The Golden Compass

Remember the part in Raiders of the Lost Ark?. . . the Nazis have found the ark and placed it in a wooden crate with swastikas stamped on the outside. As it is being shipped there is one scene where the ark causes the swastikas to burn up and be disfigured.

I just bought the Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman and I wonder . . . "If I set The Golden Compass next to my Bible which one will ignite?"

I have gotten six emails in the last two days warning me about The Golden Compass and its anti-God, anti-Christian themes. I haven't read it yet, but plan to read it tomorrow. So if you are looking for some good commentary you will have to tune in later.

But here are the thoughts of a Family Pastor and former Lit. major on The Golden Compass phenomenon.

One of the emails said that Phillip Pullman was anti-C.S.Lewis. My first thought was . . ."who cares!" But . . . they do have something in common. C.S. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, not for adults to discuss the accuracy of the allegories, but for children to have a reference point for the Biblical story. The Chronicles of Narnia are illustrations of Biblical truths. Lewis hoped that as adults they would remember the stories of Narnia and, as a result, more easily embrace the Biblical truths they represented. I.e. "I get it. Jesus' death for us is like Aslan's death for Edmund. He takes Edmund's punishment on himself." (Lewis also believed that this is exactly what God has done throughout history in myths. e.g. the dying and rising god myths. C.f. "Myth Made Fact." God was prefiguring, in mythology, the story that would become fact in Jesus Christ.) J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis called this preparatio evangelica--preparation for evangelism. Pullman, self-admittedly, is doing a different sort of preparatio--it is preparation for atheism.

To me that is not a great danger. The flurry of email warnings I have received is because the anti-Christian themes are so overt in the Golden Compass. I mean how can you ignore, "God is a liar, God is a cheat, God is senile." Sounds a little anti-God to me.

The undetected themes that pervade much of literature are the more dangerous. For example, I didn't get a bunch of emails warning me about the movie, "The Bridge to Terebithia." Basically, the main point of the movie was that the imaginary land of Terebithia was more relevant and had more powerful answers to the problems of everyday life than traditional Christianity. (Might have been a valid argument--traditional Christianity has had diminishing returns of late.) But, my point being, . . . I didn't get any emails on that movie.

Parents must be vigilant whatever they are watching. We must also remember that untrue themes can be just as powerful teaching tools as true ones. There is power in watching movies together and discussing the worldviews that are at play in them. This helps our children learn discernment. The greatest tragedy of all is that there doesn't seem to be any great Christian literature that is pacing culture and rivaling The Golden Compass. I don't think book bans are the answer. Christians should be writing the best literature. "The Bible is the great code of art." Who will be C.S. Lewis today? Who is writing the next Chronicles of Narnia?