Despite its overtly atheistic themes the novel appears to be haunted by spiritual longings.

ON AUTHORITY
There is an ongoing mistrust of the authorities, and specially that of church. Each individual should be free to live according to the dark matter within, is Pullmans message. No authority should sit above and control or command it.

There’s a lot to agree with Pullman’s critique of the “church” as described in the novels. It is corrupt, anti-truth, violent, and bent on maintaining power.

But that is not the way of Jesus. Jesus said, “Whoever would be great must be a servant.” To his disciple Peter who was bent on using force to advance the kingdom, he said, “Put away your sword.” Jesus taught, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” Dying on the cross he did just that. His is the authority of a superior who loves those in his charge. His authority is right and good.

But Christ does command his people. Perhaps Pullman has a problem with that. But he has moments when he sees through his atheism and sees something good and freeing in obedience to someone greater and wiser.

There’s a moment when Lee Scoresby, the aëronaut, meets a great eagle queen. Pullman describes the interaction:

‘And Lee felt whatever bird nature he was sharing respond with joy to the command of the eagle queen, and whatever humanness he had left felt the strangest of pleasures: that of offering eager obedience to a stronger power that was wholly right. And he wheeled and turned with the rest of the mighty flock, a hundred different species all turning as one in the magnetic will of the eagle, and saw against the silver cloud rack the hateful dark regularity of a zeppelin. ‘

His humanness is not diminished by obedience to a stronger power but is the essence of it. That is because it is offered to one who was wholly right.

This is what the church ought to be, the community of those who find freedom
In obedience to a power that is wholly right—Jesus Christ.

ON FATHERLESSNESS
There are two characters who are essentially fatherless and motherless in the novel Lyra Silvertongue and Will Parry. They are heroes: courageous and righteous. Yet they both carry a father wound, the result of loosing their fathers early in life. They long to reunite with their father.

Will speaks of this longing in a very moving way:

‘What he couldn’t say was that he longed for his father as a lost child yearns for home. That comparison wouldn’t have occurred to him, because home was the place he kept safe for his mother, not the place others kept safe for him; but it had been five years now since that Saturday morning at the supermarket when the pretend game of hiding from the enemies became desperately real, such a long time in his life, and his heart craved to hear the words, “Well done, well done my child; no one on earth could have done better; I’m proud of you. Come and rest now…’

This incredibly moving description of human longing is made even more striking when we recall that Pullman is almost quoting sections of the Bible describing the human experience of being lost form God their father. Pullman is tapping into the fundamental human lounging for a good and true father who would know and love them. Very few earthly fathers live up to our longings, and all who do, will be lost to death.

God is the father we all long for, even if we don’t realize it.

Pullmans novel is excellent storytelling with vibrant character and underneath its anti-Christian m message is a profound longing for Christianity to be true. ( )