The Golden Compass is the film version of the Book ‘Northern Lights’ Philip Pullman’s best selling, award-winning novel. It tells the first story in Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The Golden Compass is an exciting fantasy adventure, set in an alternative world where people’s souls are manifested as animals, talking polar bears fight wars, and Gyptians and witches co-exist. At the centre of the story is Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards), a 12-year-old girl who in trying to rescue a friend winds up on an epic quest to save not only her world, but ours as well.

Pullman has remarked that ‘my books are about killing God’ and, ‘I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief’. He has said that he wants to explore the questions which he considers are the ‘most important of all’: Is there a God? What does it mean to be human? What is our purpose?

As an atheist he comes at those questions from a particular angle. But such questions are absolutely fundamental and the Bible and therefore we should not be afraid of asking them, nor of considering someone else’s answers, even when they are profoundly different from our own.

The Golden Compass is a good film, the graphics and grandeur of events and scenery are excellent. The search for truth is key in The Golden Compass, it is what the compass is all about, it tells you the truth. Truth is something that we should be encouraging others to seek, and as we do so we need to engage with this film. It is a book that is widely recommended in schools and has therefore been a popular film adaptation, and we need to engage with the many questions is raises; is God good, is the church searching for truth or suppressing it, what is sin, was the fall a good thing or a bad thing?

I think Jesus would approve of the search for the truth; in John 8 he says this "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

The question is will we help others who are searching for the truth, who find that they can't answer the questions that this film raises, to find the answers in the right places, to show them Pullman’s errors and the truth about God?

In Pullman's books Jesus does not feature, there is no message of grace, no concept of a God who loves us so much that he sends his son into the world to find us, to redeem us and ultimately to die in our place saving us. In fact the God [the authority] that is glimpsed in this film bears no resemblance to the God we find in the Bible. We have nothing to fear from engaging with those who have seen the film or read the books and a great message of hope to give them.

Christianity & Culture