Until this last week, I’d only known an ‘avatar’ to be an image used to represent a person interacting with others in an on-line game or chat room.  Needless to say, this word is finding a new place in our culture.

Those more culturally literate than I would have associated ‘avatar’ with the human incarnations of Hindu deities, often portrayed as half-human, half-animal.  ‘Avatar’ comes from the Hindu verb ‘to cross over.’  Those who have already seen the Oscar-nominated, highest-grossing film of all time will make the connection.

Avatar, the movie, is set several hundred years in the future.  Industry, for those on planet Earth, has grown increasingly dependent upon resources that can only be found off-planet.  Jake Sully, a paraplegic war veteran, is hired by a mining company operating on the distant world of Pandora to help them with a special project.

The plot starts to look like Dances with Wolves.  Pandora is inhabited by giant humanoids called the Na’vi who dress like Native Americans, and generally commune with nature.  Of course, the mining company wants to extract an insanely precious mineral right out from underneath the Na’vi home.

Jake Sully is chosen to become the ‘driver’ of an ‘avatar,’ a creature grown in a bio-tank from human and Na’vi DNA.  The technology allows Sully’s brain to meld with the avatar’s brain and ‘drive’ the avatar out to make friends with the Na’vi.  Though his mission is to spy on and subdue the Na’vi, Sully falls in love with the Na’vi culture, and the tribal chief’s daughter.  Talk about a foot in two worlds!  Sully gets in over his head.

The turning point in the movie comes when Sully is forced to choose between the world of his birth and the world into which he has crossed over.  I don’t want to spoil the ending, but suffice it to say the audience finds itself rooting with the Na’vi against the mining company.  The final battle brings a degree of resolution, but one is left with the feeling that the war has only begun.  Indeed, director James Cameron has already promised a sequel.

But Pandora is not the only place caught up in a culture war.  Seattle’s own Mark Driscoll, pastor of one of the nation’s fastest growing neo-fundamentalist churches (Mars Hill Church), has called Avatar the most ‘demonic, satanic’ movie he’s ever seen.  Apparently, his objection is with the depiction of a culture that seeks not to worship God, but “to connect, literally, with trees and animals and beasts and birds.”  Funny, I thought that was one of the most beautiful parts of the movie.  Would a Mark Driscoll sequel solve the conflict with Mars Hill Bible smugglers?  If the Na’vi learned about Jesus would they stop caring about their land and just let the mining company have it?  It’s telling that Driscoll is more concerned with the ‘satanic’ worship practices of people on Pandora than he is with the murderous thieves trying to wipe them out.

A very different critique, coming from our own denomination’s monthly magazine–Messenger, takes issue with Avatar as yet another Hollywood movie that looks imaginative but remains entrenched in the popular myth of redemptive violence and just-war theory.  Contributor, Jeanne Davies asks, “Why can’t we imagine an alternative to violent solutions?  If we cannot imagine it in our story-telling, we will not be able to create peaceful solutions to conflicts in our world.”  Davies’ piece goes on to list some of the last century’s most dramatic stories of non-violent resistance to evil.

As valid as I think Davies’ critique is, I feel like it misses an opportunity.  For sure, it would be nice if a director like James Cameron would make an award-winning film about the life of Dunker preacher John Kline, martyred during the Civil War for ministering to parishioners on both sides of the battle lines, but I’m not going to hold my breath.  On the other hand we could decide to not see a movie like Avatar because it doesn’t fully reflect our values.  That’s a legitimate path, but one that I left some years ago.

I think we have yet another choice.  We could allow Avatar to spark a conversation with folks who may not know what non-violent resistance is, but recognize that Avatar still has a lot to say about our world.

Avatar, as a commercial venture, is an unparalleled success.  As a work of art, its value can be judged on its own terms.  Does Avatar help its viewers cross over from their world, into another?  Does the world which viewers enter expand their capacity for moral understanding, or for moral behavior in their own?

Do we live in a world where corporations or nations threaten the lives or cultures of those who happen to live on top of natural resources with commercial value?  You bet.  Does Avatar provoke the viewer to empathize with the threatened culture?  Again, there is no question.  But is that enough?

When my folks were working with refugees displaced by Sudan’s civil war, I discovered a curious thing.  Seeing the great imbalance of power between the government in the North, and the civilians in the South whom they bombed, and forced off of their land, I found my pacifism was challenged.  Who was I to tell the South Sudanese they should not take up arms to defend themselves?  I could not.

Non-violent resistance to high-altitude aerial bombardment is difficult.  (For that matter, so is violent resistance) The strength of pacifism lies in its ability to humanize the victims of violence and appeal to the humanity of the perpetrator.  The farther removed the perpetrator is, the harder that task becomes.  And that just may be where Avatar’s value might lie.  Millions of its viewers will learn to empathize with a culture victimized by corporate power.  If this helps them see how their consumer behavior impacts others in our own world, Avatar will have done a great thing.  If it encourages them to purchase goods certified ‘Fair Trade,’ that are mined humanely or grown and harvested sustainably, it will be a moral success.  If it inspires them to see the inter-dependence of life forms on our planet, it will change us all for the better.

If the sequel to Avatar shows the Na’vi adopting the kind of militaristic and self-serving behaviors of those who threaten them, it may accurately depict much of our world, but I doubt it will help our own identity to cross-over into a new way of being.  Ultimately, the value of Avatar as a work of art will depend on whether and how we are changed by it.  Avatar has posed some very important questions.  Whether it starts a conversation that brings new people to the table is up to us.