The Goodness of Home: Lessons from “Zootopia 2”

We all have a home; where is yours? Where is that haven of hope to which you look and for which you long? Home is that place about which we whisper “in the deep heart’s core” that we “shall have some peace there,” as Yeats would say. The question of home spans centuries and cultures, and it is present even within our own. Consider the plot of Disney’s Zootopia 2, where paw law enforcement officers, Judy Hopps (a rabbit) and Nick Wilde (a fox), help recover the lost home of Gary the Snake.

This plotline reveals an embedded cultural belief: the goodness of home. I want to examine this belief, how our culture acts on it erroneously, and then comment on how the Christian faith both affirms it and addresses it.

The Goodness of Home

The film portrays the goodness of home in at least three ways. First, home is a place of memory, rootedness, and rest. Home is markedly different, in a good way; there is home, and there is everywhere else. Second, home provides the moral justification for the character’s actions. Third, the goodness of home appears in the portrayal of Gary’s homeward longing or ache.

This evokes the concept of C. S. Lewis’s Sehnsucht, which he describes in his Weight of Glory address.[1] Lewis refers to a “lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited,” and “that old ache” (42). The difficulty, however, is this: “[I]f we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will already be in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and it will even appear as the rival of that object” (29). Lewis’s observation makes sense of what happens with our culture’s errors. Our culture’s deep desire for home appears to rival the idea of a heavenly one, leading to the many avenues briefly mentioned below, as well as others not mentioned.

Returning to the movie, it affirms Gary’s desire for home. As it turns out, contrary to the assertion of Shakespeare’s King Henry V, we are not “merriest when they are from home.” We must have a home, and we long for one deeply.

Some Erroneous Applications

So, how does this belief play out erroneously? First, culture counsels you to make a home of any noun. Culture encourages us to engage in idolatry, acting as gods who create, limit, and define what our good home is and where it is.[2]

You could also opt for a person. Some choose other people.[3] Some choose themselves, but this has also imploded under the weight of being at home.[4] Either way, it is too much weight for one finite creature.

It is not much better making home of things (e.g., materialism) or states of being (e.g., happiness). With ideas, the result is likewise dismal.[5]

As for place, it is one of the strongest candidates for home. Place is most closely associated with the concept of home. There is a reason why the phrase “putting down roots” refers to committing to a place.[6] The problem here is that culture also often promotes attacks on those places where we feel rooted. Grace Olmstead pointedly notes, “Rootedness and perennial belonging often make sense to us on a scientific, ecological level. We know (or are at least realizing) what the soil needs for biological health and flourishing. But there seems to be a widespread belief in our society that these principles do not apply to people: that we are different, that our minds and souls are, in fact, better suited to wandering and restlessness than to faithful belonging.”[7]

Lastly, and most insidiously, the culture will also argue against the idea of home as a place, saying that you may not be at home in the most consistent place you inhabit—your own body.

If all those attempts fail, many in culture attempt to achieve both the goodness of home and the satisfaction of that longing by fusing the two. Make our longing our home. Whether it is sexuality, social status, or prestige, make your longing your home. Let your longing become your identity, and your identity become your home. It is easy to see how making the longing our home does not lead us home.

In summary, the cultural belief in the goodness of home suggests that the culture senses we were made for it, yet it does not know how to get there or what our real home is, or where it is. To borrow the language of Augustine on time, culture has a memory of home and an expectation, or longing, for home, but it has no sight in the present that can link the two. When it comes to our culture,

They promise us our needed wing,

And say, “We’re made to fly,”

But they will not admit the sting:

They’ve never touched the sky.

A Christian Response

We all have this homeward longing. Tolkien references this longing in a letter to his son, Christopher, writing, “Certainly there was an Eden on this unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile.’”[8] Where is your homeward longing meant to lead you? Where is your home?

The answer to every person’s homeward ache is indeed a person and a place. The home we seek is found only in knowing Jesus Christ and being known by him (Gal 4:9). The home we long for is in Jesus (John 14:23). Augustine was correct when he wrote that God had made us for himself and that our hearts are restless until they rest in him. Reader, be at home in him. He fulfills our homeward longing. Also, realize that the cultural belief in the goodness of home gives you a way to present the hope of the gospel and invite others to come home as well (2 Cor 5:20).

[1] C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 25–46.

[2] See Ross Inman’s discussion on the “the Promethean ideal” and its subsequent effects in Christian Philosophy as a Way of Life: An Invitation to Wonder (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023), 70–72.

[3] This is seen in the number of romantic songs declaring someone else as their home. Billy Joel has his song, “You’re My Home.” Chris Stapelton (featuring P!nk), Post Malone (featuring Benson Boone), Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, and Diane Warren also have songs entitled, “You Are My Home.” There is also the song, “You Are My Home,” in the musical The Scarlet Pimpernel.

[4] Carl Trueman traces the implosion in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020).

[5] See this editorial on the rise of the politically homeless as an example of how ideas serve poorly as home.
[6] See Daniel Grothe, The Power of Place: Choosing Stability in a Rootless Age (Nashville: Nelson, 2021).

[7] Grace Olmstead, Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind (New York: Sentinel, 2021), 127.

[8] J. R. R. Tolkien to Christopher Tolkien, January 30, 1945, in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter and Christoper Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 110.