The Golden Compass claims to be about free will and finding freedom from sin, but it doesn’t really know how to do that or what those things really are. It says that freedom is the ability to do whatever you want. The truth is, freedom is the ability to do what God wants. What’s that? That doesn’t sound very free? Well, consider this; God does whatever he wants whenever he wants. He’s God after all. But the catch is that he is holy and perfect so he always does the right thing. Better yet, through Christ he gives us the freedom to learn how to do the same. We can be free to do the right thing (which leads to life) and avoid the wrong thing—which usually hurts, destroys, and can even kill us.

The Golden Compass also thinks that sin isn’t nearly as bad as we’ve been led to believe. It tells us that it’s the church that restricts us from exploring the truth found in sin. Well, the truth is you may not like being told that high explosives are dangerous—after all, they can do so much good in the world—but that doesn’t mean that they won’t kill you. The same lie presented in this movie—that sin really isn’t all that bad and the church is misleading people by forcing them to believe it is—is the exact same lie used by Satan when talking to Eve. He told Eve that sin would make her like God and truly set her free; instead it ended up destroying paradise and cursed humanity for all eternity.

We may not like being told that we’re sinful people, but until we are, how can we ever hope to become righteous people? Jesus said that truth would set us free, not hearing what we want to hear and what makes us feel good about ourselves. The so called “truth” of The Golden Compass leads nowhere; God's truth leads to actual freedom. Truth doesn’t change, and it certainly doesn’t change to suit our needs better, which is why whatever the truth is that The Golden Compass is talking about is anything but what could be called truth.

The truth is that if you’re finding any of this a little confusing, then you’re getting a picture of the true problem The Golden Compass presents. It muddies reason, not clarifies it. It talks a lot about truth, but the “t” in that truth is so much smaller than lower case that it’s hard to make out what exactly it’s talking about. It argues against Christianity, but really presents no answers or alternatives to those claims; it just whines and complains about something it obviously doesn’t understand because it doesn’t like the way Christianity makes it feel. It’s like a whiny child refusing to listen because it doesn’t want to hear anything it doesn’t like.

To top it all off, it’s not even a good movie. Sure, the last forty-five minutes or less are pretty entertaining, but all that precedes that isn’t worth the time to get to the good stuff. Even worse, there’s the big set-up for the future films at the end, as it’s obvious New Line hopes this will be their next big Lord of the Rings franchise. My hope is that those movies will never be made so we won’t have to endure anything this boring again. Do yourself a favor; go see something good this Christmas season that’s actually fun to watch... something like Enchanted. At least then you’ll have a good time.

I know that’s not what you wanted to hear, but the truth is that truth doesn’t always tell us what we want to hear, just what we need to hear.

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