Another example is Pullman’s portrayal of the Judeo-Christian God. Pullman refers to him as “The Authority,” although a number of passages make clear that this is the God of the Bible. The Authority is a liar and a mere angel, and as we discover in the third book, senile as well. He was locked in some sort of jewel and held prisoner by the patriarch Enoch, who is now called Metatron and who rules in the Authority’s name. When the children find the jewel and accidentally release the Authority, he falls apart and dies.
Additionally, Pullman uses the imagery of C.S. Lewis’ “Narnia” chronicles. “His Dark Materials” opens with the young heroine stuck in a wardrobe belonging to an old academic, conversing with a talking animal, when she discovers multiple worlds. So the young reader is lulled early on with the familiar feel of Lewis.
Nevertheless, Pullman’s work isn’t simply about using fairy-tale magic to tell a good story. He openly proselytizes for atheism, corrupting the imagery of Lewis and Tolkien to undermine children’s faith in God and the Church.
Q: Many Catholics, including William Donohue of the Catholic League, are speaking out against the movie. What should parents know before they let their children watch this film?
Vere: I don’t recommend any parent allow their children to view the film. While the movie has reportedly been sanitized of its more anti-Christian and anti-religious elements, it will do nothing but pique children’s curiosity about the books. I’m a parent myself. My children would think it hypocritical if I told them it was OK to see the movie, but not to read the books. And they would be right.
It’s not OK for children — impressionable as they are — to read stories in which the plot revolves around the supreme blasphemy, namely, that God is a liar and a mortal. It is not appropriate for children to read books in which the heroine is the product of adultery and murder; priests act as professional hit men, torturers and authorize occult experimentation on young children; an ex-nun engages in occult practices and promiscuous behavior, and speaks of it openly with a 12-year-old couple; and the angels who rebel against God are good, while those who fight on God’s side are evil. This is wrong. And while it’s been softened in the movie — or at least that’s what Hollywood is telling us — it’s still there in the books.
I read the series a few years ago, shortly after it was published. I enjoyed the first book quite a bit, although it was clear that “the Church” was a negative character even then.
The second book was not as good, and by the third it was clear that Pullman was writing propaganda, not literature. It was very heavy-handed, and some of his plot-line said seemed pasted together to keep his point in view, and it lacked that internal consistency that is true of all good fantasy.
These are not books for kids, and while I might enjoy seeing the movie, I do not want to encourage the producers to proceed with the next two, so I will not attend it.
Oh, get a life! Here’ the Harry Potter syndrome all dressed up and fit to evangelize. This is absurb. Children could care less about Pullman’s religious views not are they likely to be spiritually seduced. They want Good Guys and Bad Guys, action, secrets, special effects, wars, magic, a cracking story. Pullman’s books are halfway there and he has come cooooool ideas like the daimons, though these are obviously not original with him. He just doesn’t write very well, and the movie has the same strengths and weaknesses. Great special effects! Great names: Seraphina Pecula. Love those polar bears! But the dialogue is wooden, stilted, and often silly. We have people who can walk around in the bitter arctic night dressed in little – people who don’t shiver at all! In short, by artistic standards, the movie is second rate at best, about on the level with the movie of Lord of the Rings. But will the kids care? As I said above, get a life! They could care less. Don’t these adults have any real work to do?
Some parents feed their children organic foods, not because the conventional fare is outright poisonous, but because the organic food is healthier. Some parents restrict the amount of TV their kids watch, not just because TV is outright poisonous, but because there are more healthy uses of that time.
Parents have to be wary of entertainment which the author’s stated intent is to destroy the christian faith of children. I’d rather be thought a killjoy in this life than enter the next without my children following behind.
Larry, what children care about or want is not the issue. The issue is what is good for them. Would you not supervize the intellectual diet of a child as much as his culinary diet? The “real work” of adults is guarding the development of children. Or do you believe that children need no guidance and protection?
Larry, the comparison with the Harry Potter series doesn’t fly. That series doesn’t have an anti-Christian axe to grind. Pullman’s books most definitely do.
The movie has actually done quite poorly at the box office. Its opening weekend was much weaker than hoped, and in the following week its ticket sales plummeted 65%. It will likely not come close to breaking even on its $180 million budget.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/
What this means is that the producer, New Line (which by the way also produced The Lord of the Rings), will be less likely to greenlight production of the sequels.
