With Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Hollywood has joint-ventured with Lucifer to create a cunning piece of stunning $125 million propaganda to lure our Christian children away with the tantalizing powers of witchcraft. In doing so, Satan is simply taking advantage of centuries of Christians’ hard work. If it were not for battalions of Baptists relentlessly brow-beating their children with Bible Study, Bible School, Vacation Bible School and Bible Camp, America’s children would never have been inured to the implausible enough to swallow J. K. Rowling’s far-fetched bunk in the first place. We soften them up to believe anything they are told – and Satan moves in for the now-easy sales pitch! Such brazen opportunism has not been seen since, well, Michæl Jackson co-opted Anthrax as a vehicle to draw attention to himself, overlooking the fact that he no longer had a nose in which to inhale spores!
Harry Potter signals that Satan is clearly going after the most reliable demographic Christian churches normally count on for tithes – people gullible enough to believe that spells and hexes are real. Truly, there is no gratitude in this god-eat-god world of supernatural marketing. Indeed, if it weren’t for Christians, there would be no satanic witchcraft. After all, we were the ones who invented Satan (as a vehicle for palming off all the horrible things that occur in a world created by an all-powerful being). If you don’t believe in the Bible, then you don’t believe in Satan. Indeed, Satanism is little more than an embarrassing offshoot of Christianity. Its followers believe all the same stuff we do about blood, demons and magic, but simply pick the wrong character in the fabulously gothic story to emphasize. As such, they are virtually indistinguishable from the Mary-genuflecting Catholics.
The same thankless debt is owed by witches. Shakespeare could make them come to life at the Old Globe, but it took Puritans to kill them in the real world. The witches of Macbeth may die on stage if inartfully played, but, in Salem, Christians ensure that they died on petards for their toil and trouble. Clearly, it takes a Christian to imbue an air of authenticity to a concept what non-believers may be otherwise inclined to simply dismiss as harmless, far-fetched fiction. Magic tricks like walking on water that can later be turned into a sea of chardonnay? That was us! As such, we deserve the credit for making otherwise intelligent adults regard truly outlandish tales as real. And what is the gratitude we get? Satan uses this carefully nurtured credulity to trot out an even slicker story than the erstwhile greatest one ever told – Harry Potter!
Read more of Betty Bower’s thoughts on Hollywood on her official web site. Story copyright 2001 Betty Bowers.
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