HIS DARK MATERIALS

I’m thoroughly enjoying Philip Pullman’s His
Dark Materials Trilogy. These award winning books certainly have an ax to grind; it’s a heavily Gnostic one, too.

When I left off reading, the young heroes were raising an expedition to hunt down and destroy God. Not your typical young adult fare; at least, it’s usually not so explicitly told. I’m not through with the story yet, but I think they’re going to be successful with the whole enterprise. Assuming the books’ underlying myth, this won’t be a bad thing.

In my opinion, this isn’t an attack on the Father of our Lord (as much as it may have been meant to be so). The Authority, as God is called in the trilogy, is not the Creator. Obviously, not the same guy.

But there’s little doubt that many will confuse the god of Pullman with the God of the Bible. There’s even less doubt that Pullman’s church and the Christian church will become conflated. Unlike the situation with The Authority, however, I’m not sure there’s an absolute gap between the organization Pullman describes and the one I’ve experienced. That’s a problem. But the first step towards solving a problem is in realizing that the problem exists. Pullman is helpful here.

It’s good for God’s people to see themselves as the rest of the world sees them and to hear the story that they tell as a non-Christian might hear it. Though his story is about a different god and a different message entirely, we need to ask, “Why did Mr. Pullman think of this story when he thought of the Church?”

Wouldn’t it be nice if the simple day to day lives of Christians were enough to discredit the veracity of this sort of narrative? But they’re not. We forget that we are the message, and by and large we’re a message the world wants no part of. Like the church of Pullman’s novels, our own corporate self-centered demise ought to be applauded because neither have much of anything to do with The Kingdom- excepting nomenclature.

Anyway, I look forward to talking with my kids about this one. I think it will be helpful…and fun. But it worries me a bit regarding the audience as a whole, because it’s so well done. The new movie version (scheduled for release in December of this year) might actually succeed in subverting the genuine Christian story precisely where the embarrassingly flawed DaVinci Code failed.

Dr. Rowan Williams, current Archbishop of Canterbury, showed us what “being that message” might look like in a discussion with Philip Pullman. He didn’t blame the author for mistaken ideas, which the church’s own history has made credible; nor did he grow defensive when the author’s shots came close to home. He sat down, listened and conversed, and in doing so showed us the kind of winsome, humble, and intelligent person of conviction that others just might be drawn to. If all Christians were more like he, we could just enjoy this well told story without worrying about its negative effect; because no one could possibly find us lurking about in Pullman’s yarn.