The Golden Compass Review, Part 3

What do John Lennon and Nietzsche have to do with the recent Christian "up-in-arms" over the "Golden Compass" movie? Check out Thoughts on the Golden Compass over at Experiential Youth Ministry.

The Golden Compass Review, Part 2

My brother-in-law made a post about the movie as well. He makes some good points about boycotting and reviews how the movie stands up to other fantasy.

The Golden Compass Review

As I watched the movie I found myself looking for anti-Christian imagery or dialog and I had a hard time spotting anything.

1. Now I know the Magisterium is supposed to represent the church but I could just as easily use it as an illustration in one of the lessons as the gay-rights agenda, church liberals, or any other group that is fighting to have what they want at any cost; I could even label the Magisterium as representing atheists. I wonder how Phillip Pullman would like that?
2. According to Pullman the mysterious "dust" is supposed to represent sin and he contrasts Adam and Eve not as a great fall but as liberation, which means "dust" (or sin) is a good thing. But by watching the movie there's no clue given that dust and sin are the same thing. It's just made clear that something about the mysterious dust holds the key to something important.
3. I find it rather interesting that the author who claims to be an atheist and who wrote "His Dark Materials" out of his hatred for God (the one true God; the father of Jesus) would pull from other religions (mostly cults actually) for inspiration for his fantasy, whether it was intentional or not.
   

Maybe the fact that I haven't read the book is where I'm missing some important information. Or perhaps it's because Pullman's agenda for "killing God in the eyes of children" doesn't begin to really appear until the second book (as I've read from many reviews) that this first movie doesn't truly have an anti-Christian feel to it.

What I do know is this. . .

1. Those of us who are Christians need to learn that it's okay to have faith and ask questions.
2. That authors such as Pullman are most likely less dangerous than a high school teacher that loves Walt Whitman and teaches Whitman's personal philosophies; or countless other authors that are being held in high regard and taught in high schools across our country.
3. If Christians start banning the Golden Compass (as I've read the Catholic League is demanding of Catholics and many evangelical churches are suggesting to their congregations) then they are actually sounding a good bit like the Magisterium from the movie. No wonder some of the un-churched see the church as totalitarian dictator over the souls of people condemning them to hell for any wrong action.
4. Christians need to stop being so loud about what they're against, because most people don't really know what we're for.

Lastly. . .it wasn't all that great of a movie.

Evan Almighty

Sarah and I check it out last night. Initially I was a bit cautious. The first film, “Bruce Almighty”, was humorous, but sacrilegious content has a tendency to ruin a movie for me turning what most find to be funny into not-funny-at-all for me. After my future father-in-law told me he had heard a few good things about the content and message of the movie my interest was peaked and so Sarah and I checked it out.

First off, this movie is more like a spin-off than a sequel. It still has Morgan Freeman playing “God” but other than that the movie doesn’t really match up with “Bruce Almighty”. And second, I had a hard time finding sacrilegious content at all. Sure there was off or inaccurate comments being made about God but looking at it from the angle of people who know little-to-nothing about church their comments were probably what most un-churched Americans would say. In fact, that was an awesome point in the movie. The movie had a good bit of dialogue where “God” (Morgan Freeman) would correct misconceptions about himself and they were actually Biblical (Hollywood actually got something right about God!). There are also some awesome parallels drawn between Noah and faith, truly trusting God, through asking the question, “what if Noah was here today and was asked to build the ark?”.

I don’t want to provide any spoilers here for the movie, but this movie would be awesome to take un-churched friends and you should be prepared to explore some of the misconceptions about who God really is. This movie would also be ideal for the person who claims they’re a believer but doesn’t really trust God. The movie won’t answer any of these questions for you and it will only explore these things to a small degree but it certainly opens the door pretty widely for you to have the kind of conversations people need to hear and people need to be having.