Prohibiting your children from reading books that they are interested in doesn’t work – they just read them behind your back. (Ask my wife, a lifetime paperback romance reader). Better to allow your children to read the Pullman books, and read them yourselves, and discuss the books together. (Says this parent of to children who are not of reading age yet).
Scott, there are a lot of books in the world. You’d encourage your kids to read something that is an attack on the foundations of their faith? You’re probably better off not taking them to the movie and mentioning in passing that the books were written by a bitter athiest who hates C.S. Lewis… Maybe that would pique their interest, but more likely they’ll just shrug their shoulders and read something else.
Listening to otherwise sensible Christians on this topic has gotten to be a real pain. All you hear are variants of this stupid contemporary culture led “you’ve got to have an open mind”, “kids are going to do it anyway”, “forbidden fruit tastes better”… yadda, yadda, yadda.
So, do you give your 10 year old son a Hustler and then sit down for a discussion after he’s perused it? Same arguments apply. It’s spiritual poison and who knows, the boy might be reading it behind your back. Or like the parents who allow their middle-school kids to throw alcohol parties in the house or have unsupervised co-ed sleepovers. They’ll do it anyway, better to have them in a safe environment. As if there’s a safe location to drink spiritual poison…
There is an answer. It’s called being a parent, looking out for your child, supervising what they consume (eat, read, watch) and who they associate with etc… It’s difficult, but who said being a parent was supposed to be easy?
There are too many other good books and movies out there to spend time and money on Pullman’s atheist agit-prop. We’ll be reading and watching those instead. And remember, the second Narnia movie comes out, IIRC, next spring.
Jeffersonian,
search YouTube for the official trailer for “Prince Caspian”. Apart from having an actor about eight-to-ten years too old for Caspian, it looks like it is going to be even better than the first!
I saw that a few days ago, Libraryjim. It looks great and, I predict, will get an excellent box office. Amazing that Hollywood forgot that spitting in your audience’s eye isn’t the bullet train to riches.
Personally, I’d like to see Lewis’s “Perelandra” series made into movies.
Cabbages, it doesn’t sound to me like Scott K is encouraging his children to read “Golden Compass” (even when they reach reading age). “Allow” and “not prohibit” are far from “encourage”. Nothing makes forbidden fruit lose its appeal like shining a bright light to reveal the rottenness. If they are forbidden outright to read GC, no doubt some worldly child or adult will open the gate in “pity”. Discourage them in the same terms used to discourage smoking or drinking with sound reasons from a child’s point of view and they will likely have little interest in pursuing something less interesting and fulfilling than the true Christian life we parents should model without much lecturing.
Scott – This is the time, before your kids can read, to get really busy with the parenting. Fill their minds hourly with goodness and light, develop a close relationship, teach them truth, make them wise. Then, when they are of an age where you think kids are going to be doing things behind their parents backs, you might have kids who are filled with goodness, light, truth and wisdom. My daughters came to me and said something like, “Mom! Have you heard about this horrible movie coming out that says God is bad and has all this anti-Christian stuff in it? It’s supposed to make kids want to read the books!!! Can we e-mail our friends about it? What is going to happen to all the kids who watch it? This is awful!!!” Somehow, I don’t think my kids are going to be under their covers with a flashlight and these books….. and I didn’t need to forbid it.
And as to your thinking I should read them…. I think I’d rather stick with St. Paul’s advice. “…whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious….think about these things.” Philippians 4:8
Wouldn’t a faith that’s strong enough withstand an attack from middlebrow fantasty literature?
(and of course I meant “fantasy” not “fantasty”)
#10 libraryjim says:
Nice! I hadn’t seen that yet. (It’s here, by the way.)
Also I’m glad that the producers are ignoring Harper-Collins and doing the movies in the right order.
Well, ember, this isn’t being marketed to people of strong faith. This is being marketed to children, and really to children of no faith. And of course a strong faith could withstand it, just as a strong faith can withstand other trash. Doesn’t mean you should subject yourself to trash.
I don’t care what Pullman wants to say to me or my children. I know his motives and I will not spend any of my money to support him or his agenda. However, this might be a good discussion for a Sr. High EYC group or even a college group to have. As I’ve said when discussing God with athiests is that I don’t believe in the God they don’t believe in either. They so often have such a distored view of God that it doesn’t even come close to what I know of God.
So, my family will not be seeing TGC nor reading the books, but I won’t ban the books either (as that does make the books more attractive).
