I've Found God ...
... on the TV.
Yes, Operation Cheapskate was successful. I have managed to get a TV installed in my house for zero cost. Pity though that SBS is not working. I hope they fix it before Thursdays start of the second test or I will be mightily pissed.
Anyway I was flicking through the fourteen channels last night and realised something I should have known before - of course it is something I already knew - most of the channels are crap. Why anyone would pay for the service is beyond me. There is the absolute shite made-for-tv movies on Hallmark, the pass-me-a-bucket news from Fox ("We Report, You Believe"), the bad Bollywood that I can't understand on the Indian channel and worse still are the two Christian channels. Two channels devoted to God out of the 14. That's a ratio you won't find in many places.
So as I was flicking through the selection and constantly skipping over the two, something caught my eye on one particular pass and made me stop. On the 'Hope Channel', there was a guy standing on a stage having a preach - not unusual - but behind him on a overhead projector were the words 'Harry Potter, Wicca and Witchcraft'. Whooa, slow down on the flicking thumb, this looks interesting I think. I love it when something innocent like a popular kids books raises the hackles on a bunch of American Christians.
The blokes arguments were the same as before, the books are bringing children in contact with the occult and they will be more likely to experiment with Wicca and Witchcraft. Give me a break! Kids, unlike what stupid adults think, know the difference between fantasy and reality. I doubt that any kids that read Harry Potter have actually ever heard the term Wicca. You may get a kid break his arm after jumping off the fence with a broomstick, but that will be about that.
What worries me more is the fact these evangelists focus on things like Harry Potter, and they miss completely the fact that by the time a child is 10 they will have watched something like a 1000 killings on TV. And yet they fail to miss the connection when teenagers take assault rifles into schools.
Perhaps if they would just bother to read the books they will realise that one of the main messages behind HP, as clichéd as it is, is love conquers over evil. A message I would have thought these Christians would be jumping up and down to spread.
Anyway later on I was flicking again, I had decided by this stage that the other Christian channel EWTV, was well and truly skipping territory. It is the catholic one and instead of the preacher in the slick suit, they deal with wizened old monks giving a talk to bore the crap out of you. Passing over the Hope Channel I decided to have another look at it. The same guy was still there but he had moved on from denouncing kids books and was really getting into realms of controversy.
The topic this time was the Papacy and the Anti-Christ. It seems old Martin Luther kick-started something (among other things) by interpreting a prophecy in the Bible about horns rising out of a lake, or something, and linking that back to Rome and therefore the Papacy being the Anti-Christ. This is more like it, I was thinking. A controversial slag off of another denomination and calling them the anti-Christ to boot.
The slick suit kept explaining that it is a long held Protestant view, that really spread like wildfire in the 19th century. I had never heard of it, but then again we are talking religion here. I flicked back to the Catholic channel just to see if they were hitting back at these allegations. They weren't, so instead my attention was turned to some good old occultist fun on HBO - Bewitched.
