I wrote this article in 2009, when James Cameron’s Avatar was first released. With this week’s release of Avatar: The Way of Water, I am making the article available again.
______
“Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe
That all was lost.” (John Milton, Paradise Lost, 780-784)
The story is a familiar one—a creation filled with promise and a serpent filled with lies, a woman contemplating forbidden fruit, the man silent by her side. A choice was made, a hand extended, and the cosmos was forever changed.
No one on earth today has ever stood in the spot where Adam and Eve took their first taste of cosmic treason. Yet our souls still bear the scars of their ancient exile from Eden. Even those of us who thrive in the cities cannot seem to escape our yearning for a garden where natural harmony abounds. Top billings in online listings of “Best Cities to Live In” inevitably require not only plentiful sidewalks and public-transit systems but also slivers of the Eden in the form of spacious parks and tree-lined parkways.
Even in urban neighborhoods where the only foliage in sight is a single wisp of a weed straining through a crack in the sidewalk, the street names are likely to wax botanical—Elm Park and Oak Lawn, Evergreen Avenue and Pine Street. Condominiums at the corner of Asphalt Avenue and Pavement Place don't attract many purchasers.
Our primeval parents left the Garden of Eden, but somehow the Garden never left us.
Eden at the Cineplex
In Avatar, evidence of humanity's hunger for Eden was as near as the neighborhood movie theater.
Yet this film from James Cameron presents a paradise very different from the one described in Scripture. On the forest moon of Pandora, blue-fleshed tribes of Na'vi coexist in idyllic unity with the life of the natural world. Eywa, the mother goddess, balances and personifies this matrix of life. Although she appears at one point to answer a prayer, the “great mother” is neither personal nor transcendent. A biological network of electrochemical communications constitutes the inner life of this world. Living Na'vi are able to link themselves with this living network and commune with spirits from the past. In the year 2154, an ex-Marine named Jake Sully joins a Na'vi clan with less-than-noble intentions. And yet, when a greedy corporation joins with the military to take Pandora from the natives, Sully musters the Na'vi to defeat his former comrades.
This is not a new story-line, of course. Apart from the stunning three-dimensional animation, virtually everything in Avatar has been recycled from earlier tales. Without the computer-generated beauty, the story line itself is, in fact, rather hackneyed and dull. It is equal parts Star Wars and Dances with Wolves with hat-tips to The Matrix and an ancient Hindu tale tossed in along the way.
As it turns out, the theology of Avatar is nothing new either.
A Nature-Embedded God?
The God of the opening chapters of Genesis is like no other deity in Ancient Near Eastern literature. He infinitely transcends the cosmos and yet intimately involves himself with his creatures. His Spirit hovers over the chaos before creation. Yet he also spins a spouse for Adam from a piece of bone and converses with his creatures in the cool of the day.
What popular films ranging from Star Wars to Avatar propose in place of such a God are forms of pantheism, the belief that “all is God,” or perhaps panentheism, the belief that God is simultaneously part of and more than the created order. The presence of pantheistic tendencies in a film doesn't mean that a Christian can't appreciate its beauty. It does, however, call Christians to think critically not only about the images on the screen but also about the theological claims in the script.
Pantheism appeals to humanity's hunger for a perfect natural world by embedding God within nature. This has far-reaching consequences for our perspectives on God and the world: If God and the cosmos are one, creation is neither fallen nor broken; the cosmos is merely imbalanced. Sin is no longer rebellion against God but a failure to maintain balance and harmony with nature.
Multiple forms of pantheism may be found in Hindu practices and pagan philosophies that predate Christianity. Modern pantheism, however, traces back to the centuries following the Protestant Reformation, and pantheism attracted far less applause then than now. The Roman Catholic Inquisition executed Giordano Bruno for proclaiming pantheist perspectives; the Jewish community of Amsterdam excommunicated Benedict Spinoza on similar charges.