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Well, from a Christian point of view, the good news is that Rotten Tomatoes gives it a mere 46%. Propaganda makes poor entertainment.
Do I think parents should supervise what sorts of jams their kids are likely to get into? Obviously yes. Do I watch check the tV shows the kids watch and are there some I do not permit? But get real: Will the kids read the books they want to read at someone else’s house our under the covers at night? Of course they will.
Just how much will this damage them? On the whole, not much, even if they are old enough read old copies of Playboy. Will Playboy stimulate raw red thoughts in post puberty boys? Well, I guess.
Is Playboy like the Golden Compass? No, and that the point. They are not at all alike. Playboy speaks to that which is understood without understanding. It speaks as a hamburger speaks to someone starving. The Golden Compass and its ilk are wholly unlike this. The anti-religious bias therein is, to the young, virtually invisible, because they have no interest in it, esp. compared to their interest in desperate heroines, magic, daimons, battles with demons, armed polar bears. Can you REALLY not see the difference? Is Golden Compass going to turn them into atheists? This is absurd. They would have to be aware that an argument was being presented (which it isn’t) or they would have to have a preexisting bias toward atheism and Pullman’s bungling portrayal thereof.
This does not seem to sink in easily: The difference that count are not merely the differences in kind, but the difference in degree as well. There is a radical difference in degree between Hustler and the Golden Compass. There is as radical difference in degree between Happy Potter (and the charge that the books teach Satanism, as credible a charge as that Halloween teaches Satanism) and Hustler. Shall I stop reading Dickens Christmas Carol to my son because it portrays the future as black, silent, ominous? Or because it shows people who steal from the dead for their own profit and who are not punished? Shall I not read Wind in the Willows because it portrays animals talking, an utterly false representation of reality?
Shall I vote to stop playing dodgeball in elementary school because it is competitive and leaves a child capable of being hit by a ball? Shall I rule that all games in elementary school be altered so that there is no competition and so no one’s’ feelings are hurt?
Come one, men, when are you going to get weary of having your world controlled by the Mommy Society? Pullman is harmless because he has no more power to harm than Star Wars did – or the Lone Ranger. The movie is second rate and the books aren’t very good eithere. The kids will read them and move on. But here’s the Mommy Society wringing its hands. Well, I’ll say it once again, that once sure sign of a mediocre mind is the passion to pursue great principles in matters of no consequence – an Pullman is a mat ter of no consequence. LM
C.S. Lewis wrote that people are typically less influenced by overt arguments than by the assumptions underlying books, films, and other forms of entertainment.
Rational arguments put us on guard. Smuggled-in assumptions more easily slip past our conscious defenses.
LM,
I was with you right through the first couple of paragraphs. I do indeed think that there is a difference between Playboy and the Golden Compass, and that one is far more dangerous than the other. If the adolescent sneaks a look at Playboy for the reasons most do, it is far less likely to cause damage than the insidious damage caused by the anti-Christian propaganda of Golden Compass–because the adolescent who sneaks at look at Playboy is not reading the articles.
The problem is not that Golden Compass portrays a representation of the universe that is contrary to reality (as do Harry Potter and The Wind in the Willows). The problem is that Golden Compass portrays a moral vision of the universe that is contrary to reality–and that is something quite serious. Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” makes this point quite well, as does John Gardiner’s book On Moral Fiction. Imaginary world fiction is not a problem. Immoral fiction is.
And, no, I’m not recommending that adolescents should read Playboy.
Wow, Larry. The Mommy Society? I was quoting St. Paul. Guess he isn’t manly enough for you. Wasn’t wringing my hands, either.
Star Wars is pretty clear on good being good and evil being evil, and how evil sometimes tries to pass itself off as good but that doesn’t make it good. This stuff is a tad different, if I am understanding this right. And it is downright blasphemous in portraying God as bad. Many leaders in various church denominations have spoken out against this film and books, and not one of them whose comments I’ve read have been women, and therefore of course not mommies. Just curious here, but do you think Jesus would say this is an okay film and books for kids, or not? What do you base your answer on?
Re #20: Mark this on the calendar. We agree on something!
Re #22: And you sort of had me until you said, “the Golden Compass portrays a moral vision of the universe that is contrary to reality.” Clearly, it portrays a [i]theological[/i] vision that is contrary to reality… although that is somewhat subject to question if you analogize Dust, rather than the Authority, to the Christian God and recognize that Pullman’s model isn’t Narnia but rather Paradise Lost. The Authority and his Vicar are patterned after Milton’s Satan, which makes the Magisterium more akin to a cult of devil-worshipers than to the Catholic Church.
