It’s cheesy, I can’t deny that, but truthfully it’s a movie that everyone needs to watch. This week there has been a lot of talk about love. With the SCOTUS ruling on gay marriage the cry of, “love always wins” broke out in support of gay rights nationwide. Of course, it was met with criticism and skepticism on both sides with hate being disseminated by supporters of the decision as well as those who opposed the decision. And while I’m not waving a rainbow flag saying love wins, I am a Christian, and I do believe in a God that puts love and mercy over hate and anger.

I’m not here to debate the biblicalness of homosexuality. I don’t agree with it, but I don’t hate gay people. The way I see it is homosexuality is a sin, but we are all sinners. However like I said, my point here isn’t to debate homosexuality but to address what I believe is a more pressing issue – the zombiefication of my generation.

For a while now we have been obsessed with this idea of a zombie Apocalypse. A dramatic and explosive end to the world where we kill brain eating humans in a bloody and gruesome fashion. For some people it is nothing more then a funny hobby, but for others it is a feasible scenario that they prepare for every day. I highly doubt that anytime soon we will see an epidemic of human beings eating other humans brains, however I think it is rather obvious that as a culture we have become infected.

The movie Warm Bodies is so cheesy its almost laughable, so cheesy that I’m pretty sure I could use it to make nachos…You get the point, but the message that it conveys is one that everyone needs to hear. Maybe you won’t take away the same message from the movie that I did, but I would hope that you see the lesson that it teaches.

Warm Bodies revolves around the idea that zombies, assumed lifeless corpses, can somehow change back into being human. The movie’s name comes from the idea that what starts this change is their hearts start beating again, which circulates their blood and in turn warms their bodies making them human, hence the name Warm Bodies.

This is where the cheesiness takes over. What is responsible for this change you might ask? What makes the zombies hearts start beating again? Love and hope.

Throughout the entire movie the main character, known only to viewers as R, wishes he could be human again. He narrates as he wonders slowly about the city, looking for more human brains to consume so that he can feel human again through the memories of whichever brain he eats. When the pack that R is traveling with comes on a group of humans collecting medicine, R eats the brains of one of the guys in the group and then spots the soon to be love of his zombie life, Julie. Plot twist, the guy who’s brains he eats are Julie’s boyfriend.

During that scene R’s uniqueness from the other zombies stands out when he smears brains on Julie’s face to protect her, and leads her back to his airplane where he lives. It is during that first moment of their contact that we begin to see R slowly change from brain eating zombie to emotion feeling human.

But in all of this the point of this movie isn’t zombies or how realistic they are. The point of this lesson is that we live in a world that encourages zombie like lifestyles. Whether you think all government is evil, you are a church every Sunday type person, or this has been the best week of your life because of the legalization of gay marriage, in one way or another we are wondering aimlessly, slowly, looking for the next brain to eat, hoping and wishing that we could be human again.

Although this lesson speaks more directly to the lazy Christian who finds it easier to judge homosexuality rather than to witness and exemplify the attitude of Christ, we are all zombies in some manner of how we live.

Of course, Warm Bodies ends happily ever after, and like most movies we don’t see the consequences of certain actions nor the price that some had to pay, but we do see a moral lesson that points the arrow at love and hope, not hate and judgment.

The truth is that some people just want to live again. I know that the only way to find life is to lose it in Christ, however I am a sinner and I am hypocritical and the idea that I am here on this earth to serve God and witness to others is not as appealing as doing what I want to do.

In a part of the movie where Julie sneaks away to go back to the compound we see R fall asleep and dream, something the corpses can’t do, this signifies the most significant turn in his return to humanness. When he wakes up and realizes Julie left R says, “It’s easier not to feel, then I wouldn’t have to feel like this.” His statement resounds a collective understanding between many of us. It would be easier if I just didn’t feel anything at all.

As a Christian I wake up every day and pray that I won’t be like a zombie. That I won’t ignore the homeless person that needs food, or I won’t put off the difficult phone call because I don’t feel like telling the truth, or that I won’t choose not to serve someone else because I’m selfish. However, I’m not perfect, and some days I am zombie myself, needing to receive love and hope instead of giving it.

R’s desire to feel again and to live as a human is what drives him. Throughout the movie he selflessly serves Julie with no ulterior motives, he simply wants to be human again. We see this come full circle when he sacrifices his life in order to save her. Although R lives, he demonstrated without hesitation, a level of selflessness and unashamed feeling not only for who he loved, Julie, but to show the other humans that he was becoming human again and to stand up for his fellow human turning zombies.

R went against the pack. R allowed his feelings to show. R demonstrated courage in the presence of personal danger and harm. R just wanted to live again and to feel again. R got tired of being a zombie. R set the example.

I’m not saying you should try and be like a helpless romantic zombie, but if you’re like me, and you struggle with being Christ like, it might help to start small. It might help to start doing what R did, because essentially it is all the same.