I have a bit of commentary about the movie Avatar, buried in the comments over at the First Things blog. I’m seeing more and more strange stuff from people who ought to know better, so I’m going to have to write more about it. But for now, check out this link, for my comments and a few others.
Most of my comment:
I went to see Avatar, at the urging of my adolescent son. he enjoyed the beauty of the movie, as well as the violence of the fight scenes. (The adolescent boy market is a significant market share of the movie market.)
Appealing but wrong-headed movies like this are not harmless. In fact, the appeal is the problem. All the people living in harmony with each other, and with the earth, until the Evil Humans appear: this is not a harmless fantasy. This is the Gnostic fantasy that the world as we know it is evil, and that we can fix it if we only had the will and the power. Or should I say, the will to power.
The problem is that the world as we know it has elements of both good and evil. The human race has been trying to create perfection, and has never succeeded. Yet still the Gnostic fantasy persists: we, at last, have the secret knowledge that will allow us to live in harmony with nature and each other and never again have any trouble. If only we could get those Other people to stop asking so many impertinent questions, stop dragging their feet, get with the program, and enter into our dreamworld.
But the Biblical God says the created world is good, and that the world after the creation of man and woman is very good. Sin enters the world, not because human come on the scene, but because they try to make themselves gods. That is, they refuse to face reality: God is God, and we aren’t.