but I’m a bit of a Tom Cruise fan. He’s had quite a streak over the last decade or so of making really good movies. I thought, you know what? I’m going to take a chance on this Top Gun movie. And let me just say—it was really, really good. A thoroughly enjoyable film, right up there with Edge of Tomorrow and the later Mission: Impossible movies.
Box Office Success and Cultural Resonance
Did you know—if you’re a movie nerd, you might—that Top Gun: Maverick is the only movie of 2022 so far to cross the $1 billion threshold? That’s a benchmark for a really profitable movie: the billion-dollar club. For reference, in 2019, nine movies crossed that mark. In 2022, only one so far. And it’s not like there’s no competition. The Minions movie is out right now—the first one made over $1 billion, this one’s around $800 million, which is a lot of money, but in Hollywood, money doesn’t make sense.
You have the Buzz Lightyear movie, which was basically a flop. Toy Story 3 and 4 each made a billion; Buzz Lightyear, thud. Jurassic World: Dominion is the first in the Jurassic World trilogy to not cross the billion-dollar threshold. What about Marvel? Thor didn’t do it. Doctor Strange didn’t do it. Maybe Disney+ saturation, too many superhero movies—we’re done with superheroes? Spider-Man: No Way Home in December 2021 almost made $2 billion. So that’s not it.
Why do movies like Top Gun and Spider-Man resonate in popular culture while others don’t reach the same level? What separates them? To understand that, we have to look at the cultural moment we’re in right now. Has anyone here heard of cancel culture?
Cancel Culture and Erasing the Past
The idea is that whatever you’ve done—the worst thing you’ve ever done—defines your entire existence, and therefore you must be erased from history. We’ve sought to erase people and events from history. They don’t exist anymore because they were bad, and we’re moving on.
We see this with streets being renamed, buildings being renamed, monuments being torn down. We’ve even seen it in film and television. I have a couple of prominent examples to play for you right now.
“The past is with us.”
“The past is dead.”
“We either move forward… or we die with it.”
“Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to.”
Is that what we do? Do we kill the past? How many of you have heard of historical figure Hans Christian Heg? Really popular globally? Well, his statue stood in front of the state legislature in Wisconsin. During the great monument upheaval of 2020, he was one of the ones torn down—his head removed and thrown into a lake.
Who was this man? A Norwegian immigrant to the United States who rose through the military ranks, eventually becoming the Republican governor of Wisconsin. He was a virulent abolitionist during the height of the Civil War. Not only did he work to free slaves coming from the South, but he would lead parties to find bounty hunters recapturing runaway slaves and put them in jail. This is the man who was canceled by the mob when they tore down his statue.
We cannot erase the past. We have to look at it and evaluate it honestly. I heard two views presented about a particular statue—a Robert E. Lee statue, the Confederate general, in Virginia. These opinions came from two Black men roughly my age, with Black sons.
The first said the statue should stay in the public park because he could explain the history to his son: who this man was, what he stood for, that he was defeated, and that we live in the greatest country in the world because we fought and died to make sure his son would not be in the situation that man wanted.
I said, yeah, that sounds reasonable.
The second said no—the statue needs to be removed, put in a museum or somewhere with context explaining who he was and what he did, so his son doesn’t see a monument venerating a man who wanted to keep him in chains.
I said, yeah, that sounds good too.
Reasonable people can disagree, but both men value acknowledging and evaluating the past. We don’t just erase it. Erasure is bad for two reasons: it leaves us uninformed, and it leaves us unreformed. Let’s dig into those after we pray.
Opening Prayer
God, thank you for your word. Thank you for your truth. Thank you that wherever we look, if we are looking with eyes for truth, we can find it and something good there, God. I pray that as we dig into this idea and topic, and what your word has to say about it this morning, you would help us understand that the past doesn’t need to define us, that we can overcome it, that we can move forward, but there is value in recognizing, celebrating, and using it as a warning by evaluating the things in the past. Give us wisdom as we go through this morning and open minds and hearts to hear what you have to say. Amen.
The Value of History
The past is a progression—it moves forward. You may have heard phrases like “standing on the shoulders of giants.” That doesn’t mean people before us were supermen or demigods; it means they paved the way, and each generation paves a little more for the next. We stand on their shoulders, taking advantage of their work to do something new, better, greater.
When I was growing up, my mom talked about three men. You can be the fool, who doesn’t learn from his mistakes. The smart man learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Hopefully we work toward being the wise man.
Or the famous quote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Erasing the past is not good. We need to evaluate it honestly—the unvarnished truth: triumphs and defeats, failures and victories, atrocities and moments of transcendence. Everything we have is built on the past. We can’t erase it, but we need to be honest.
My theory on why movies like Top Gun and Spider-Man: No Way Home resonated so strongly while others like Jurassic World and Buzz Lightyear did not: it holds across mediums. In Top Gun, Maverick reckons with his complicated past—the good and bad decisions—and passes on a legacy to the next generation. In Spider-Man, Peter is overwhelmed, but old Spider-Men from past films help him, learning from each other. The past helps him decide how to be the hero he wants to be.
Buzz Lightyear is supposed to be the movie Andy watched in 1995 that inspired the toy. But the film has a same-sex relationship as a key feature—marriage, child, growing old. People alive in the ’90s would say that’s not what the ’90s were like. It’s a 2022 movie pretending to be 1995—rewriting the past.
