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AVATAR

“Avatar” has become the most commercially successful movie ever. While millions marvel at its technological achievement, I particularly appreciate its plot of which multiple messages and analogies can be drawn and derived from.

The movie carries a clear environmental message. While some may consider the movie a knock on Imperialism, I see a lot of parallel in Christianity.
An avatar is a genetically engineered hybrid body of a human and a Navi, the indigenous being on the planet Pandora.  Director Cameron said, “Navii represent something that are our higher selves, the better beings that we would like to think we are.”
Strangely enough, whenever we step into a Christian milieu such as a church or a Christian gathering; we, consciously and subconsciously, conduct ourselves accordingly as if we have landed onto an ecclesiastic Pandora donning our individual Christian avatars.

In my younger and more cynical days I had a simplistic and one dimensional term for this complex phenomenon, I called it “Hypocrisy”. As I grow older, I have come to appreciate the complexity of human nature, and God’s perpetual Grace in transforming us into better beings even as we knowingly, or unknowingly, struggle to maintain some form of equilibrium between these “earthly” and “Christian” forms. As our yearning for spiritual fulfilment is growing stronger by the moment, we still frequently revert back to our customary way of handling things during trying times.
In N.T. Romans7:21-24, St. Paul put this phenomenon into perspective:
“...when I want to do what is good, what is evil is the only choice I have. My inner being delights at the law of God, but I see a different law at work in my body – a law that fights against the law which my mind approves of. It makes me a prisoner to the law of sin which is at work in my body. What an unhappy man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is taking me to death?” (Today’s English Version)
He answered his own question in the next sentence: “Thanks be to God, who does this through our Lord Jesus Christ!”
 
In the movie “Avatar”, as our hero Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) initially connected neurologically with his avatar, he was darting back and forth between his human and Navi forms. He had an ulterior motive when he began to cultivate his life on Pandora. He shaped and behaved like a Navi because of his avatar form, but he still carried an earthling perspective. He was overwhelmed by the knowledge gained but failed to digest properly, amazed at all the wonderments but unable to understand much.

Through trial and tribulation, Sam eventually transformed into a true Navi when he gave up his handicapped human form, but not before he let go of his earthling perspective to truly think and feel like a Navi. Consequently, he was connected, in body and in soul, with the spiritual force of Pandora.

How far are we into our development with our avatar in the Spiritual Pandora?
   
How much of a Christian we are in connecting with our Lord?

Raymond Li