The Golden Compass & Paradise Lost

Y‘all’ve no doubt heard about the new kids’ fantasy movie coming out just in time for Shoppermas: The Golden Compass. It’s based on a best selling (though not in the US) trilogy by Philip Pullman. It’s a good versus bad story … with God being the bad Guy.

(My mind swims to an unbelievable island where God, lonely and needing work, remembers how Denzel Washington, the good guy’s good guy, surprised everyone by being so very bad in Training Day. Wait. Where was I?)

The urban legend source, Snopes, does a fair job with The Golden Compass data.

Mr Pullman ain’t a big fan of CS Lewis’s fantasy novels where God wears a white hat. Instead, Pullman is reported to have declared the intent of his own books is to undermine Christian belief. (Gosh, now there’s an idea! Hollywood, are you listening?)

The movie stars Nicole Kidman who claims to be a Catholic.

Where was I?

OH!

Here we go … The movie stars Nicole Kidman who claims to be a Catholic.

She is reported to have said that she would never have signed on to the project if she thought the films were anti-Catholic. (I imagine Albus Dumbledore, knowing now what he didn’t know then, wishes that he could renegotiate his own raw deal.)

Ms Kidman can click HERE for different directions.

Mr Pullman said: “I don’t know whether there’s a God or not. Nobody does, no matter what they say. I think it’s perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don’t know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away.

Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it’s because he’s ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they’re responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I’d want nothing to do with them.”
Source

It should be noted that …

While many Christians appear to be quite alarmed by the movie and books, Dr. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, actually supports and endorses the movie. He believes that it is not anti-Christian, as such, but rather anti-dogmatic or anti-control, issues that need to be addressed in the church.
Source

Friends, when thinking about all these things — The Golden Compass and all — it should be remembered that the Castaways, though they thought they were all alone … were not. Rather, forgotten aviator Wrongway Feldman, who had disappeared 33 years earlier, was living on the island as well. Though the Professor finally got him back into the air, he turned out to be of no help to the Castaways … as he could not remember the island’s coordinates when he met up with the authorities.

(Hopefully that last paragraph is clear enough even for the directionally challenged.)