Avatar and Eden 

The movie, “Avatar” tells the story of corporate-sponsored scientists engaging the indigenous “Na’vi” people on an Edenic planet, Pandora, in a nearby galaxy.  Inevitably the corporation betrays the science and the innocent indigenous people in its quest for profitability. The Na’vi rebel and send the Earthlings packing. Have we heard this story before? Some environmentalists have expressed the hope that the movie may “convert” people to the values of Pandora’s indigenous “Na’vi” to save our own ravaged planet. Douglas Todd wrote recently in the Vancouver Sun about “Avatar’s” pantheism and its parallels to Christian “pan-en-theism” in its spirituality.  The movie’s theology of “EyWah” takes a back seat to the delightful computer-generated imagery of Pandora and its luminous “Tree of Souls.”  Environmentalists see the storyline of “Avatar” as sympathetic to their message that we are in the process of destroying our own Eden and its indigenous cultures with our relentless consumerism. Others, however, see those environmentalists as advocating a “new religion of Gaia” opposed to the objectivity of science and the practicality of economics.  Avatar’s neo-pagans are even seen by some as Hollywood’s latest assault on traditional values.  The belief that nature is an expression of God whether He (or She) is pronounced “Jaweh” or “EyWah” is not a really a new story. The beautiful images in the movie are recognizable from our own oceanic Eden.  The “Spirit” that pervades the imagined nature on Planet Pandora is recognizable here on Planet Earth as the “wind that bloweth where it will.”  Tolkien and C.S. Lewis created similar alternative realities where gospel messages found fresh expression. The “Tree of Life” and the “Tree of Souls” both resonate with religious imagery and invite us into communion with all creation. Clearly there is a spiritual dimension to our earthly concerns for clean water, pure air and fertile ground. The science leading to the recent conference at Copenhagen and the practical politics of international treaties is not diminished by our artistic and emotional responses to the beauty of the world around us and our affections for the creatures, human and non-human, that share our Eden.  There is a profound truth in our “exile” from the first Eden and it may be that it remains in our collective imagination as our true home.  We need not travel light years to find it in other galaxies - it was here all along. We do not require flights of winged dragons to oppose violations of the sacred trust to care for creation.  We are Earth’s indigenous people and it is our world to protect.