Be that as it may, the [b]moral[/b] vision is of a universe where evil exists much more substantively than any postmodern relativist would admit, where good must struggle against it even in the face of futility, where life may only be found by the pilgrimage through death, and where love can redeem even very, very bad people. The final sacrifice of Lyra’s parents, which saves both her and the infinity of universes, is a profoundly moral act. So is Lyra’s decision to turn her back on personal happiness for the sake of the general good.
Sure, Pullman requires more unpacking than C.S. Lewis, but the books are worth the effort. To answer #23, most of the comments on the trilogy that I have seen from church leaders show that they either did not read the books or read them looking for evidence that they were no more than a vicious anti-Christian parody of the Narnia series. If they were, I would join the boycott. I find them to be considerably more.
I just finished reading the trilogy this morning and thoroughly enjoyed them as literary fantasy, though agree with those who suggest Pullman’s literary art suffers (though not fatally, in my judgment) at the hands of his polemics in the final volume.
Now Pullman certainly has an ax to grind, but the trilogy is not simply trash. It’s far too serious, engaging, and philosophically creative to dismiss that way.
Whatever Pullman’s personal religious beliefs may be, he constructs a world that, in many respects, resonates with biblical faith: the trilogy presents the fact of human self-consciousness as a deep mystery, affirms the fundamental goodness of the material creation in all its concrete particularity, presents purpose-directed narrative as part of the deep structure of reality and meaning, offers a cosmology that is replete with beings that go beyond what superficially empirical evidence suggests, and so forth. In this respect the books give expression to fundamental questions that human beings ask about the world, meaning, values, and the like.
Now, of course, the books are anything but Christian. The caricature of the church, religious authority, people of faith, the nature of sin, the Scriptures, the creator God, and so forth simply don’t match up with the reality of what those are supposed to be. Yet, for all that, even the caricature is instructive inasmuch as it shows us something of what religion can turn into the hands of fallen people.
Part of what is so intriguing and enjoyable about the books (even if frustrating) is to try to discern what it is that Pullman believes about people of faith, where sadly he is right, where he goes wrong, and how genuine Christian faith celebrates many of the same values that Pullman wrongly sees religion as suppressing.
As a Christian parent, if my child were middle school or older, I would want her to read these books so we could talk about them. These sorts of challenges to faith aren’t going to disappear if we simply ignore them. To my mind, it seems far better and wiser for a child to encounter such views in the context of parental supervision and guidance reading fantasy literature than it is to shield a child from them, only to turn her loose and unprepared at some later point.
The delicious irony of the Pullman movie? [url=http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=214]Its financial collapse is bringing to life another Tolkein work: The Hobbit[/url]
Re #26: Apparently, we are to be doubly blessed. They are doing it as two films, rather than one. Peter Jackson will only be producing, however, not directing.
Don’t get so worked up guys! If you want to live into the tension of consuming exquisitely crafted anti-Christian literature with your impressionable children, more power to you. However, if this anything goes permissiveness is indicitive generally of your parenting ethos, don’t be surprised if your children end up nice and polite as can be, but just not that interested in that whole church thing…
I do love the whole, “it can’t be bad, it’s so entertaining and well written”! It’s like little Ralphie Wiggum complaining when Chief Wiggum takes the anti-freeze away “But it tastes so good!”
The other line of argument I’m really getting a kick out of is the “my kids aren’t bright enough to pick up on the anti-Christian elements, they just really enjoy the action!” Maybe you guys should be giving your kids a little more respect for their powers of discernment (which is not to say the maturity to process the messages they are so discerning)…
I don’t know if you watched the extras on the LoTR, #26, but Peter Jackson can easily be described as a “hands-on” type. I don’t see him getting too far from these films.
I don’t have a problem with parents shielding a child from literature with messages they disagree with (especially if the child is insufficiently mature or the parents don’t have the time or inclination to help the child discern and process). That’s parental prerogative.
Still, I don’t think it’s wise to over-shelter children from every possible negative influence. It’s much better to train them to understand, wrestle with, and critically assess such influences.
