I started a study of angels and demons at our church this week and commented that so much of our entertainment is filled with the super-natural or super-human. 8 of the top 10 highest grossing movie franchises are filled with the super-natural - magic, super human abilities, "the force", mind control or consciousness expansion, trans-humanism (the integration of technology into the human brain and body). The bottom line is that human beings are extraodinarily intrigued with the super-natural, including super-human abilities and have been throughout history.
Some of us like to criticize certain aspects of the genre. It's easy to pick on the magic in Harry Potter while ignoring the magic in the Lord Of The Rings or the force in Star Wars. We seem to forget that even Mickey Mouse dabbled in the dark arts as the sorcerer's apprentice in Fantasia. I'm not writing this to pick on your favorite movie or show because it advocates magic, the force, etc.
Evolutionists say that the idea of a God or gods and religion is simply an evolutionary characteristic that has somehow enhanced our survival. Scientists, while finding no evidence of life anywhere other than on this earth, all insist that there is other-than-human life somewhere out there. Statistics, they say, demand it.
I have a Biblical explanation. I believe that "eternity in our hearts" in Ecclesiastes 3:11 means we are hard-wired by our Creator to seek something out there beyond what we can see with our eyes. It is a God-given desire to seek God and eternal life, but it is a dangerous desire when it is not submitted to the search for the one true God. It is dangerous because there are beings out there who interact with our thoughts and ideas, and, according to the Bible, a third of them are malevolent rather than benevolent.
God says there are multitudes of beings whose primary residence is not on this earth. There may be millions of them - beings who share our existence in this universe, who are almost always invisible to humanity, and yet who exist as surely as we exist. In 34 of the 66 books of the Bible, these beings are referred to and described because they not only exist in the spiritual realm but also interact consistently with the physical realm.
I may be making too much of this, but I do not find it strange that as people believe in God less and less, they continue to believe or at least hope in something beyond this existence. What else fuels the billions spent on entertainment that illustrates that desire for something super-human, super-natural?
This human fascination and preoccupation causes two reactions in me. The first is hope. Humanity's desire for something beyond itself affirms my faith in the design of God. The second is concern. Humanity's willingness to consider un-biblical answers to the design of God concerns me. If you are a follower of Christ, I believe it should concern you, too. Here's why.
Holy angels who have remained faithful to God are real. They worship God, do His bidding, minister to His people, and implement His judgment. Unholy angels, who we often call demons, do not worship God, they work against His desire, they resist and do battle against His people, and they lead people astray so that they incur His judgment.
I think that 8 out of 10 of the top entertainment franchises are successful because they play to this desire. I do not think, however, that they are neutral, benign expressions of ideas. They offer an escape from the mundane through means that are not Godly. They entertain our desire for something beyond ourselves to ensnare us, not to enrich us. They encourage us to believe our desire can be satisfied through human evolution, human manipulation, and human wisdom or through some other-than-God supernatural means.
"Pastor, you have taken this too far." Maybe. It is just entertainment. Well, if it's just entertainment, why do we spend hours upon hours, dollars upon dollars, investing in it? Why do some of the "most brilliant minds" hope beyond hope that we are not alone in the universe? Why do we get offended when someone criticizes the moral or spiritual content of our favorite movie if it's just entertainment?
The idea that we can answer the desire within our hearts for eternity through manipulation of magical force, or cosmic energy, or through the evolution of technology and the expansion of the human mind is an ancient one. The hope that man can become a god was offered to Adam and Eve at the very beginning by a fallen angelic being. They reached out for infinite knowledge and eternal life and found knowledge that destroyed their communion with God and their oneness with one another. It also resulted in the downfall of their entire race.
We treat entertainment as if it is only entertainment. Is it? Entertainment is full of ideas. Those ideas are based on beliefs. Who is behind each belief? Is God and His truth, or Satan and His untruth? We are so immersed in this culture that is so controlled by the world of entertainment that most of us will never consider the possibility that we are being deceived and led away from God through entertainment that is manipulated by the demonic.
I know. I'm just blowing all of this out of proportion. Don't worry about what you spend hours watching. It's just entertainment. Is it really?
Picture Attribution: Fabi1994 at the German language Wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
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