Kansas City, USA - The science fiction movie "Avatar" borrows themes from many religions.
More importantly, it poses a great question of faith.
Of the many borrowed themes, here are two.
The word "avatar" comes from Hinduism and literally means "a descent." An avatar is a god descending into a human form as a partial manifestation of the divine.
In a way, the movie insults this traditional usage. In the film it is a human, not a god, who descends. The film implies that the descended form of the blue-skinned race on a distant moon is inferior to the human.
Or perhaps rather than insult, this is irony, since the avatar term is used by the RDA corporation, a colonizing power determined at any price to extract a valuable mineral called — get this — unobtainium.
Hindu gods, particularly Vishnu, become avatars to save the order of the universe. The movie suggests something is terribly wrong with a rapacious greed that leads to destroying the world of nature and other civilizations, and the movie's avatar must avert ultimate doom.
The movie's Tree of Souls recalls the Norse story of the tree Yggdrasil, an example of a tree supporting the cosmos found in many traditions. Its destruction signals the collapse of the universe. Scholars call such trees the axis mundi, the center of the world. The earth itself shook in the Christian story of the tree of crucifixion, destroying the old for new life.
In the movie, the avatar must save the Tree of Souls from human assault to prevent unrecoverable catastrophe.
The big religious question the movie raises can be put this way: Will we see creation hierarchically or ecologically — governed from above or through mutual interdependence?
The movie preaches the latter, that a network of energy flows through all things, that disturbing natural balance leads to disaster.
Christianity has sometimes been called a religion of colonizers, despoilers and decimators of native peoples.
However, Christian insistence on stewardship of nature, rather than dominion over it, may effectively respond to that charge. Christian environmentalism is huge.
New technologies may minimize environmental problems, but the real solution may be a spiritual reorientation. The 2001 Kansas City Gifts of Pluralism interfaith conference declaration contained these words: "Nature is to be respected, not just controlled. Nature is a process that includes us, not a product external to us. … Our proper attitude toward nature is awe, not utility."
The 3-D fantasy world of the movie is gorgeous. But will it remind us to thrill to the beauties and wonders of this world, and to cherish it?