I also hope parents would be consistent in the application of their principles. If Pullman is ruled out, then one should also rule out other works designed to undermine orthodox faith such as Paradise Lost, Gulliver’s Travels, Moby Dick, and so forth.
I would like Kirk Hadaway to look at the statistic of how many kids who grew up in the Episcopal Church actually end up Christians. My wager is that it is pretty low. We had a recent get together of choir members, past and present, to celebrate the retirement of choir director. One of the members asked this very question and the results for children of these very active members, and the results were abysmal.
Why? I see the answer in many of the responses here, “Oh, let us not be overly paternalistic.”
I appreciate Larry Morse’s argument. It has some merit, though I am not convinced that children do not at all absorb unhealthy biases and philosophical premises merely becaus ethey aren’t interested in them and because ‘it’s a ripping good yarn”. The Da Vinci Code was a “ripping good yarn”, if you could get ignore the idiotic historical and religious fantasy (which I couldn’t), but that doesn’t mean that many people who read it as entertainment didn’t come away thinking that some of the alleged history might be true.
As to the moral vision of the books: I do not understand how Dale can say they are moral in a Christian sense. Just have good fight evil does not equate to Christian morality. It is how good fights evil and what is valued in the fight that determines the moral tenor of the books. One could as easily say that Mein Kamph is a moral book because it is about the struggle between good (the pure Aryan race) against evil (Jews, Communists and the weak).
But I am really puzzled that William Witt thinks some bad fantasy literature is more dangerous to the adolescent psyche than pornography. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Garver, what do you mean by “overshelter”? Unless you live in the middle of Alaska, even the most “sheltered” kid is having to deal with far more societal crud and anti-Christian propaganda than any of us did growing up. The choice is something like having your kid exposed all day long every day to every sort of moral decay, or working hard to occasionally give them a break from the onslaught. Skipping this movie and book trilogy is an easy way to just give them a break. It’s not like they need extra practice at holding to the faith or being moral or coping with an evil world. They get plenty of that. Sheesh.
By “over-shelter” I’m thinking of folks I know who isolate their kids inside an evangelical bubble – homeschooling, no movies or TV, Christian-only social circles, etc. I’ve know enough kids rebel from that sort of upbringing and really run off the rails that I’m very wary of it.
It seems to me that part of the point of literature is to hold a mirror or lens up to reality so that inter-connections, assumptions, patterns, and contours within our lives are thrown into relief by a literary representation that makes explicit what may be less clear in our actual lives. It is precisely in artificially constructed environments provided by art, literature, philosophical texts, and so forth that we train young people to grapple with the problems life presents so that they do indeed get the sort of extra practice they need before they face those problems more fully in real lived situations.
I haven’t seen the film, so can’t speak to that, but Pullman’s books are worthwhile, I think, because they aren’t run-of-mill societal crud and moral decay. They’re well-crafted from a literary standpoint and, while bearing witness to a sometimes over-the-top anti-Christian bias, they nonetheless hold out a strong moral code that far more often than not resonates with Christian virtues and values.
Thus, the books effectively raise the problem of the moral pagan, as well as the question of why caricatures of Christian faith persist and how we as Christians contribute to those caricatures. Or, to put things another way, the “god” of Pullman’s novels – and the “church” devoted to him – is clearly not the Triune God of Christian faith and, indeed, Pullman’s own ethics is far closer to biblical values than the forms of religiosity he critiques.
Yet, his caricature rings all too true of some varieties of putatively Christian belief and practice, thereby serving to unmask our own forms of idolatry (writers such as Freud or Nietzsche could serve similar purposes in their respective fields). Thus, engaging with the novels can provide a sort of spiritual discipline. I know I found the reading experience challenging and edifying.
Besides, since the books are assigned in a lot of high school English classes these days, they may also provide a site for Christian teens to engage their peers concerning matters of faith – admitting where the church has too often fallen short, showing where Pullman’s portrayal of religious faith rings falsely, and pointing out how genuine Christian faith provides the best of what Pullman really seems to want and even more.
And I’m not suggesting anyone encourage 8 year olds to read the trilogy. The books are clearly aimed, I think, at kids no younger than middle school (13 and up, I’d say).
If they are aimed at kids no younger than middle school, why does my local Borders have the display of the books set up in the little kids area?
No idea – you’ll have to take that up with Borders. On the publisher’s website (Scholastic) they put it in the 9-13 year old category but list the grade level equivalent as 7.6 and include it variously among books for “young adults,” “teens and tweens,” and “older readers.” It’s definitely not intended for younger readers.
