| The Culture War Heats Up
Reverse Cultural Collapse & Revive Civilization
An Atheist Children's Fantasy, THE GOLDEN COMPASS,
Comes to the Big Screen
Insulting the Audience You Seek
Behind the Scenes of Jerry Seinfeld's BEE MOVIE:
The Joys of Making
a Wonderful Gift to Children
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On Dec. 7, 2007, the movie THE GOLDEN COMPASS based on the first book in the fantasy trilogy entitled His Dark Materials by atheist Philip Pullman will be released in theaters throughout the world. Pullman wrote his trilogy because he was so upset by the Christian evangelism that C. S. Lewis wove into his wonderful series entitled The Chronicles Of Narnia. Pullman is an avowed atheist who has dedicated his life to undermining Christianity and the Church among young readers. The film's release is another example of a culture deconstructing, a culture where we must declare truth.
Pullman represents God as a decrepit and perverse angel just like Satan in his novels, who captures the dead in a prison camp afterlife. As one fallen angel tells one of the novel' young heroes:
"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."
When the hero finally finds this god he is ultimately described as a demented and powerless creature that could only weep and mumble in fear and pain and misery. The boy then kills this god by breaking him out of his crystal cell, thereby evaporating him. The only god in this universe is matter.
Meanwhile, the Church is depicted as an organization bent on power, control and the torture of children. One heroine in the story who turns from the Church did so when she realized, there wasn't any God at all and. . . the Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all. Instead, the church just kept her from finding love, thinking freely, and pursuing bodily pleasures like sex.
There is no heaven in this universe, just a dank and dreary prison camp afterlife. Pullman thought Christians like C.S. Lewis positive view of the afterlife was a celebration of death.
The children in the story ultimately discover that true wisdom is doing what is right in their own eyes, becoming their own gods. The result of this wisdom is a focus on bodily pleasure over eternal truth. Although ambiguous as to what exactly happens, at the end of the novels the two children pleasure each other bodily and finally experience true joy.
The world of Pullman's series mechanically mirrors that of C. S. Lewis. While The Chronicles Of Narnia starts with Lucy going into the wardrobe to get into Narnia, Pullman has Lyra going into a wardrobe, but what Lyra finds is not the supernatural world, nor a world where God rescues His creation, like Narnia, but rather a world that ends in dust, where the highest meaning can be found in pleasuring each other and God is just a sniveling old man who doesn't know what he's doing.
Pullman's world is a sad, animalistic universe. Since this is the only world there is, the trilogy ends in hopelessness. Love is not selfless giving, because that would be useless in a materialistic world. Love instead is the lust of pleasuring each other. In Pullman's world, there's no hope of eternal life where the lame and the blind and the deaf and dumb can walk and see and hear and talk, where the old are made youthful, there's no heavenly banquet, there's no loving God, there's no order, and there's no peace.
The logical consequences of Pullman's atheism can be found in the lives of the leading atheists of the 20th Century - Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot - men who killed millions of their own people and had no respect for justice or love. Ultimately, it is a road that only leads to meaninglessness and murder.
Even though the movie waters down the book, it can only demean, devalue and diminish life. Therefore, we urge people of faith and values not to corrupt their children with this odious atheistic worldview. Instead, there are plenty of good movies this Christmas, such as ENCHANTED; that will build (and not destroy) values.
A society shaped by the materialist and godless ethic promoted by THE GOLDEN COMPASS is a society without hope. If there is no God and no eternity, if all that exists is matter, human life loses all value. Sex becomes the ultimate form of pleasure we can achieve, and unlimited autonomy from other people while being our own gods becomes the goal. A society like this will destroy itself.
Unfortunately, discouraging signs abound that the message of THE GOLDEN COMPASS is impacting our society. . .
Note: To learn the truth about the Chronicles Of Narnia, please read Dr. Ted Baehr's book Narnia Beckons available at www.movieguide.org or call 1-800-577-6684. Also, to help you can select the good and reject the bad at the box office and protect your children and grandchildren from wicked content, please visit www.movieguide.org or call 1-800-577-6684. Dr. Baehr is founder and publisher and James Baehr is a staff writer of MOVIEGUIDE®: A Biblical Guide to Movies, Entertainment and Culture.
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