Photograph by Toa Heftiba via Unsplash

While the Minions make their customary appearance, flanked by the so-called Mega Minions, much of the movie centers around parenting. Having adopted three girls—Margo, Edith, and Agnes—in the first Despicable Me film, Gru now has a newborn, Gru Jr., with his wife Lucy. Throughout the film, Gru attempts to bond with his son, but finds that Jr. has a strong parental preference for his mother. While the movie plays this for laughs, showing Jr. sabotaging Gru on several occasions, I know from experience that not being the preferred parent can take an emotional toll. My own daughter didn’t warm up to me until she was nearly 4 years old.

Eventually, the family goes on the run from a powerful supervillain and must adopt new identities. One particular scene was interesting to me as a parent who takes the moral formation of my child seriously. I’m not alone there – 96% of parents say that they have the primary responsibility for teaching their children values. Agnes does not want to lie about her name, and Gru tries to get her to do so by saying, “don’t think of it as lying. Think of it as high-stakes pretending.” She ultimately refuses: “but we aren’t supposed to lie.” Probably every parent has had the experience of teaching their children a moral absolute that is perhaps not as absolute as they think. While I can’t prove it, I’m fairly certain that this is where the concept of a “white lie” comes from.

The pivotal scene in the film comes at its climax. The bonding that Gru has attempted pays off, and his newborn plays the pivotal role in vanquishing the supervillain, but not before he gives Jr. permission to hurt him: “It’s okay…Dada loves you.” That permission is what shakes Jr. out of his trance. While this is an apt metaphor for parenting in general—true love also involves allowing your loved one the agency to make their own decisions and hurt you in the process—it is also a powerful reflection of God’s love for us.

God’s parenting ultimately allows us to make our decisions, and those decisions often come to harm our Creator. God gives us this permission through the ability to choose how to orient our lives. Ultimately, God chose to offer a salvation method for the entirety of humanity that hurts God – that is perhaps the central facet of Jesus’ crucifixion, as Jurgen Moltmann made clear in The Crucified God. There is no greater act of love than can be found in our divine parent’s sacrificial act.

Amongst all the Minions and the flashy action scenes, Despicable Me 4 offers a touching reflection on what it means to be a parent. We raise children to make good choices, and then we have no control over what they do with that moral formation. That is also a good way to think about salvation and God’s unstoppable love for us – no matter the decisions that we make.