Jurassic World brings back the original cast, but only for cheap nostalgia bait. They have no real plot impact—just a cynical cash grab. Audiences could tell.
Deep down, we know history matters. When it’s misrepresented, it doesn’t jibe. History is His story—it tells us about God, reveals His design, and shows our purpose.
Scripture: History as God’s Story
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Colossians 1:16
For through him, God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see, just as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world, everything was created through him, and for him.
Acts 17:24-28
He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples. Human hands can’t serve his needs, for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything and satisfies every need. From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall and determined their boundaries. His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist, as some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.”
Psalm 78:2-8
Stories we have heard and known, stories our ancestors handed down to us. We will not hide these truths from our children. We will tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord, and about his power and his mighty wonders, for he issued laws to Jacob. He gave his instructions to Israel. He commanded our ancestors to teach their children, so the next generation might know them—even the children not yet born. And they, in turn, will teach their own children. So each generation should set its hope anew on God, not forgetting his glorious miracles, and obeying his commands. Then they will not be like their ancestors—stubborn, rebellious, and unfaithful, refusing to give their hearts to God.
Application: The 4 Ps
History matters day to day. Here are the 4 Ps of application:
- Perspective — History serves as a warning. Where have we made mistakes before? How can we correct them? It provides direction—look at others’ choices and roads they led down. It reminds us we’re not alone in challenges. As Ecclesiastes says, there’s nothing new under the sun.
- Perseverance — Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us cast off everything that entangles us, every sin that entangles us, and run with perseverance.
The cloud of witnesses are those who’ve gone before, laying the groundwork.
- Promise — God promises a future beyond this life. He’s concerned with the afterlife, not just the “meat suit.”
- Pride — Beware hubris. We can get puffed up, thinking we’re enlightened and passing judgment on past generations. Amen.
In Top Gun, they try to sideline Maverick as an irrelevant dinosaur. He reckons with his past—reconciles with Penny, whom he hurt, and with Rooster, the son of his former copilot. It’s dealt with sincerely.
In Spider-Man, there’s a moving scene where Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man saves MJ. He weeps because in his 2014 film, he couldn’t save Gwen Stacy. It comes full circle—he succeeds where he failed before. That honors the past, learns from mistakes, grows, and changes.
Our culture says that’s not allowed anymore. The worst thing you’ve done defines you forever.
The Danger of Cancel Culture
Here’s a video of a John A. Macdonald statue in Montreal being torn down. One guy kicks the cast-iron head—probably broke his toe—because they wanted him gone. He was Canada’s first prime minister, confederated the nation, expanded borders sea to sea, built the national railroad. He did good things but was a drunk, kicked out of office for bribes, and architected the residential school system.
Do we ignore the good because of the bad? None of us is pure. We’ve all made mistakes—just not on a global stage. We need to evaluate the past, take the good with the bad, and ask if redemption is possible. How will people judge us in 100–300 years?
Our culture demands absolute purity—no grace. It creates fear, not freedom. Let me say this clearly: You are not defined by the worst thing you’ve ever done. God has grace for the humble, penitent who come to Him for forgiveness.
Scripture: Grace and Forgiveness
1 John 1:9
But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.
Colossians 2:13-14
You were dead because of your sin and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he will forgive all of our sins. He canceled the record of charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross.
Psalm 103:7-12
He revealed his character to Moses and his deeds to the people of Israel. The Lord is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. He does not punish us for all of our sin. He does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens is above the earth. He has removed our sins as far as the east is from the west.
We have a past—sometimes ugly—but we don’t erase it. We learn from it. How can God grow us?
Lion King Reference
This reminds me of a scene from The Lion King (1993):
“Looks like the winds are changing.”
“Ah, change is good.”
“Yeah, but it’s not easy.”
“I know what I have to do, but going back means I’ll have to face my past. I’ve been running from it for so long.”
“You can either run from it, or learn from it.”
Closing Thoughts
In movies like Top Gun and Spider-Man, heroes evaluate their past and use it to change course. It’s not cynical nostalgia or rewriting history. Joshua 4 shows we don’t erase the past but build memorials to celebrate what God has done.
Joshua 4
When all the people had crossed the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, “Choose twelve men, one from each tribe. Tell them to take twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, where the priests are standing, and carry them out. Pile them up at the place where you will camp tonight.” … “In the future, your children will ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’ You can tell them, ‘They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord’s covenant went across.’ These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever.”
If you’re a Christian, celebrate the good work God has done and is doing in you. If not, God loves you and has good work for your life. For all of us, God’s ways are higher. The cross is bigger than history’s atrocities. God redeems and has a plan. As long as we have the cross, we have hope.
Deuteronomy 4:9
Be careful never to forget what you yourself have seen. Do not let these memories escape your mind as long as you live, and be sure to pass them on to your children and grandchildren.
Closing Prayer
God, thank you for your word and truth. Thank you that throughout history you have revealed yourself more and more, and we can see how you have progressed us. Help us look at history with eyes for your truth and hope, as an opportunity to share it. Help us not get mired in our personal history but use it to evaluate, move forward, and celebrate the good you are doing. In your holy, precious name. Amen.