"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
~ C. S. Lewis, English essayist & juvenile novelist (1898 - 1963)
How ironic, that there is a great movement afoot to ban children and families from viewing the movie "Golden Compass" or reading Philip Pullman's wonderful series, His Dark Materials. I've received emails telling me the book is anti-Christian, that the author, an atheist, is attempting to recruit children to atheism. It's true, Pullman is a self-avowed agnostic (see his website), but I found the series incredibly spiritual and profound in its questions about the meaning of life and how we should aspire to live.
The banning email in question refers to the Narnia series, the great work that C. S. Lewis wrote for children, as an example of what Pullman is trying to destroy. And yet, Lewis abhorred censorship, as evidenced by his quote above.
I plan to watch the movie when it's released. We already own the books, and love them.
2 comments:
I am sorry. Suna started this. I tagged you for a meme. Visit my blog to see what you should do. Or not. The up side is that if you participate then I get to see what your random thoughts are.
Take care
All this brouhaha has me anxious to read the series. I got the books recently but am letting dd read first.
In the meanwhile, I noticed you didn't respond to this nutty meme stuff yet so I'm tagging you two. This allows you to do what you were already going to do for Sam and give me a thrill as well. Nifty.
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