Avatar, Driscoll and fantasy literature

This is a little late in coming, but a recent discussion with my oldest daughter and wife about the film sparked some thoughts and I wanted to get them down before I forgot. These are just some basic ruminations based on questions my daughter was asking — she loves fantasy literature and we went and saw the film together when it first came out. My wife has not seen the film but was wondering about some of the controversy that has swirled around it within evangelical circles.

There is a sermon excerpt from Mark Driscoll that circulated around the web on the film. In it Mr. Driscoll stated boldly that Avatar was satanic and demonic. This précis is a riposte to his bloviation.

First, Avatar is that new species of the fantasy — or fairy-tale — genre known as science fiction. In other words, it is not asserting a philosophic or idealistic view of reality within our own as contradictory to the one we experience, but rather creates an entirely different place where creatures and things that we do not know exist. Pantheism suggests that known things are god. Avatar presents things, such as trees, as actual creatures- they are not trees as we know them, but exist as a wholly other kind of thing. Much like Tolkien did with the Ents in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The story of Avatar acknowledges the existence of earth as a distinct kind of place from Pandora within the setting of the film, they co-exist as two separate, distinct kind of places. It could even be argued that, contrary to classic paganism, the story of Avatar maintains the distinction between the Creator and the creature. What we have is simply a different set of creatures within a different environment.

Secondly, the humans who experience the alien world of Pandora engage with it as a distinct reality from the one they knew on earth. They do not experience a revelation in their own minds regarding the nature of earthly existence, but rather experience the alien planet as an objective, alternative kind of place. Pantheism suggests that men do not see reality as it is, and until their minds are opened to a particular revelation of it, they remain unenlightened. This is not the notion suggested in Avatar. The experience of Pandora is not activated by a personal revelation, but is a physical reality experienced by all who visit.

Having said this, the film suggests an explicit world based on the popular notions found in the Gaia hypothesis, ideas that date back to the Hellenic search for a unifying substance or controlling aspect within nature. That search for a unifying notion is not itself Satanic, as men are religious by nature. When men pursue a unifying idea within temporal experience, they express their participation in the fall of Adam, as oriented toward the creation rather than the Creator. They do this within the realm of this world, in reality.

But, when a fantasy world is created, and the creatures within it act in accordance with the reality of that world — whatever kind of world that might be — then what we have is a potentially interesting piece of literature or film.

Finally, and as an aside, Mr. Drsicoll asserts that the film is contrary to the cultural mandate found in Genesis 1:28. He does not go so far as to suggest that the film depicts people who are fulfilling the mandate, but his words suggest that the opposition to the invasion of Pandora is a denial of something that might be close to it. Mr. Driscoll demonstrates deep confusion about the mandate in this regard. But again, I am not so sure the mandate was ever intended to include fantasy planets.

I would hope that Christians would take more time to think through these issues. We can be faithful without compromise, and still engage the artistic works of fallen men with intelligence and understanding. Reactionary and dogmatic evaluations are rarely accurate or helpful. Although we need to be circumspect, there is much to admire in the work of all kinds of men. We should strive as far as possible to see the world without a jaundiced eye.

“But as I put my head over the hedge of the elves and began to take notice of the natural world, I observed an extraordinary thing. I observed that learned men in spectacles were talking of the actual things that happened–dawn and death and so on–as if THEY were rational and inevitable. They talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as NECESSARY as the fact that two and one trees make three. But it is not. There is an enormous difference by the test of fairyland; which is the test of the imagination. You cannot IMAGINE two and one not making three. But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail”.
— GK Chesterton