In the nineteenth century, earlier trends toward pantheism mingled with certain aspects of German idealism to spawn “transcendentalism.” Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau promoted these ideals in American contexts, with Emerson declaring himself to be “part or parcel of God.” In the latter half of the twentieth century, appeals to a pantheistic goddess provided many feminists with a neo-pagan path away from Judeo-Christian beliefs. Today, the shelves beneath the “Religion and Spirituality” sign at your local bookstore bulge with books from the ideological heirs of Western transcendentalism and Eastern pantheism.
The Problem with Pantheism
The problem with pantheism is precisely the same as its attraction.
In the words of C.S. Lewis, “The pantheist’s God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there for you if you wish for him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you.” The pantheist “God” is a deity in the background, available in all things but interrupting nothing.
Whatever else the God of Scripture may or may not be, he is never imprisoned in the background. He suspends the spinnings of the solar system and hurls hailstones from the heavens. He slays the firstborn sons of Egypt and splits the sea for the children of Israel. And all of these acts were preparatory for that moment when God would invade human history amid the amniotic fluids of Mary's womb and reveal his glory through a cross and empty tomb.
To merge God with creation is to discard the centrality of God's revelation of himself in Jesus Christ.
This is quite clear in a Huffington Post article in which columnist Jay Michaelson praises the pluralistic possibilities of pantheism. For those who believe that all is God and God is all, “sometimes God is Christ on the cross, sometimes the Womb of the Earth. Sometimes God is Justice, other times Mercy. This is how sophisticated religionists have understood theology for at least a thousand years.”
Here’s the challenge for churches in all of this: The perspectives of the supposed “sophisticated religionists” are more common among the people in the pews than most of us would care to admit. According to a Pew Forum study, nearly one-fourth of professing Christians believe there is “spiritual energy” in such natural entities as trees and mountains. Sociologist Christian Smith discovered that most teenagers—even in evangelical churches—see their faith as “part of the furniture in the background of their lives.” While not full-fledged pantheism, the practical implications of such a position differ little from pantheistic perspectives. Once I relegate God to the background of life, God can be construed as whoever or whatever I desire.
Exiles from the Garden, Seekers of the City
On a fan site for the film Avatar, I ran across one thread that included suggestions for helping people to deal with their despair once they realize that the world of Pandora is “intangible.” And, indeed, this dream is intangible—though not for the reasons that the participants in this discussion seem to think.
A Pandoran paradise is unattainable because God and nature have never been one. The cosmos is cursed, and all creation groans beneath the weight of humanity's sin. Furthermore, God never intended Adam and Eve to live as noble savages in a primitive paradise. Before sin ever entered Eden, God designated human beings as vice-gerents with a responsibility not only to nurture the natural world but also to fill the earth with new communities (Genesis 1:28; 2:15). Communities, cities, and cultures in a kaleidoscope of colors were part of God's good design from the beginning. God makes this clear in his revelation to John when he God consummates his eternal plan not with a return to Eden but with the creation of a “holy city” where the nations bring their honor and glory (Revelation 21:2, 24—26; 22:1-2).
Does this mean that Christians should purge themselves of every concern for nature and the created order? Far from it! Creation is the theater of God's glory and the context of divine redemption. The natural world still declares God’s wonders, despite the curse that’s upon it (Psalm 19:1-6). Christians in particular bear a responsibility to steward God's creation wisely and never wastefully.
These concerns are not, however, a call back to Eden.
Sin has turned us into exiles from a world that once was, but God is preparing his children for the glory of a realm that is yet to be (2 Corinthians 4:17-18; 1 John 3:2). Everything that is precious and good in this present world foreshadows a city “whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10)—a city that includes not only gates and streets but also crystal-clear waters and a life-giving tree (Revelation 21:21; 22:2—3). This city that is yet to come is no mere recapitulation of what Eden was; it is the fulfillment of what Eden was meant to be.
“It's so hard ... to get over it, that living like the Na'vi will never happen,” one person declared regarding his post-Avatar blues. “I think I need a rebound movie.” He is partly right. Living forever in a primitive paradise will never happen, and it was never intended to happen. And yet, no “rebound movie” will ever satisfy the yearnings of his soul. What he senses is the groaning of creation. And what creation groans for is not a restoration of Eden but the revealing of the blood-bought heirs of a kingdom on which the credits will never roll (Romans 8:16-23).