After all, the trilogy is, in large part, a typical coming-of-age story with main characters on the cusp of adolescence and so would most naturally connect with that age and up. Even the film version is rated PG-13, which is consistent, I think, with the content of the books.
[blockquote]But I am really puzzled that William Witt thinks some bad fantasy literature is more dangerous to the adolescent psyche than pornography. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.[/blockquote]
I very carefully qualified what I wrote. I did not say that bad fantasy literature is more dangerous to the adolescent psyche than pornography.
I repeat what I wrote in an earlier thread:
I haven’ t read the books–but my wife has, and she loves them. However, when we went to see the movie together, I was a bit surprised. I had read in reviews that the movie “toned down†the anti-religious message of the books. If this is toning down, I’d hate to think what the real thing is like!
What I found most interesting was the different reaction my wife and I had. She, having read the books, and utterly enchanted by the idea of the animal “daemons†(external souls) that follow characters, completely missed what was for me blitheringly obvious, namely that “the magisterium†(=Christianity) wanted to destroy healthy sexuality through sexual repression (the forced separation of the daemon from its person, a kind of psycho-spiritual castration) and turn all people into robotic, docile believers. If anyone missed the point, the “office†of the magisterium where the polar bear’s armor was kept hidden was (in the movie) an Orthodox Church.
Sure, you can come up with rationalizations. Those who are not religious, or anti-religious, and still adore the Chronicles of Narnia, do all the time. I’m OK with that. But let’s admit that they are rationalizations.
Aesthetically, my biggest peeve with the Pullman universe, as I understand it from the movie and from what others have told me (or I have read elsewhere) about the books, is that Pullman wants to have it both ways. We can have daemons, witches, alethiometers, etc., all very mythopoetic—but there can be no real transcendence behind them. And if anyone mentions, say, Star Wars, well, does anyone think that George Lucas actually believes in the Force? That’s just a story-telling device, a convenience to provide a rationale for the Jedi, etc. No one is supposed to take it seriously. Whereas Pullman really does believe the atheism that informs his books–read any interview.
That might not stop me from enjoying them, any more than Isaac Asimov’s atheism would stop me from enjoying the Foundation trilogy, or Homer’s paganism from loving the Iliad. But I wouldn’t come up with some rationalized cover just to comfort myself.
I very carefully qualified what I wrote.
If you carefully crafted what you wrote your care is extremely foolish. You imply that an adolecent “looking” at pornography and exciting his lust is less dangerous than reading a bad idea that he doesn’t care about that much anyway.
That’s nonsense. A child reading Pulllman may and my not get out off it what Pullman intends. But the child’s critical faculties are much more egagerd than they are when that child is following more basic instincts looking at pictures of naked women and getting out of it EXACTLY what the magazine intends.
Garver, I don’t need to take it up with Borders. I was just responding to your assertion that this is clearly being marketed to kids over 13. You’re wrong. The Borders display is in the 9-12 year old section of the store, and this morning on Borders.com it is listed as the number one best-seller for “children’s books – ages 9-12”. That is marketing.
I didn’t mention marketing. I said the books are “aimed at” middle school and up, which is confirmed by the author himself and by the Scholastic website. That’s the audience they’re written for. Whether or not Borders wants to market them to a younger crowd is their problem.
Great argument # 42. I’ll be sure to pass that line of reasoning along to the executives at Camel. I can hear the congressional testimony now: “Our product is ‘aimed at’ adults. This is confirmed both by our say-so and by our website. Whether or not we are buying full page adds in Highlights and Sports Illustrated for Kids is beside the point.”
I sometimes wonder if certain people bother to think through the logic of their posts before hitting submit.
Here’s a thought exercise. Is it possible that the cigarette company could be lying about it’s intent to market only to adults (given the evidence that they do in fact market their poison to children and it’s in their financial interest to do so)?
Is it possible that Pullman is lying about his books being “aimed at” more mature audiences (given the evidence that they are being activley marketed to younger children and Pullman’s clearly stated ideological interest in marketing his poisonous athiesm to impressionable children)?
