Avatar, Pagan Advertisement?

It’s sur­pris­ing the things you’ll find on YouTube, and I mean that in a good way. (**Spoiler if you haven’t seen Avatar**)

I came across an excerpt from one of Mark Driscoll’s ser­mons (his most recent series on Luke) in which he gives a brief analy­sis of the ‘wildly pop­u­lar’ movie Avatar. This is Driscoll at his most can­did: Avatar is “the most demonic, Satanic film I’ve ever seen. How any Chris­t­ian could watch that with­out see­ing the overt demonism is beyond me”. Ouch. I have to say, though, that I agree with him. I ended up see­ing Avatar a few weeks after release (the only time I could get tick­ets), and the one thing that really both­ered me about the movie was the amount of reli­gious ani­mism. I won­der how many (Chris­tians) will com­pletely miss the world view being presented–that every­thing is inter­con­nected, divine, and that the cause of our suf­fer­ing and unhap­pi­ness is dis­con­nec­tion from nature, not sin. Driscoll brings up this same point, yet goes on fur­ther to high­light the false Mes­siah / res­ur­rec­tion we see in the main char­ac­ter (Jake).

Kudos to Driscoll for telling the truth as he sees it. Espe­cially when all I wanted to do was lis­ten to a ser­mon on Luke. I sup­pose the only ques­tion left to ask is this: do you agree with Driscoll?