Right-wingers always relishing someone with whom to fight – here and abroad – are responding to James Cameron's epic, Oscar-favored film Avatar with disgust, as I suspected they would.  I concur, meanwhile, with the view of a mature and theologically sound evangelical campus minister friend:  “I was rooting for the natives.”

I can understand why some non-Christian conservatives would not like the messages of Avatar.  But Bible-believing professors of Christ are another matter.  Do I believe Cameron is off base with the pagan animism he evinces in Avatar, and headed for hell personally unless he believes on the Lord Jesus Christ? Yes.  It is tragic that so gifted and passionate an artist is not imbued with the love of God; his talents could create an enormous platform for him to deliver Christ-honoring messages.  But alas, God does not usually choose to work through such folks, does He?  “Not many wise…powerful…noble," and all that.

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So I support discussions of Avatar that enfold Cameron’s “religion” and its flaws and dangers.  That being said, recent attacks by professing believers – some of them Christians working in or around the motion picture industry – accusing the film of being “Anti-America, Anti-Military” announce the speakers' own cultural and nationalistic idolatry, if not their ignorance of the gospel itself.  Of course, if a Christian chooses Fox News, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter books, and National Review magazine as their primary news sources, they’ll be surprised to learn that our country’s “military-industrial complex” – to use the famous words of that war hero and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower – has for generations acted as Cameron depicts it in Avatar. 

Conservatives who deny the undeniable truth of our (often “well-intentioned”) violent, rapacious, money- and power-fueled imperialistic behavior all over the globe are – well, they need some good teaching of the true “Christian history” sort. We should be thankful Cameron did not make Stephen Lang’s villainous character in Avatar a Bible-spouting fundamentalist, as so many of our “noble warriors” actually are.  (I was particularly struck by the recent story of a leading American arms manufacturer engraving Bible verses inside the barrels of the guns it made to kill people with.)

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Christians moan and groan over the Church’s ineffectual impact on the world in general and our country in particular.  Christians who make (tax-deductible) money off other Christians moan the loudest about it.  But why should a holy God honor the efforts of fools? (The biblical sense of a fool is one who refuses to learn.)  Those spouting “Anti-America, Anti-Military” epithets about Avatar – and other recent films that criticized our tragic attack on Iraq – behave as stubborn, stiff-necked fools, and place themselves in the perilous role of opposing the Christian gospel of peace, humility, gentleness, purity, sacrifice, suffering, repentance, reconciliation, and redemption.  So far as they labor in that direction, they act as enemies of Jesus – not because they criticize non-Christian films, but because of the unbiblical views they hold that animate this portion of their criticism.

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Let us criticize those aspects of James Cameron’s work – and anyone else’s – that fall short of Scriptural precepts.  And let us learn from such work when it casts light on our own blindness.  We Christians who elect and re-elect warmongering politicians; who sacrifice our sons to serve as hired killers for Caesar; who confuse and terrify a watching world of unbelievers as we baptize our brutal military colossus with Christian symbols, imagery, song, and emotion; who cow our own pulpits into silence when they should be aflame with holy zeal and jealousy for God over such wicked idolatry – we are the villains of Avatar. 

Christians should be men and women enough to own up to our shortcomings and assess where we need work to become more conformed to the image of Christ (Isn’t that what we teach our children and grandchildren?), even when God chooses to use His enemies and ours to teach us some of those lessons.  After all, He was no friend of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, or Romans, as is evidenced by “Where are they now?”  But He used them all in His sovereign, Providential plan for sanctifying His people.

As I wrote seven years – and a couple of wars – ago, it is past time for the followers of Jesus Christ to put down our M-16s and to go forth into all the world with John 3:16 as soldiers of the cross and not Caesar.

February 24, 2010

John J. Dwyer [send him mail] serves as Adjunct Professor of History at Southern Nazarene University and Oklahoma City Community College. He is former chairman of history at Coram Deo Academy near Dallas, Texas. He is author of the historical narrative The War Between the States: America's Uncivil War. His website includes a five-minute preview video about the book. He is also the author of the historical novels Stonewall and Robert E. Lee, and the former editor and publisher of The Dallas/Fort Worth Heritage newspaper. He is currently working on the comprehensive history The Oklahomans: The Story of Oklahoma and Its People.

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