JR and I went to watch The Golden Compass recently...the verdict is, not very interesting and definitely no threat to the Christianity we profess.

I am however quite eager to find out about the mysterious Dust and the world of the Witches of the air in future episodes. The little heroine, Lyra was too much of a troubled preadolescent gal for me but I like her strong stance against the bandit enemies in front of the GOB building in the "artic" North.

How come no threat to Christianity when all the fuss? For one, I don't think many Christians today would know what's Magisterium or Oblation. If you don't know what is it, how would that affect your pious mind at all?

What about the part where everyone have a daemon in the form of animals? Well, just the regular cute fairy tales stuff, like the half man of a hobbit will not jeorpardize human beings created in god's image, I do not particularly think those little animals will turn us into occultists or atheists. Anyway, daemon (pronouce "demon") sounded bad, but it's just a word (latin) for "spirit/deity/god" and the movie clearly tells us that they are the "spirit" of the person whom the daemon belonged to. Again just a cute plot in a fairy tale.

Mrs. Coulter was sinister but I think her primate of a daemon was the real scary one, with his eyes always on the look-out to grab someone else's little daemon.

And finally, the alethiometer, truth-meter, sounds like something we Christians ought to have or rather ought to be. I first read of aletheia in my greek NT in Romans chapter 1 (vv18 & 25). Cool word, I am sure Dave would agree since he kept a yahoo group by that name.

I don't know anything about the next books in the Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Perhaps they really are militantly atheistic and are dangerous to our little Christian minds, but The Golden Compass the movie is just cute, nothing of much interest, just cute.

My sister was there with us, she loved the bear. Another boy, my colleague's 4 year old son (or was it 5), he told me the other day that he loved the bear too...nice name Iorek Byrnison - sound Scandinavian don't you think so?