When It Comes to “Materials”, How Dark Is Too Dark?

Lyra is a little girl, chosen by destiny for some great purpose. Her uncle, Lord Asriel, who is actually her father, has discovered a way to connect the parallel universes and is gathering from all of them an army of angels, witches, armored bears, and who or whatever else will join in his great military campaign. The Church, in all the universes, along with many angels and others, supports the authority of the Authority. And the Authority, as it turns out, is God, or actually a broken down old angel named Yahweh, who has been pretending to be God. You see, he rebelled gazillions of years ago and won the Battle of Heaven and, since then, has devoted his energies to misleading everyone about who he really is, and to ruining everything with all his evil laws. But now he is old and decrepit, and only wants it all to be over. And Lyra’s friend, Will, has been chosen by destiny to kill this pretender God, or actually just free him and allow him to die.

Lyra’s destiny is to let all the souls out of the World of the Dead, the scariest of all the parallel universes, so that they can finally really die and become one with everything. She and Will, and Lord Asriel and his army, manage to win their respective battles. This reverses the Battle of Heaven that we always thought was started by Lucifer (the Devil) who fought against the real God who created the one and only universe, but was actually started by this phony God, Yahweh, who was just an angel who wanted to be the boss of everyone.

In the end, God is dead, Lord Asriel is dead, the souls of the dead, which haven’t been quite dead, are dead and dying, which is a good thing, and Will and Lyra are back in their own separate and parallel universes. Though they are broken hearted to be separated, everything is much better because now there is no God, or at least not one who tries to be the Authority and tell everyone what to do.

If all this sounds complicated, it is. And I left out oodles of stuff that’s absolutely essential to the story such as Mrs. Coulter who is Lyra’s mother, the Gyptians, Mary Malone who has an amber spyglass so she can see Dust, harpies, mulefas who are sort of elephants on wheels, and Dust itself which is actually what started the whole business in the first place and turns out to be sin. At least I think that’s what it turns out to be.

I admit that this description of Philip Pullman’s novel, His Dark Materials, is grossly unfair. It’s a three volume story after all, and like Richard Wagner’s great opera, The Ring of the Nibelung, it’s actually much better than it sounds. It’s also a children’s story and, being an adult, I probably missed the point entirely. At any rate, I doubt if I spoiled the plot for anyone who hasn’t read it yet.

The idea that the God Christians and Jews worship, Yahweh by name, is an evil control freak, and must be destroyed, or at least ignored, if people are to live fulfilled lives, is at least as old as humanity, and some say even older. But to teach it to children by making it the premise of a children’s story is a bit of a new twist. And the fact that this story has been published and is being made into a series of motion pictures indicates that there has been a significant cultural shift in recent years. So, how should Christian people engage an idea of this sort? On one extreme I suppose we might try boycotts and book burnings; on the other perhaps we should just lighten up and take a valium? What do you think?