Of course, Pullman has explicitely stated that he wrote these books as “children’s fiction” in order to play the role of the anti-C.S. Lewis… Kind of hard to claim that the author didn’t intend his children’s books to be read by children now, isn’t it. Or are we hanging our hats on the fact that middle-schooler’s aren’t children? I guess this ties into the whole, let’s give middle-schoolers condoms line of thinking…
Garver,
You are really ill-informed about homeschoolers. Homeschooled children consistently score higher on standardized tests, do better in contests such as spelling bees, and even go on to win the Heisman Trophy:
[blockquote][i](Tim Tebow’s)[/i] parents were missionaries in the Philippines, and when his mother fell seriously ill while she was pregnant with him–and the doctors recommend she exercise her “reproductive right” and abort him–she went through and delivered Tim Tebow in August of 1987.
The Tebow’s homeschooled their children, and after seeing Tim’s remarkable athletic ability, took advantage of a Florida law allowing homeschooled students to participate on the sports teams of their local public schools. As quarterback, Tim Tebow eventually led the Nease High School Panthers to a state championship and garnered awards for himself.
He went to play for the University of Florida’s Gators, and is now the first sophomore EVER to win the coveted Heisman Trophy. This means he has two more years in which he can potentially win the trophy again.
Kudos go out to Mrs. Tebow for choosing life. Kudos go out to the Tebow family for showing the support of their son and sibling in his chosen pursuit. Finally, kudos go out to Tim Tebow for working so hard.[/blockquote]
[blockquote]You imply that an adolecent “looking†at pornography and exciting his lust is less dangerous than reading a bad idea that he doesn’t care about that much anyway.[/blockquote]
No, Christopher. You implied this. You certainly may disagree with what I wrote, but please disagree with an idea I actually expressed, not with an implication you have drawn from an idea I did not express.
I was making a point–which I will stand by, that ideas have consequences, and subversive ideas are dangerous, and sometimes even more dangerous than the kind of material to which it was being compared. Nor did I say that either kind of material was harmless. I specifically included the last sentence of what I wrote to prevent people making the kind of interpretation of what I wrote that you seem to have drawn anyway.
I was not advocating lust–I never used the word. Nor was I implying that lust was not harmful. Nor did I use the words “child” or “pornography,” both of which are less specific than the actual words I used. Look at exactly the words I wrote. They follow the qualifier “if.”
Then disagree if you wish with what I actually wrote.
Having expressed my irritation about what I regard as misrepresentation, and having had a little time to cool off, might I restate the proposition suggested by Christopher Hathaway:
The temptation to commit lust is less dangerous in terms of one’s eternal destiny than the temptation to despair or nihilism.
Most thinkers in the Catholic tradition would agree with the above proposition, including Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Luther, and C.S. Lewis.
As would I. The most damnable sins are the cold spiritual sins–with pride, presumption, despair, and unbelief being among the worst. The warm sins of the flesh, while more empirically obvious, are also more easily redeemable, as they are more clearly sins of misplaced love.
So, yes, I would argue that the reading of books or the seeing of films like The Golden Compass, insofar as their very intent is to insidiously tempt the reader to commit the cold spiritual sins could actually be more dangerous to one’s salvation than soft-core erotic material like Playboy, whose appeal to the warm fleshly sins is not at all subtle.
My point was not too say that magazines like Playboy are harmless, but that books like The Golden Compass are positively damnable.
On the other hand, all sins are damnable. If the devil can get the same result with lust as he can with pride, he is happy to use lust.
And, to add just one qualifier, when I wrote “If the adolescent sneaks a look at Playboy for the reasons most do,” I was thinking primarily about sexual curiosity, which is not exactly the same as lust.
And, finally, I reiterate what I wrote in my original last sentence:
And, no, I’m not recommending that adolescents should read Playboy!!!!!!!!!!
(The exclamation points are just in case someone missed the point of the bold face.)
And when did I make a generalization about all homeschoolers?!? Or mention anything about test scores?? Sheesh. I’ve got plenty of friends who homeschool and we did so for a while with my own daughter. It’s the best choice for many folks.
I was simply suggesting one possible way in which a child could be over-sheltered, which isn’t homeschooling in itself, but only as part of a lifestyle designed to isolate from the world. Don’t read more into what I said than is there.
And as for Cabbages comment, what can I say? Maybe you’re right. I just don’t interpret the world through that sort of hermeneutic of suspicion. Personally I consider books aimed at middle schoolers to still be children’s fiction. Moreover, Pullman’s books are written at higher reading level and conceptual level than Narnia.
