Childlike Faith and the Neverending Story

I watched the Neverending Story with my kids this morning. This movie impressed me deeply as a child with a view of imagination, and multiple dimensions of reality, which shaped me at a deep level. In many ways this movie and several other books I read as a young person “baptized my imagination” to experience our co-authorship, with God, of the great unfolding Story of Creation and Redemption centered in Christ. What I did not realize until watching this movie as an adult: 

First, this movie may be the best illustration of Jesus’ saying that the Kingdom of God belongs to those with childlike faith which I have ever seen. 

Second, it is a potent critique of living in a world culture of Consumerism, in which every Corporation and advertisement seeks to co-opt our imagination, and stop us from dreaming, with the lie that their products can satisfy our every desire, and bring us to true happiness. 


Perhaps Fascism or Totalitarianism in previous ages that were the primary “dream killers”. But in our age, it is this Consumerism, this Nothing, that destroys our ability to hope and dream for a better world through constant stimulation and gratification, and thus threatens to annihilate the Neverending Story that God is writing us into. Like Bastian in the Story, we need to take a stand against the great nothingness of this totalitarian hedonism, by reading and dreaming and imagining and creating new worlds. That’s what a childlike faith does. And it is childlike faith that brings us to the very heart of God. 

My two favorite scenes come near the end of the movie. In the first, the child-warrior Atreyu confronts the demon dog G'mork:

• G'mork: If you come any closer, I will rip you to shreds.
• Atreyu: Who are you?
• G'mork: I am G'mork. And you, whoever you are, can have the honor of being my last victim.
• Atreyu: I will not die easily. I am a warrior!
• G'mork: Ha! Brave warrior, then fight the Nothing.
• Atreyu: But I can't! I can't get beyond the boundaries of Fantasia! [G'mork laughs and Atreyu gets a little angry]
• Atreyu: What's so funny about that?
• G'mork: Fantasia has no boundaries. [laughs]
• Atreyu: That's not true! You're lying.
• G'mork: Foolish boy. Don't you know anything about Fantasia? It's the world of human fantasy. Every part, every creature of it, is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries.
• Atreyu: But why is Fantasia dying, then?
• G'mork: Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger.
• Atreyu: What is the Nothing?
• G'mork: It's the emptiness that's left. It's like a despair, destroying this world. And I have been trying to help it.
• Atreyu: But why?
• G'mork: Because people who have no hopes are easy to control; and whoever has the control... has the power!
• Atreyu: Who are you, really?
• G'mork: I am the servant of the power behind the Nothing. I was sent to kill the only one who could have stopped the Nothing. I lost him in the Swamps of Sadness. His name... was Atreyu.

In the second scene, the Empress reveals that it is the reader-- Bastian-- who has been part of the Story all along as the Chosen One, and it is only by his childlike faith and imagination that the Story can be saved:

• Atreyu: What will happen if he doesn't appear?
• The Childlike Empress: [sadly] Then our world will disappear - and so will I.
• Atreyu: How could he let that happen?
• The Childlike Empress: He doesn't understand that he's the one who has the power to stop it. He simply can't imagine that one little boy could be that important.
• Bastian: Is it really me?
• Atreyu: Maybe he doesn't know what he has to do!
• Bastian: [shouts] What DO I have to do?
• The Childlike Empress: He has to give me a new name. He's already chosen it. He just has to call it out.