A message to people who freak out about stupid stuff

I've had a little something on my mind lately that's been annoying me a little bit. I saw Avatar like a month ago and I loved it. I thought the movie was great all around. People always talk about how great it is visually, and it is, but what I liked even more than that was the actual story. If you want to liken it to a historical situation it would be closest to the Native Americans when the Europeans came and over the process of several years, forced them off their land and took it. Of course, the outcome is different in the movie, but it would be hard for anyone with any kind of historical knowledge of the "discovery" of America to not see the parallels.

What's been bothering me is a comment that somebody made when I was trying to tell them how good the movie was. It goes along the lines of the people who freak out because Harry Potter has magic in it. Essentially, this person said that they are not going to see the movie because it promotes Pantheism. Since the people or aliens on Pandora have such a strong connection with the nature on their planet, and that force helps them ultimately defeat the humans, this is apparently a bad movie for Christians to see.

My message to people who think this is DON'T GET YOUR PANTIES IN A WAD. No, this movie is not the Passion of the Christ. Jesus is not going to come through the clouds of Pandora at the sound of a trumpet and rapture every alien who has accepted him as their personal savior. If that's what you're looking for, then you should look elsewhere. But does that make the movie entirely bad? Or perhaps, can we interpret Ehwa (the Pandora god) as a metaphor for the actual God that we believe in?

While I don't think that worshiping nature is the correct way to practice religion, I think that a worse thing to do is to completely disregard nature and have no sort of reverence for it whatsoever. God created the world. God made the world beautiful, and I believe he did that for the people who live in it. If this is true, then why do we just want to make a parking lot out of the place? Why do we get so arrogant as to think that nature is there just for us to mine for resources so that we can make money? (This, of course, is exactly what the humans in Avatar want to do).

Also, I think that for people of faith, instead of feeling like this movie is attacking your personal belief, you should instead feel like it is supporting your belief in a powerful deity and attacking the notion that no God exists whatsoever. In the movie, the humans (the bad guys) mock the idea of the aliens' god. They arrogantly assume that their power, weapons of war, and machinery are going leave them to exhort their will over the creatures on Pandora. What happens is the opposite. The aliens, who put their faith and their hope into their god, ultimately come out on top. They are rescued.

Avatar is a great movie. I think it was 2009's Dark Knight. I am probably speaking to a small segment of the population who actually wouldn't see this movie because of Pantheism. There is a lot of good stuff about this movie, and a lot of good lessons that can be learned. (Plus, you get sweet glasses!) But all I am saying is that people, and particularly Christians because they are bad about this, need to take a chill pill. Not everything is an attack on your personal beliefs. Quit being so defensive.