Saturday, December 1, 2007

Not everything that is Golden is Gold

Ok, this is a long entry today. I am all fired up! I have recently heard of the controversy regarding The Golden Compass and have been compelled to comment. Over the last few months I have seen snippets here and there of the previews and thought the movie looked quite good. Almost ‘Narnia-esc”. But through my cousin Pam’s blog I discovered a link to this blog which led me to search out the truth behind this movie and the books that inspired it. I believe this movie and the controversy around it is something every Christian needs to know about. I’d like to preface the rest of this blog by letting you know I am not a band-wagon Bible thumper who jumps at every opportunity to join a campaign against non-Christians. Every ‘campaign’ or ‘petition’ email I get is skeptically run through TruthorFiction.com and Snopes.com before I give it any credence at all, and even then I find most of them are working harder to reject non-Christians than to reach out to them. I’m not out to stop non-Christian media, I do believe we have a choice in what we watch, read, hear. I just think people have the right to know what they are being exposed to, that the truth should not be hidden in order to get a bigger audience at the box office. This one has gotten under my skin for a few reasons though, which I will get to later. First I want to tell you about the movie, the book, and ultimately the author.

Snopes.com, a site that looks into popular email rumours in an effort to verify their authenticity, looked into the email rumor that the movie The Golden Compass had anti-religious themes. They summarized the plot of the movie and series of books as following “an adventure of a street-wise girl who travels through multiple worlds populated by witches, armor-plated bears, and sinister ecclesiastical assassins to defeat the oppressive forces of a senile God.” Other than the senile God part, you could think this movie and these books are very similar to the Narnia series, a well known Christian themed series. If you like Narnia, you would probably be very interested in seeing this movie just from seeing its previews alone. I was.

I am not aware of what instigated a deeper investigation into the intentions of the author but I am thankful someone decided to take a closer look at this seemingly innocent movie. Now, the movie doesn’t literally portray a senile God, and may not seem, on the surface, to be anti-religous, however the movie has been sanitized. According to Wikipedia the Director, Chris Weitz said "in the books the Magisterium is a version of the Catholic Church gone wildly astray from its roots" but that the organization portrayed in his film would not directly match that of Pullman's books. Instead, the Magisterium will represent all dogmatic organizations. Weitz said that New Line Cinema had feared the story's anti-religious themes would make the film financially unviable in the US, and so religion and God will not be referenced directly. Attempting to reassure fans of the novels, Weitz said that religion would instead appear in euphemistic terms”. However, how many people have become fanatics of a series of books because the movies have been an introduction to the author. And if you already are uncomfortable with the movie from that quote, the books are much more sinister.

If you read the blog I mentioned earlier, you’ll find that objective reviews such as the examination from Snopes.com, have researched the author and point out that Philip Pullman was very clear on his intentions with his writings, especially in the Dark Materials Trilogy, where The Golden Compass is from. Quoted from their article on The Golden Compass, “Although literary works are subject to a variety of interpretations, Pullman left little doubt about his books intended meanings when he said in a 2003 interview that ‘My books are about killing God’ and in a 2001 interview that he was ‘trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief’”. And TruthorFiction.com (another email hoax/rumor research site), in their examination of the anti-religious claims shows a passage from one of Pullman’s novels where a character, a fallen angel says “The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty – those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves – the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself.” Although I have yet to read the books, I trust the research from these non-religious sources, and the undermining of Christian beliefs can not be doubted.

Now, I really question Pullman’s public stance when he says “I don’t think it’s possible there is a God”. The reason is this. What is the one reason that after thousands of years of corruption in religion that a belief in God has not died? It’s because of our personal experiences with God, it’s because I have, and millions of other people have, heard God’s voice and felt God’s touch. Pullman knows that and so in order to ‘kill God’ you have to make people believe that personal experience they have had with God was a deception. Pullman’s angle is that, ok, Yahweh may have spoken to you, and told you He is I Am, He is your Father, He revealed himself to you but He is not God. He is a delusional angel who is deceiving you. But, if angels exist, powerful angels that have the ability to seem God-like in our minds, who created them? Pullman’s book says, “He was never the creator.” Who was? “he was formed of Dust as we are” Who formed him? Maybe it’s just me but this ‘powerful angel’ bit does not explain away God in the least. It seems to me he is a pretty bad atheist.

Now, to the heart of the matter, the controversy. So, he’s an atheist, trying to ‘kill God’, trying to ‘undermine the basis for Christian belief’, so what? Don’t go see the movie. Well, I don’t necessarily agree with avoiding the movie altogether. What I don’t agree with is the movie being sanitized to make it ‘financially viable’ and hiding the agenda of the author. Parents should have the choice whether they want their children exposed to beliefs that are contrary to their own, not have it coated in sugar to hide the pill Pullman wants our children to swallow. They need the opportunity to give their children perspective, if they are going to watch or read the story, not blindly believe their child is delving into something innocent. I think it would be fine to watch this movie as long as the parents are aware and have the chance to discuss philosophy with their children. I don’t think children should be excluded from hearing about other religions and beliefs, that they shouldn’t be given an opportunity to make up their own mind, however, how they are presented that information is a whole other story. So it really makes me mad that the media covers a story like this with headlines like “Libraries are banning The Golden Compass because the author is an atheist”. I know it’s a trick of the trade, flashy, partial truth headlines to gain an audience, but even in the full coverage I watched, they barely distinguished that it is ONLY libraries in Catholic schools (which due to separation of Church and State, ALL Catholic schools are private and parents are choosing to put them in a faith based institution). Throughout most of the news story they mostly eliminated that fact. That’s what gets me really upset. How dare we object to and attempt to eliminate material designed to 'undermine our faith' in our faith-based schools! Solely faith-based organizations are not even allowed to help their members take precautions to shield our children from doctrine opposite of ours. Public schools are allowed to throw out doctrine to ‘protect’ those students who may disagree with it due to their own doctrine, but when it’s a faith-based organization doing the exact same thing it’s discrimination. Personally, I’m not trying to discriminate against atheistic free speech, we should just be allowed to choose how that message is introduced to our children. In fact, I agree with anti-censorship groups who object to censorship of the movie, I wish they had left it just as it was for people to see the real message that Pullman is trying to convey. Pullman isn’t upset that the movie isn’t true to his intentions, but that’s because he knows that it being kid-friendly is how to draw us in. Kids have more power over what they read and see today than ever before, if he captivates them as an audience, he knows his message will spread like wild fire. It is up to us as a Christian community to not stay in the dark about his message and be prepared to bring clarity to the confusion that will arise in our kids because of it.

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