From “
The Da Vinci Code” to “Harry Potter” to “The Last Temptation of Christ,” the church, that is Christians, have taken a more active role in the protest and boycott of companies, books, movies, thoughts and dialogue. This increasing disdain for the critique of art and the debate of church doctrine has taken on a retro feel reminiscent of the Middle Ages.
In the 1980’s the secret, evil satanic beliefs of the company, Proctor and Gamble, was uncovered and quickly circulated through Christian circles. P&G was the official corporate sponsor of Beelzebub. I can only assume that the sponsorship came from The Adversary’s devastating need for cleanliness. All that weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, not to mention the heat, has got to be Hell on the cleaning crew. For their devotion, P&G was given the okay to quietly display the head of a ram, Mephistopheles’ trademarked icon, on all products.
So it was off to the kitchen for me and my Free Will Baptist family to pour out all cleaning supplies by P&G, including any products by any of the evil empire’s subsidiaries. Had they not removed the miniscule icon (whatever it was, ram’s head or otherwise) I’m sure a ban on any television station that carried P&G commercials would have been soon to follow.
With great remorse and embarrassment, I must admit something to you, good reader. We did not, as good Christian followers would have done, rid ourselves of the corporate incarnation of Apollyon the Destroyer. More out of pragmatism rather than defiance, we just didn’t want to waste the money on something that seemed somewhat innocuous. We just moved all the products into a box and put them next to our Baptist Beer Fridge, concealed in the garage.
For those of you who do not know, a Baptist Beer Fridge is an institution in many Baptist homes, sitting covertly in a garage or other room not frequented by guests (especially the pastor or decons) and filled with delightful indulgences not approved by church doctrine: beer, wine, wine vinegar, cooking sherry and the like – anything, basically, that you don’t want The Preacher Man to know that you have in your possession.
Proctor and Gamble were not the only ones finding themselves at the business end of a mis-read Bible. The same proved true for our rock and metal bands in the 1980’s, whose soul-goal was to demonize the hearts of young children turning them from God and transforming the tender children into full-blooded, rat-eating, card-carrying, P&G shopping Satanists. This movement was lead by the sinister band, Knights In Satan’s Service, known to the mother-my-dog teenagers as KISS. After all, how could any good boy wear make up, platform boots, and sport a cod-piece? Our first clue as to KISS’s tether to Belial was that lusty, dirty, reptilesque tongue of band leader and sin generator Gene Simmons. There was something inherently evil about that tongue. God would never give a good Christian boy a tongue of such enormity, because it’s only purpose is to defile the female body during hours-long lustful interludes. As if further proof was needed, church ban was solidified upon realizing KISS’ obvious dedication to The Devil with their album titled “Destroyer.”
Fortunately for me, the church had a team of holy cleaner, Mindful Maids, who routinely scrubbed our pre-teen brains squeaky clean, ready for sanctifying, scriptural re-education. I, too, fell prey to the anti-propaganda toward the Knights In Satan’s Service and refused to listen to the band because I was afraid I would go to Hell, and I was not particularly interested in that road. There was not much about Hell that appealed to me then. I guess that’s still pretty true. Not a fan of Hell, thank you very much. My “List of Evil People and Things,” compiled by the Baptists, grew as my musical tastes broadened. Bon Jovi was also off the list because of the song, “Living in Sin.” I needn’t mention “Two Live Crew” what with all their swearing and overly descriptive sexual dialogue. And God save you from damnation if you view the sinful Hollywood mis-telling of Christ Jesus in the destructive film, “The Last Temptation of Christ.” That is just one more way that The Deceiver hornswoggle’s society, disrupting believers and confusing the weak. Christian singer “Carmen,” on the other hand, was church-approved and parents were encouraged to listen along with their children – a teen’s dream.
Long tongues and evil empires were not our only taboo abominations. No indeed. There was something ever more sinister, cunning and destructive laying wait in our teenage paths. We were lucky, however, to have a loving church wrapping us in a warm safety blanket of Christian armor. We were to need that armor, as a war was almost upon us and the government-run public educa-sin-al system had committed two unspeakable horrors against God and community:
- Banned prayer and all forms of Christian expression on or near school property;
- Groomed teenagers for pre-marital sex through the Godless, heathen, satanic act of dancing.
In seventh grade we had a junior high dance. I was a rather awkward boy around girls. I may not have understood them, but I sure did think they were dandy. Any other thoughts stronger than “dandy” or “keen,” would have been inappropriate, automatically triggering my guilty soul on a Hell-bound train ride to Flame Town. I didn’t really want that. Dances were forbidden. This included dances of all kinds and types. We suggested, foolishly, to host an alternative church dance for like-believers. Dancing was dancing and sin was sin – there’s just no other way around it. Done and done.
I like oats and mine were growing ever so much in seventh grade. In fact, I enjoyed the feeling of my oats and so I challenged Brother Bud to a debate – a debate of dance:
“Brother Bud, what is wrong with dancing?” I curiously asked.
“Oh. We don’t dance,” he replied.
“But why?”
“Because it is wrong and sinful,” he said. It will lead you down dangerous paths.”
“What paths,” I asked. I really didn’t know what paths he was referring to. Brother Bud launched into a lengthy explanation of how dancing causes us to have feelings that will lead to sex. But that did not satisfy me. I simply explained that I was not wanting to have sex; I just wanted to dance. But it was no good. If I was going to dance, then I was going to have sex. Interestingly enough, I never remember him referring to it as “pore-marrital sex.” It was always just “sex.”
