The "Golden Compass" Has no Moral Compass By J.
Matt Barber
With its fantasy world backdrop, sympathetic talking
animals and extravagant
battle scenes, the new movie, The Golden Compass,
may resemble C.S.
Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. But parents
be advised, this film — which
is very intentionally being marketed
toward children — is nothing of the sort.
The
Golden Compass was created with the benefit of a multimillion dollar budget and
big name actors such as Nicole Kidman, Kevin Bacon and Sam Elliot. It
opens December 7, and promises to be action-packed and visually stunning in the
epic tradition of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings.
But upon closer review, it becomes abundantly clear that both this movie and
the man behind it have a very certain anti-Christian axe to grind. Based
on the first of three secular humanist children's books by avowed atheist and
British author Phillip Pullman, The Golden Compass provides the opening "down
with God" salvo in the author's His Dark Materials trilogy. Pullman leaves
little question as to his books' central theme. "I don't profess any
religion," he is quoted as saying. "I don't think it's possible that there
is a God; I have the greatest difficulty understanding what is meant by the
words 'spiritual' or 'spirituality.'"
Ironically,
Pullman's confident pronouncement that there is no God appears to take an
exclusive backseat to his hatred for the very God he denies. "My books are
about killing God," he told The Sydney Morning Herald in a 2003 interview.
And in the trilogy's final offering, The Amber Spyglass, he does just that — he
knocks off the Almighty in a delusional fit of
grandeur.
Pullman's books
drip with moral relativism, that deceptively sweet, yet fruitless nectar of the
secular humanist. His portrayal of God — which is clearly intended to
personify the Christian church — is that of an evil authoritarian who spitefully
stifles human creativity, arbitrarily punishing
mankind for very naturally
and properly entertaining base impulses with unfettered
license.
In a telling and
pivotal moment in the series, a former nun named "Mary Malone," who is a central
character, poignantly reflects upon her realization that God does not
exist
: "There's no one to fret, no one to condemn, no one to bless
me for being a good girl, no one to punish me for being wicked. Heaven was
empty. I didn't know whether God had died, or whether there never had been
a God at
all."
And isn't that what atheism is all about, really? Our
fallen desire to have, "no one to punish [us] for being wicked." If we can
convince ourselves that there is no God, then we escape accountability for what
we do, or so we believe. It's not so much a-theism as it is
anti-theism. In fact, atheism is every bit a religion as any other.
But in the church of the non-believer, the high priest is cloaked beneath the
vestment of pseudo-"science" and parishioners worship at the altar of moral
anarchy.
Still, like so much else in our culture,
Pullman's aversion to God would appear to boil down to sex. Mary Malone
explains that her desire for sex was her primary purpose for abandoning the God
in Whom she no longer believes. "And I thought: am I really going to spend
the rest of my life without ever feeling that again? … And I took the crucifix
from around my neck and I threw it in the sea. That was it. All
over. Gone. … So, that was how I stopped being a nun," she
recounts.
Author and attorney David Limbaugh sums up
the anti-theist condition succinctly
: "It seems the most militant
'anti-theist' these days are either arrogant scientists
or unrestrained licentious types whose main
obstacles to faith are not intellectual, but moral — and that moral obstacle
seems invariably to be sex … sexual perversion, while perhaps not the worst sin,
especially when compared to pride, for example, seems to be the one galvanizing
the modern opponents of God."
Psalm 14:1 tells us, "The fool says
in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there
is no one who does good."
With The Golden Compass,
Phillip Pullman shares his heart with us — a heart that says, "There is no
God." And he clearly wants to influence your child's heart as well.
This movie's creation — or chance materialization, take your pick — has a
specific agenda. It is clearly targeted toward unsuspecting children with
the furtive goal of enlisting the next generation of "fools."
But do as he will, the loving God Whom Pullman rejects is bigger
than all that. He's so big, in fact, that He gave his only Son for you,
me, and yes, Phillip Pullman.
Just the same, I think
I'll spend my eleven bucks somewhere else.
Matt Barber is one of the "like-minded men" with Concerned Women for
America -- the nation's largest women's public policy
group. He is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law and serves as CWA's
policy director for cultural issues.
© 2007 Matt Barber