It seems that Mark Driscoll has made his opinions of the blockbuster film ‘Avatar’ known through his sermon at Mars Hill Church a few weeks ago, and branded it “the most demonic, satanic film he has ever seen”.

It seems he has caused a bit of a stir – have a look at the post on the SeattlePI Big Blog here.

His comments about Avatar are only a small part of his sermon on Luke 4: 31-41 about Jesus and Demons, but to quote him:

“The world tempts you to sin, to use people, to disobey God, to live for your own glory instead of his own, to be a consumer instead of generous, that’s the world system.

And if you don’t believe me, go see Avatar, the most demonic, satanic film I’ve ever seen. That any Christian could watch that without seeing the overt demonism is beyond me. I logged on to christianitytoday.com and the review was reflective of Christianity today, very disappointing. See, in that movie, it is a completely false ideology, it’s a sermon preached. It’s the most popular movie ever made, and it tells you that the creation mandate, the cultural mandate is bad, that we shouldn’t, we shouldn’t develop culture, that’s a bad thing.

Primitive is good and advanced is bad and that we’re not sinners, we’re just disconnected from the divine life force, just classic, classic, classic paganism, that human beings are to connect, literally, with trees and animals and beasts and birds and that there’s this spiritual connection that we’re all a part of, that we’re all a part of the divine.

It presents a false mediator with a witch. It presents false worship of created things rather than Creator God in absolute antithesis to Romans 1:25, which gives that as the essence of paganism. It has a false incarnation where a man comes in to be among a people group and to assume their identity. It’s a false Jesus. We have a false resurrection. We have a false savior. We have a false heaven. The whole thing is new age, satanic, demonic paganism, and people are just stunned by the visuals. Well, the visuals are amazing because Satan wants you to emotionally connect with a lie.”

You can listen to his whole sermon here, or watch the YouTube video of the ‘controversial’ part below:

What do you think?  Have you seen Avatar?

As for me, I agree with him!  In fact, I said very much the same to my wife and son as we left the cinema after watching the film. 

Techncially, it was amazing, especially in the 3D format, where the integration of the CGI and real life filming was just awesome, but the subliminal spiritual message of the film for me is a worrying indictment of the rejection of God in our post-Christendom culture.  To use my exact phrase, “It’s just mother-earth paganism dressed up in a beautiful costume” – which ultimately is exactly what it is!

Well said Mark – keep telling the truth.  Be controversial because we need to hear it – it makes us think and seeds discussion.