Stretched Illustrations?

(**Spoil­ers below**)

Some times I won­der how peo­ple arrive at cer­tain inter­pre­ta­tions of “art”. Strangely enough, I came across this arti­cle which sets about using Avatar  as a metaphor for “emer­gent evan­ge­lism”. The main thrust of the arti­cle is that we “don’t bring God to the other,” rather, that “we find God in the other”–Jake Sully is the per­fect exam­ple of this sort of mind­set, or so it’s claimed. I don’t want to exam­ine the entire arti­cle, only one paragraph.

Evan­ge­lism is a two-way street

This is where the Avatar movie is a great metaphor for what evan­ge­lism could and should become. Although Jake Sully entered the Na’vi world (Pan­dora) ini­tially with an agenda in mind, he got to appre­ci­ate their way of life, its beauty so much so that he wanted to become part of it. Even­tu­ally his pres­ence there really helped to save them. But it was some­thing organic. Evan­ge­lism should really be a two way street. We enter the other’s world because we really believe we are enriched by the inter­ac­tion and our hori­zons will be enlarged. We cel­e­brate good and beauty where ever we find it. Jesus often found faith out­side his reli­gious tribe (Israel, God’s peo­ple) and praised it (Matthew 8:10; 15:28 to name a few instances). Actu­ally, when we read the Gospels we often find Jesus sad­dened by the lack of faith among his own peo­ple and followers.

I want to begin by look­ing at the sen­tence “Even­tu­ally his pres­ence there really helped to save them” and ask­ing a ques­tion, by what means did Jake Sully save the Na’vi? To briefly explain some of the plot; as the movie goes, Jake’s agenda is to dis­cover “inside infor­ma­tion” about the Na’vi, gain their trust (under­stand their ways) and then con­vince them to leave their “home tree” (he was also expected to turn his back on them when the time called for it). How­ever, he grows to appre­ci­ate the Na’vi, even­tu­ally falling in love with one of them (Neytiri) and, in the end, he saves them from their would be human mur­der­ers. Assum­ing that Jake is pre­sented as a Christ fig­ure, then the anal­ogy — both in the movie, and in this arti­cle — fails. I believe there are three sig­nif­i­cant ways the anal­ogy fails.

Fail­ure #1 A basic tenet of the Chris­t­ian faith states that we are sin­ful, fallen, and noth­ing we can do of our­selves will bring us back into com­mu­nion with God (the Father). This does not mean that God can become man, and then use one of our meth­ods (where we couldn’t use it) to save us. Any human method of “sal­va­tion” is insuf­fi­cient. This means that for our com­mu­nion with God to be restored, He must do a divine work. How­ever, in Avatar this is exactly what Jake does–he becomes a Na’vi, sav­ing them with their own means.

Fail­ure #2 To save the Na’vi, Jake must betray the entire human race–it’s the only way. To ask a ques­tion: did Jesus aban­don God, or the Israelites? On the contrary–salvation is only pos­si­ble through God, not by any other means (and He did not aban­don the Israelites). In fact this also relates to the Incar­na­tion. Con­sider that through­out almost all of the movie, Jake only appears as a Na’vi, but in essence he is still human. The com­pa­ra­ble Chris­t­ian heresy is known as Docetism, the belief that Jesus only appeared human (and sub­se­quently, did not really suf­fer). It is only until the end of the movie, where Jake dies and is res­ur­rected as a Na’vi, that he truly pos­sess the essence of a Na’vi. But con­sider the trade-off. Either Jake pos­sess a Na’vi nature, or a human nature–he does not pos­sess both at the same time.

Fail­ure #3 It is assumed that the Na’vi belief sys­tem is not only as valid as any human belief sys­tem, but more valid than what humans pos­sess. This is the movie’s answer to the prob­lem of sin. When we first meet the Na’vi (Neytiri, specif­i­cally), we’re intro­duced to a Jake who is being scolded for killing. The rea­son? Every­thing on Pan­dora is con­nected and has a life force–nature and ani­mals (includ­ing the Na’vi) are in per­fect har­mony. It is not until humans — tech­nol­ogy dri­ven and dis­con­nected from nature — show up that this order is upset. This reli­gious sys­tem (which is very sim­i­lar to ani­mism, or pan­the­ism) is one of the tools Jake uses to defeat Pandora’s human invadors. It is a sig­nif­i­cant vic­tory when Jake tames a Toruk–he and nature are truly one. In other words, nature is god. A corol­lary of this is the teach­ing that devel­op­ment and tech­nol­ogy is bad. Had humans not become dis­con­nected from nature, we wouldn’t have had to travel to Pan­dora. And, if we did, we would have been peaceful.

Where the the­ol­ogy of the movie is con­cerned, we learn a few things:

• Suf­fer­ing is a result of dis­con­nec­tion with nature
• We can ‘save’ our­selves by recon­nect­ing with nature
• Devel­op­ment and tech­nol­ogy is bad, as it requires the destruc­tion of nature
• There is a life force which trav­els through all of us, con­nect­ing everyone

It does sound awfully sim­i­lar to New Ageism, or Pagan­ism, doesn’t it?

But what of evan­ge­lism being a two way street? I think that absolutely, such inter­ac­tion can be ben­e­fi­cial and enriching–human cul­ture is a gift from God. How­ever, it’s not sim­ply about cel­e­brat­ing “good and beauty” wher­ever we find it. That isn’t enough; good and beauty don’t restore one’s rela­tion­ship with God (nei­ther does mis­di­rected sin­cer­ity). It’s about fol­low­ing the com­mands of Jesus: “And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all cre­ation.” (Mark 16:15). I engage in evan­ge­lism because I want to see peo­ple come to know and believe and trust in Jesus. I don’t “evan­ge­lize to be evangelized”–I already know the mes­sage. I’m evan­ge­liz­ing because I believe the mes­sage and peo­ple need sav­ing. And absolutely, we need to form relationships.

A quick word on the pro­vided exam­ples of Jesus find­ing “faith out­side of his reli­gious tribe, and prais­ing it”. I must point out that the com­par­i­son fails in that those who are dis­play­ing faith, are dis­play­ing it towards him–they are prais­ing God, seek­ing after God. They aren’t being praised for their sin­cere dis­plays of faith in any other Gods. They aren’t approach­ing Jesus and say­ing, ‘You’re a nice guy, but I believe in Ba’al”. Jesus isn’t going to praise them for that sentiment.

In the end, if this is an exam­ple of “emer­gent evan­ge­lism,” then I fear “emer­gent evan­ge­lism” is a rejec­tion of Jesus.

Related posts:

1. Avatar, Pagan Advertisement?
2. Stephen Meyer inter­viewed by R.C. Sproul