An incredible demonstration of how sin works comes from a surprising place: the movie Coraline. In Coraline a girl with a mundane life living in a mundane countryside with fairly mundane neighbors and less than desirable and often distracted parents discovers a parallel reality in which everything that is mundane in her life is far more colorful. Her garden is more colorful, the food is better, her mother - nicknamed the “Other Mother” - is cuter and more loving giving Coraline anything she wants, her father is a talented pianist and super friendly, her room is decorated with talking animals and living pictures, her neighbors are suddenly more interesting and inviting, even the creepy bully down the street is friendly and fun. It doesn’t take Coraline many visits to this parallel reality for her to realize that it is the more colorful and interesting reality, the one in which her desires are gratified instantly, that she wants.However, after a very short while Coraline discovers that her “Other Mother” is really a wicked evil witch who has designed this parallel and distorted reality to lure her into a trap, a literal spider’s web, in which Coraline must forfeit her soul to loving her “Other Mother” forever. Suddenly instead of a cuter mother Coraline is owned by a curvy wicked spider-like woman. Her parallel reality of a brilliant father turns out to be a squat and deranged slave of the witch. All of what is best in the parallel reality not only turns out to be an illusion but largely is an illusion that is wicked and bent on one thing: claiming Coraline’s soul for its own.
Whether the writer of this movie intended for the analogy to play out this way or not I don’t know. What I do know is that sin, that Satan, is exactly like this. Sin and Satan offer a tasty, better looking, more enjoyable alternate reality. For a while, this reality really does taste better but there is a terrible price to pay: you must forfeit your soul if you intend to keep on enjoying it. You will forfeit your soul to the “Other Mother” (i.e. Satan), as numerous other souls have, if you insist on trading what is real for that which is a tasty but short lived illusion.
I caught some very inappropriate themes and stupid Eastern elements in this movie, secular film is not very redeemable, but I certainly intend on using this illustration more than once!
Fear God!
R. D. Thompson