“But, I don’t understand how dancing will make me have sex,” I affirmed. “I won’t.”
“It will lead you in that direction.”
“How? I don’t understand how. It’s not like I’m going to rush out the dance and have sex in the parking lot.”
“It will lead you in that direction.”
“How? I don’t understand, how.”
Brother Bud paused, took a deep breath and stared into my eyes. Then he finally and reluctantly released the true message:
“Because of the sinful gyration of the woman’s bosom.”
I didn’t have much to say to that. I was thirteen and never heard my elderly pastor label any woman’s body part, let alone describe her circulating chest region. I was instantly reduced to my Beavis and Butthead, hearing them snicker: “Bosom, huh, huh, he said bosom.”
But there it was, all layed out on the table. The temptress, the cause of our original sin would catch me in her snare, gyrating her tantalizing bosom in my face until I was reduced to a quivering mass of sexual frustration, ready to sow my seed into her fertile soil, and dooming my soul to the eternal Abyss. Amen.
I had no choice but to speak to my parents about the whole affair, and we decided that we disagreed with Brother Bud, so we chucked out that nonsensical anti-dancing business into a pile next to the beer fridge.
I went to the dance by myself. My best friend was also our pastor’s grandson; he did not go to the dance. So I danced with his girlfriend all night, who also went to church with us. She saw me at the dance and was sweet to ask me. I had to tell her that I didn’t know how. All that time fighting for the right to dance and I had no date and no clue how to dance. So she taught me – fast and slow dances. I had never rubbed up so close to a real girl before and it felt good. Great, actually. I finally felt like a real teenager, dancing and doing what other kids do. It felt nice to feel normal. Amazingly neither she nor I dashed out to the outside, overrun with hard-ons and moist spots, to have dirty, hole-poking, nasty-wet sex next to the school dumpster. We just had a really good time, and I told her so. Either her gyrating tits were out of kilter or the church doctrine was somehow misguided. Thus ushered in my first real challenge to the church establishment and my understanding that discourse and debate is more important than blind dedication to tradition and teaching. Sometimes they are wrong. Just because we are Christians does not mean that we always stand on the side of right. Christians, just like everyone else, can be misguided, fooled, hornswoggled, bamboozled, fleeced, conned and diddled, despite our continuing prayer to the contrary.
“Harry Potter is evil.” Have you heard? Potter promotes witch craft and Satanism and is unofficially banned in the Springfield classroom. You take your career into your own hands by reading “Harry Potter” to your elementary students. “The Lord of the Rings,” and of course “The Chronicles of Narnia” are all church-approved as the authors are known and self-proclaimed Christian followers. In Rings, Narnia and “The Wizard of Oz,” the witches and wizards are evil (with the exception of Gandalf who really never recites any incantations.) With Potter, however, we do not know Rawlings’ religious stance and the main characters routinely recite spells.
I have some Christian family members that were astounded to discover that I had read and loved the Potter series. Astounded, she stated that she thought I was a Christian and did I not know those were the creation of The King of Babylon? The only problem I see is when, in our struggle to worship God, we become so fearful of creative play, imagination and the important role that fantasy plays in the healthy development of a child’s mind, that we are systematically stripping away all things that may, even in the most indirect way, not immediately conform to a narrow religious preconception.
Now Hollywood is resurrecting an anti-Christian hypothesis with “The Da Vinci Code.” This book picks up a millennium-long conspiracy theory believing that Christ did not die, but married Mary Magdeline and fathered children, thus creating a holy, earthly blood line. Christians world-wide are up in arms calling for boycotts and selling books and DVDs on the debunking of “The Da Vinci Code.” I’m sure Jesus will be proud to use those dollars to forge gold-plated water fixtures in the motor homes of Pat Robertson and the Van Impe Ministries.
“The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter are fiction – fantasy -- and neither have anything to do with reality. Children understand fantasy; they understand creativity, imagination and pretend play. Children know that a pretend friend is only make believe. Make Believe. I haven’t read “The Da Vinci Code,” yet, but I do have plans. I have read the entire “Harry Potter” series and I see the struggle of good over evil and the fact of doing right because it is right. I see Christian values in literature and I will teach my daughter that we are Christians who question the national church consciousness and, from time to time, dispute what the Christian mainstream regurgitate from the extremist, fundamentalist pulpit.
In the eyes of some, I became Satan’s cabana boy the night I went to the dance with that girl and her … tantalizing red apples. In my mind, I discovered that education and intelligence, over blind obedience, was a greater path to righteousness and the only prevention of fear – fear – being that which always leads to discrimination.
I have also realized that to demonize all churches, all Baptist churches, all southern churches or whatever, is born of the same fear, which as I stated earlier, always leads to discrimination. Incidentally,
my church does not jump on national boycott bandwagons. We choose, instead, to use the Bible as a foundation along with dialogue and debate to help forge right and wrong. That’s right, my friends, just because a church does not boycott “Harry Potter” and “The Da Vinci Code” does not mean we have air-conditioned Hell. We still believe in right and wrong. We just don’t see everything in an easy evil, pure and simple, black and white, dancing-is-bad, gyrating-bazoombas-will-seduce-you kind of fear-based mentality. It’s that love thing, I guess. That whole: “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins,” from 1 Peter 4. We simply approach things differently.
Seems to me What Jesus Would View might be love above all things. But I don’t claim to know that mind of God.
Suggested Reading:"
10 Things I Learned Wrong from a Conservative Church," by John Killinger.
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