Lately, a lot of ill press has surrounded the upcoming movie, The Golden Compass. Some Christian groups seem really irritated that the movie comes from a book written by an author who is open about spreading his anti-God stance. While I do consider myself an Independent Christian, I can’t honestly say I support or understand the need to boycott this movie.
Let me start out by saying that this is my opinion. I am not an expert about my religion or it’s history, nor do I wish to convey such an idea.
A lot of people want to “hide” our children from the influence of this book. These attempts to hide alternative religions are in complete vain, especially if you send your child to a public school. Our world requires us to come in contact with Christians, Muslims, Scientologists, Atheists, Agnostics, and numerous other religions. It’s almost fair to say that term religion is thrown around quite loosely these days, so I’m sure I’m missing quite a few others. You cannot possibly prevent your children from coming in contact with these conflicting ideals unless you take them out of public schools entirely, but what kind of life does that really prepare them for?
While I can’t speak for others, I want my children to be intelligent and think for themselves. Ideally, I would like them to follow the Christian faith, although I’m truthfully not picky on denomination. More importantly, I want my children to be exposed to the real word and, consequently, to other religions. I want them to defend their convictions while amongst their peers. I think being able to stand in front of your peers and keeping your convictions is part of having true faith.
If a single movie is able to change my children’s entire religious stance, my children never had a good stance to begin with. I have obviously done a poor job of being a Christian parent. End of story.
I don’t believe you can say the movie can start the path of disbelief either. It will be difficult to convince me that this movie can have a worse effect on a child’s religious beliefs than basic cable. I just don’t believe the cycle works like that. Sorry.
If we are going to prevent our children from seeing this movie, are we also going to prevent them from learning about the darker times in the history of Christianity? Will we prevent them from learning about the Crusades in History class? What about all of the times Christians have persecuted others that don’t share our views? I think our children have a right to be taught about the darker times of their religion, just like we teach them the darker times of every other religion.
I feel like a lot of people, Christians and otherwise, will agree with my point. I’d ideally like to have my children follow my religion, but I want their choice to be THEIR choice. If my children’s religion is their own choice, then I’m sure my children will see The Golden Compass in the same light I see the movie, just another waste of two hours coming out of Hollywood.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Jeff // Dec 14, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Wow, totally in agreement with you on this.
Good article.
2 Jeannette // Dec 16, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Have you read the books? I did. It didn’t change my perspective at all. In fact, the first book is just a fantasy and the parts that would “make you question Christianity” don’t really come until the end of the second book. People are so over reacting. This movie can’t be any worse than the Harry Potter movies.
3 Cathy // Dec 20, 2007 at 8:29 pm
*thumbs up*
4 Toni Alatalo // Jan 27, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I immediately kind of fell in love with the books - like how they went north.. and started to wish a great movie would be made of that. You know something that would really capture the, dare i say, sprit of the arctic. I mean there are northern lights (autora borealis), polar bears .. crisp freezing nights, when the stars show perfectly .. well certainly a nice classic fantasy kind of thing
Actually back then when talking with a friend, who had read it earlier, I learned that a guy here had wanted also to buy the movie rights immediately .. but it was not too surprising that they were gone already then.
I have not seen the movie yet, but certainly will watch it some time .. and sure hope it has good things in it.
I don’t actually recall anything ‘anti-christian’ in the books, but am not referring to every detail here .. probably i did not consider it too much then, many things have been easily considered ‘anti-christian’ (of course they are not as easily actually anti-christian. i mean, what would have Jesus considered being against what he taught?)
i am not christian, so i hope i did not offend anyone in any way - just liked the books and was happy to recall them. also the topic seems interesting: my wish certainly is that ecumenic activities are doing good things, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumene
in fact i hope that there is nothing that separates good christianity from what i strive to be. or at least the very core has to be the same, and i guess we know it is .. the golden rule, basically.
from someone taking early steps on the eight-fold path, in a Christian culture, in a country with strong pagan roots (of course, that’s everywhere - i mean old remnants are everywhere and that was a time of history. and it’s nothing to be afraid off.)
~Toni
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