So, have you seen “Avatar” yet?  This 3-D action film just passed “Titanic” as the highest grossing picture of all time.  I had no plans to see it, not for any moral/ethical reasons but because, well, just because.  But this past weekend I read an article about it that included this extraordinary review:  “This movie is from God.  The Holy Spirit spoke to me as I saw it.”  Having had no personal experience with the Holy Spirit as a movie reviewer I wondered if I should see “Avatar” and find out what happens.

I started by going online to see if I was allowed to see it.  It turns out, I am not.  You see, there are Christians whose ministry is watching movies we shouldn’t watch so they can let the rest of us know why we shouldn’t watch them.  Personally, I am rather glad God has never called me to that ministry but I suppose somebody has to do it.

Nevertheless, it left me with a dilemma.  On one hand there is the testimony about the work of the Holy Spirit in the movie, on the other, the strong recommendation I don’t see it.  So what do I do?  My initial reaction was to simply wait.  Perhaps, in time, the conflict would be resolved.  At the very least it would be cheaper in non-3-D DVD form so if I saw it, and it was a complete waste of time, I wouldn’t feel quite so cheated.

But then one of my co-workers brought a copy of “Avatar” on DVD to work and we’ve been watching it, a half hour at a time, on our lunch breaks.  You might wonder how he had a DVD of a movie that has not yet been released to DVD.  It turns out that his brother, who lives in a country where there are no copyright laws, sent it to him so it is all (and I am quoting here) “perfectly legal.”  Judging by the quality of the video, the angle of the camera, and the background noise, it appears that this “perfectly legal” DVD was recorded by someone sitting in the first row of a movie house with a video recorder, but that is another story.

So what about the movie itself?  I’ll start by confessing that I have no message from the Holy Spirit either through it or about it.  Beyond that I wonder what the shouting is about.  My primary impression is that only Hollywood can produce, without the slightest sense of irony, the most technologically advanced movie ever made with a theme that advanced technology is intrinsically evil.

  “Avatar” does not have any Christian themes or images.  It does promote a sort of “mother earth” view of the world.  But it seems to have become the latest in a series of movies that is greeted with furor and alarm by the Church.  Remember “The DaVinci Code”  “Harry Potter”  “Star Wars” and many others?  Urgent calls are made to protest/avoid these movies as they are threats to the existence of the Church.  Eventually the protests die down, the movies fade away and the Church goes on to face the next mortal danger Hollywood sends our way.

When Paul gives advice about meat sacrificed to idols in Romans he lays out an extraordinary principle of grace.  If you really think this is wrong, by all means, avoid it.  But allow others who disagree to go ahead.  Implied in this advice is the message that sitting fuming, thinking how rotten those folks are, is not good enough.  On the other hand, if you think this is OK, then go ahead.  But respect those who take a stance that this bothers them.  The same implication applies.  That Paul, the Hebrew of the Hebrews, the strictest Pharisee, could make this statement about something he was trained for years to regard with disgust is an astonishing triumph of grace.  But his message is that this grace is a two-way street.  To get it, we need to extend it.

It grieves me that issues like this consume so much of the Church’s energy.  We wage fierce wars over secondary matters all the time.  I have no recommendations for or against seeing “Avatar.”  For me it has been a case study in how a lot of people in our world think and an opportunity to bond with, and perhaps share ideas with, my co-workers.  But in a larger sense, movies like “Avatar” are opportunities for us as Christians to show some two-way grace. 

How do you deal with the times your fellow Christians hold positions opposite to yours on secondary issues?