So, let’s just say that whatever the intentions of the author, publisher, or marketer (which very often are at odds, if you know anything about the publishing world), I wouldn’t want my kids reading them until they were in middle school or above. Am I allowed to come to my own discernments as a Christian parent about what my kids are permitted to read and when? If you aren’t careful, some of you good folks may begin to make Pullman’s caricature of the “Magisterium” more nearly believable.
“Am I allowed to come to my own discernments as a Christian parent about what my kids are permitted to read and when?” Sure. You’re “allowed” to do just as you wish! 🙂 We’re all entitled to make mistakes after all… It’s not like there’s anything “truly” important on the line when it comes to raising your kids as Christian…
The temptation to commit lust is less dangerous in terms of one’s eternal destiny than the temptation to despair or nihilism.
My point was not too say that magazines like Playboy are harmless, but that books like The Golden Compass are positively damnable.
I see this is what you are saying. But you are also implying that the efficay of the tempatation to commit lust lby ooking at Playboy is no greater than the efficacy of reading Pullman to be tempted toward nihilism. My point is that the very act of looking at Playboy is much more likely to induce the kind of psyche distorting lust than is reading Pullman to induce a temptation to nihilism. Sure, Pullman is selling nihilism just as much as Hefner is selling lust, but Hefner requires little intellectual assent and his temptation is very much the only game being played when looking at his magazine. As you said, they aren’t reading the articles.
Pullman, howvere has woven his nihilism within a mildly entertaining story, thus, while the call to nihilism is there, it isn’t what is drawing the readers.
Imagine the temptations dressed up this way. There are two roads a boy can go down in the city. One has a cranky man telling him, “life is meaningless, kid. Destroy yourself”. The other road has a beautiful sexily dressed woman who says, “Would you like to come inside and enjoy yourself?”
Which temptation represents a temptation to greater danger? The first one. Which temptation is more likely to have an impact on a boy? The second one, no question about it. If I had to choose which road to let the boy walk down I would choose the second as there is very little reason to suspect he would find such advice really tempting.
Playboy is more effective at selling its poison than Pullman is at selling his, because the nature of adolescent boys doesn’t naturally lead to nihilism but it certainly leads to looking at girls.
Having both read the [/i] His Dark Materials [i/] trilogy (and been impressed) and seen the recent movie (and been disappointed), I feel compelled to comment.
If the image of God you worship or the vision of church to which you submit can even be recognized as being caricatured in Pullman’s novels, you have much deeper problems than one grumpy atheist’s scratchings can dream of causing.
Pullman’s fictional “Dust” has much more in common with the activity of God as the best of our faith and other human religions have apprehended it than does the “Church” of Lyra’s world. It is telling, to me, anyway, that, when the action moves to [i/]our[i/] world, the minions of “authority” are secular. (One disillusioned Nun is not enough to constitute a condemnation of the Church to me.)
I bought the trilogy for my home-schooled neice some years ago. I don’t know if my sister has allowed her to read them yet (the kid’s fifteen, though, now).
The movie pulled too many punches, and allowed far too little exposition, so the profound differences between Lyra’s world and ours couldn’t sink in. The result was a specatacle without enough meaning for any argument to sink in.
I doubt if more movies will be made from the trilogy. I will also be disappointed, because they have a great and valuable – and [i/]Christian[i/] – moral lesson to teach, concerning power and its abuse, false gods and how easy it can be to do evil in their name, and moral responsibility in general.
Pullman is an atheist, but he is, by his own admission, and Anglican atheist.
Caveat: I’ve neither read the books nor seen the movie.
But my impression is, for the savvy Christian parent, these are interesting but not let-you-middle-schooler-read-them books. I speak as the mother of a very precocious 3rd grader who is deep in the 4th Harry Potter novel. He definitely has the comprehension of a 12-13 year old – but in spite of both a solid Anglican (church) and equally solid Lutheran (school) theological background, I’m not ready for him to delve into these books. It seems to me that these – for the Christian child, anyway – are for older children who are a little more advanced in abstract thought. A senior youth group discussion of the Pullman books vs. The Screwtape letters would be fascinating. Theologically for the Christian child, these are not banned books – but definitely post confirmation (assuming parents allow children to pursue confirmation when they are truly spiritually ready.)
Christopher Hathaway, I’ve truly appreciated your comments on this thread. I believe you are right on target.
Ross, I’ve also appreciated your comparisons to Narnia & Screwtape. These books are now on my list for after holiday studies.