Junior high was not a pleasant time for me.
I was smaller, shorter and less coordinated than the other kids, not quite as stylish, not quite as socially savvy, just beginning the first signs of acne and constantly wondering what I would have to do to move up the in popularity pecking order – enough, at least, to go from "unwitting butt of the jokes around me" to "might get a pretty girl to talk to me, if I'm lucky."
In other words, it was a lot like the misadventures of Greg Heffley in "Diary of a Wimpy Kid."
Actor Zachary Gordon delivers a breakthrough performance in this quirky film about junior-high foibles and a hard-luck kid who's just certain he'll quickly rise to the top of the heap within the first few days of sixth grade.
As young Greg Heffley discovers, however, the man who seeks first and foremost his own selfish gain will forfeit his soul in the process (Luke 9:24-25).
Greg's not-so-meteoric rise to the top of the popularity list (which the movie tracks through a clever, pecking-order "thermometer" of sorts though the film) is stifled first by the albatross of his unpopular childhood friends.
But Greg only makes his life worse by losing sight of the values of friendship and virtue in the desperate quest for popularity.
What Greg doesn't lose sight of, however, is a piece of ancient, moldy cheese plastered to the playground pavement.
That's right … cheese.
The legend goes that once upon a time, an unwitting junior higher actually bent down and touched the cheese, sending a shockwave of disgust through the entire student body. Indeed, the other kids fled from the pariah, who was then feared as the kid with "the cheese touch."
Stupid? Yes. Kind of like junior high.
But wait, for the cheese is the key to the biblical lesson Greg – and young audiences – learn in "Diary of a Wimpy Kid."
Now, years later, the cheese is still there, and through a tragic set of circumstances, one of Greg's former childhood friends (for all his friends are "former," as Greg's selfish pursuit of popularity burns every meaningful bridge in his life) is compelled to … gulp … take a bite of the ancient cheese slice.
Could it be any worse? It's like "the cheese touch" times ten! It's social death for the school's new leper, who will be remembered in junior-high lore for decades as the lowest of the low, as the most scorned and disgusting kid to ever haunt the hallways.
Woe to him!
"He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not" (Isaiah 53:3).
Those who are familiar with that passage of Scripture will recognize it as describing not the cheese eater, but the suffering servant, Jesus Christ.
The Bible goes on to say, "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed."
Those verses tell us that it was not his vileness, however, but ours that was punished in him. We were the disgusting ones, not him. And though we deserved the suffering, Jesus took it for us.
Hence, Jesus fulfilled his own words when he was hung on the cross for our wrongdoing: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).
And so it happens with Greg and the moldy cheese.
At the risk of giving too much away, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," which is, for the most part, a relatively innocent, forgettable, fluff film about junior high, takes a sudden turn for the profound at the very end.
And for those with eyes to see, it's all about Jesus Christ and his demonstrated love. Jesus, that is … and moldy cheese.
Content advisory
- As a junior-high movie made mostly for junior-high audiences, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is littered with butt-and-booger jokes, armpit-hair gags, a peeing incident and other juvenile and "gross-me-out" antics.
- The film, however, contains virtually no profanity, save for one noticeable use of taking God's name in vain.
- The film's sexuality, as well, is limited to a joke about "a cute butt," an older brother's "porno" magazine (which is really just a motorcycle mag, with a bosom, bikini-clad woman on the cover) and a laughable dance number in which a kid slaps his rear end in the pathetic attempt to imitate something provocative.
- "Wimpy Kid" contains some playground-type bullying, but almost no real violence.
- The film does have a Halloween scene that dabbles in occult themes, as an older brother spooks Greg with the story of the "Devil-Worshipper Woods," including a tale of Satanists cooking and eating children. The use of dark lighting and a jack-o'-lantern enhance the creepy scene, but it's portrayed like a campfire ghost story.