“The Tin Man now had no heart to love with and forgot how to love so he just kept chopping wood until he got stuck in the rain and rusted. We were once human, made from flesh and blood but in the pain from life we have become broken people made from tin.”
The story of the tin man who lacks a heart which prevents him from marrying his lady love, cropped up as I was chatting with my girl friend, Channel. Sometimes, we get so broken in life with all the past relationships and hurts, and our feelings get numbed. Over time, we think that we have lost the capability to love whole-heartedly and totally, as we are afraid to get hurt again. We dare not open up our hearts to our loved ones, as we deeply fear rejection.
That movie Wizard of Oz was made in 1939…. so i guess, it’s not such an uncommon syndrome after all!!!
A quick search on Google uncovered this story of the tin man, which I totally loved!
The Story of the Tin Man
You know the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz movie? You know his story right? About how he was made of tin metal and had no heart?
Did you know there is a little more to the story?
In L. Frank Baum’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Tin Man has a chance to tell his story. He used to be normal, flesh and blood like everyone else. But then he fell in love with a girl. The girl lived with an older woman who wanted her around the house to do things for her selfishly. When the Tin Man confessed his love to the girl, she said she would go with him under one condition: that he build a better house for the two of them to live in. The Tin Man, being a woodsman, accepted the challenge and began working on their new house at a feverish pace. When the old lady found out about the Tin Man she would not allow it and asked the Wicked Witch of the East to cast a spell on the woodman and his axe.
One day, while out chopping wood, the woodsman slipped and chopped off his leg. A blacksmith repaired his leg. Then, he chopped off his other leg, and the blacksmith repaired that. He eventually chopped off both of his arms and his head, all repaired by the blacksmith. He thought all the damage had been done until he slipped and chopped his body in half, and as the blacksmith repaired him, he left out his heart.
The Tin Man now had no heart to love with and forgot how to love so he just kept chopping wood until he got stuck in the rain and rusted.
He forgot how to love, and no longer cared if he married the girl or not.
I think it is really odd that the Tin Man was, at one point, complete and normal. He was a human.
But then he fell in love and it all went down hill from there.
Even though this is a children’s book, I think we can find our story is very much like the story of the Tin Man. We come into this life complete and ready to take on the world. As time goes on we meet Jesus and fall in love. But very much unlike how we think things should be, that is when things get hard for us. When we fall in love with our Savior we start chopping off random body parts when the ways of the world seem to grip us and make our axes slip as if we have some sort of spell cast over us. Each limb we lose gets replace by a prosthetic, it looks nice but it makes us numb to the ways of grace and peace. Just like the Tin Man, at first the lose will slow us down, but we soon realize that having legs and arms made of tin doesn’t slow us down at all. It actually makes us better, stronger and more durable.
Believing that we are stronger with prosthetics is the lie that we take. This is the eating of the fruit in the garden: the feeling that we are broken, but that the world can fix us and make us stronger. First it’s a leg, then an arm, and before we know it its our heart.
So we work faster, longer, harder, and we chop down trees in what we think is the name of Jesus but is really for our own name. Instead of going straight to Oz (I mean God), we go into the world for our remedies. Our religion and spirituality of cutting down trees and making a little house for Jesus has left us cut, but only Jesus is the remedy and He isn’t even asking for a house.
Even though the Tin Man had chopped his body down and had no love to build a house for, continued to cut the trees anyway.
We were once human, made from flesh and blood but in the pain from life we have become broken people made from tin. We started off in love and focused, but soon lost sight and lost it all. We lost our love and got rusted in the rain. We got stuck. We keep chopping the trees of religion and fake romance even though we lost sight of whom the house is being built for.
But the real journey for the Tin Man really hadn’t even begun yet. His story really started when he was found – rusted – broken – made of tin. He was born, he fell in love, got screwed over, and then, and only then, did the Tin Man’s journey really begin. I have a feeling that I am stuck in the rain, rusting and in need of someone to come shake the rust off of me and start a journey down a road that leads to a new heart and some peace. As Oz gives the Tin Man his heart at the end of the story you become aware that he had a heart the entire time. Just because it wasn’t pumping blood into his veins, didn’t make him incapable of love. Just because it didn’t beat and squirt blood with every pump that he didn’t know how to love. I think the Tin Man just thought that he couldn’t love anymore and the same goes for us. At one point in my life I would have sworn to you that I had it all together, that I was complete. A couple of years later I realized that I was stuck and rusted out from doing too much in my life and realizing that I had no heart. For years I went through the motions of Christianity and religion only to find out that I am like the Tin Man, empty on the inside and cutting down trees for no reason. Spells can chop our hearts in half but they will never stop the beating because the beating comes from someOne else and nothing can take that away.
We may be broken from this life, whether the brokenness comes from relationships or addictions, we are all made of tin. Jesus is the remedy. Jesus is the one who has our heart.
