| "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world.
Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to their desires.
All progress, therefore, depends upon unreasonable people."
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| “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to sell fish, and he'll eat steak.”
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There's one important thing I've always done when it comes to fiction.
I've always kept gods of fantasy entirely
separate from gods of religion.
Additionally, and far more importantly, I've always kept both of those previous two groups entirely separate from The One true God.
I'm a videogame fan. I love games like Zelda. I could play them for hours. I could go to great lengths to tell you the plot of each one and how the different titles weave in and out of each other and interconnect. Most likely you wouldn't be interested. However, I don't believe in the three goddess, Din, Nayru and Farore, who are the creators of this fictional world. I also love the Myst novels. I don't believe in the fictional deity Yahvo, creator of all possible worlds. Surprise surprise, that novel was even written by Chrsitians!
The point here is that just because a story contains a god, it doesn't mean you believe in him. The story isn't real, the god isn't real either. The fact that a fictional world contains a fictional god shouldn't cause you to reject the story or what it has to say.
Having a book that tells the story of a make believe world that happens to have no make-believe fantasy god in it shouldn't get people steaming, either. It's the author's world, and he can do
what he likes in it. Their god may not exist, but their world doesn't
exist either, it's fiction, and shouldn't offend people.
If you did know a little more about The Golden Comass, you'd understand why people who are fans of the Golden Compass series look at all of these Christians boycotting it and think "Wow, they have no idea what they're talking about. Have they even read the books before they're doing all this?"
It's important to know that most
non-Christians view all Christians as closed-minded. Boycotting a movie
you know very little about doesn't help our image very much.
If you have read the novels, that's a different story. Boycotting the movie in this case is entirely legittamate. If you're a parent, you have every right to not allow your children to watch it. If you're a parent and you don't know anything about the movie, but you've heard a few things that make you concerned with what message it might be giving to your children, again, that's a very good reason to now allow your kids to watch the movie, at least until you gather more information about it.
Most importantly, if you're a kid, and your parents say you shouldn't watch this movie, by all means obey your parents. It's God's commandment. However, if you're an adult, I urge you to be open-minded about this. You know your faith, and you know that no movie will change that.
Without going into any spoilers, the novel does end with a very good moral -- and, ironically, and perhaps unintentionally (given it's written by an Athiest), a very positive Chrstian moral one; concerining the importance of knowing who -or what- you put your faith into.
-Brad
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| Prometheus Dovgal: life as we know it has come to an end
General Yiyuan: Shame.
Prometheus Dovgal: tis
Prometheus Dovgal: what do we do now
General Yiyuan: Eat
Prometheus Dovgal: ok
Prometheus Dovgal: jello?
General Yiyuan: Yes.
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