The Golden Compass preview

I'm naive to think all of my readers, the dozen or two they may be, are Christ-followers, and in fact, some of the following may be music to some of your ears. But, I am a believer in Christ, so I figured I'd give you the following info about a great looking Christmas movie coming up.

And no, its not a copy-and-pasting forward--its all typed out by my own ten fingers.

So, there's a kids movie coming out called "The Golden Compass", starring Nicole Kidman, that looked like it would be pretty good... so, while we were sitting here watching "The Amazing Race", and the trailer/commercial for the movie came on. The Lovely Steph Leann, sitting next to me, just pipes up and says "You know the guy who wrote those books is like, an athiest, and the books that the movie is based on is totally anti-religious and anti-Christian." (this is paraphrasing, but you get the gist)


Doesn't this look like a great movie? Maybe not.

Anyway, I went onto Snopes.com, which is a great resource for rumors and such, and here's what I found...

Essentially, the book "Northern Lights" (which was relased as "The Golden Compass" in America) is written by England's Philip Pullman, a hardcore athiest, and is the first in a trilogy called "The Dark Materials". He's a guy who professes that he doesn't think its possible there is a God, and, in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, said, "My books are about killing God". Christopher Hitchens, who wrote last year's best selling "God is Not Great", has said that the Dark Materials trilogy is a rebuttal to CS Lewis' Narnia series.

There are some religious leaders, such as the Arch Bishop of Canterbury, has said that Pullman's negative portrayal of the church is really an attack on dogmatism, and other Christian authors (Kurt Bruner, Jim Ware) say that despite his best efforts, Pullman's books "also uncover spiritual themes within the books, which, like shafts of light, break through an otherwise gloomy universe—despite Pullman's best efforts to keep them out. In the end, the authors argue that Pullman offers an unwitting tribute to the God he intended to discredit.".. ie, (what the enemy intended for evil... you know the rest)

From what I've read so far, I've figured out that the movie's writers have taken lots of the anti-Christian rherotic out of it, so as not to offend the ever larger Christian family market (and their money), but you know what happens when people love movies based on books? Many times, they want to read the book. And in this case, any book written about killing God is not a book I'll want my kids to read.

Here is the link for the Snopes.com article I'm basing this on... here is Phillip Pullman's Wikipedia page to read about the author... here's the synopsis of the book "Northern Lights", (that was made into "The Golden Compass")

In case you don't want to read all of the book synopsis, just know that "...in the trilogy, a young streetwise girl becomes enmeshed in an epic struggle to ultimately defeat the oppressive forces of a senile God. Another character, an ex-nun, describes Christianity as "a very powerful and convincing mistake." In the final book, characters representing Adam and Eve witness the death of "God" (who turns out to be an upstart angel, rather than the creator)."

Finally, here's an article from Peter Hitchens (no relation to the aforementioned Christopher, I don't think), who claims Pullman is the "one athiests would have prayed for, if they prayed"

Anyway, I'm not telling you to NOT go see this movie, or write letters to your congressmen or protest whatever, you guys can decide for yourself and your family as to whether you want to see this flick.

I just thought it might be good to have an idea of what you were putting your family and kids in front of. I have a feeling that Steph and I will put our hard earned money towards something with more meaning, like "Fred Claus".