In follow up to my review of Avatar, I’ve recently come across a short snippet of Mark Driscoll’s thoughts on the movie (though the comments are quite old). Here’s a transcript of his sermon:
The world tempts you to sin, to use people, to disobey God, to live for your own glory instead of his own, to be a consumer instead of generous, that’s the world system.
And if you don’t believe me, go see Avatar, the most demonic, satanic film I’ve ever seen. That any Christian could watch that without seeing the overt demonism is beyond me. I logged on to christianitytoday.com and the review was reflective of Christianity today, very disappointing. See, in that movie, it is a completely false ideology, it’s a sermon preached. It’s the most popular movie ever made, and it tells you that the creation mandate, the cultural mandate is bad, that we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t develop culture, that’s a bad thing.
Primitive is good and advanced is bad and that we’re not sinners, we’re just disconnected from the divine life force, just classic, classic, classic paganism, that human beings are to connect, literally, with trees and animals and beasts and birds and that there’s this spiritual connection that we’re all a part of, that we’re all a part of the divine.
It presents a false mediator with a witch. It presents false worship of created things rather than Creator God in absolute antithesis to Romans 1:25, which gives that as the essence of paganism. It has a false incarnation where a man comes in to be among a people group and to assume their identity. It’s a false Jesus. We have a false resurrection. We have a false savior. We have a false heaven. The whole thing is new age, satanic, demonic paganism, and people are just stunned by the visuals. Well, the visuals are amazing because Satan wants you to emotionally connect with a lie.
I think there are some very good points made here. Namely – to get people to accept a lie you don’t give it to people for what its worth, you dress it up. Satan is terribly clever at doing this and I think Driscoll’s forthright comments are worth pondering. While I was suckered into the visuals of the movie I will admit that I found the storyline pretty laughable (and predictable).
Another good point he makes is that we must consider the spiritual affect of even a ‘work of art’ which has had such a profound influence globally. I heard the other day that even though James Cameron has only made 12 films they have grossed a total of +5 Billion dollars globally, making him, on gross earnings, the highest earning Director in history. So we must evaluate the spiritual and philosophical push his films make.
Finally, it may seem crude to some that Driscoll’s views this film is as ‘demonic and satanic’. I would challenge all of us to keep meditating on how close to the truth he might actually be. Anything which robs God of his true glory is both demonic and satanic. Whatever you think of Driscoll’s words, it’s been widely noted that Avatar pushes a particular agenda. And that agenda is not in line with scripture. Coupled with the fact that this is movie is one of the highest grossing movies of all time and we begin to see that its robbing of God’s glory affect may be more profound than we first think. What better, easier, and more glamorous way can Satan be at work?
Happy discerning-movie-watching. :)
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