He-Man Is Evil?

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EXSRa-B850[/youtube]

I am christian. I accept Jesus Christ as my savior and God as the creator, you know the whole gig. However, I do think that there are other people of my faith that are a bit unreasonable and ignorant, I like to call these people "Radical Christians". Now, A Radical Christian is the type of person that considers almost everything that is fictional an abomination to God, much like those people who think that Pokemon and Harry Potter are Satanic. While browsing YouTube today I stumbled upon this video. I decided to make a blog with this video. It's about two radicals back in the 1980s saying that cartoons like He-Man are evil. My thoughts on the video is that these two are taking things way too far. So, if you would please watch the video and post in response to my blog about what your opinion on this is.

damn bigots. they just hate openly gay characters.

An especially amusing attitude in light of the fact that their own creation story is lifted whole-cloth from a much earlier Sumerian myth, right down to the name of E Din. The Sumerian version of course is mythological, but the plagiarized version in the Canonical Bible is historical fact straight from God's lips.

And isn't it funny how of the four 'synoptic' ('seeing together' or 'in agreement') gospels, Mark and John both agree that Jesus was born in Nazareth the son of a human carpenter, while Matthew concocts an elaborate tale of immaculate conception, a census which never took place, birth in a manger (in Bethlehem no less - not Nazareth), choirs of angels and gift-bearing Magi from the East, all to make a convincing case for Jesus' birth having fulfilled traditional Messianic prophesy (which the birth of a carpenter's son in Nazareth would not). Luke, of course, as a 'historian' borrows freely from everyone and merges fact and fiction in one grand sweeping epic.

Then along comes Saul of Tarsus, the Christian-Killer (having never met Jesus), who claims to have a change of heart and begins running all over the region teaching a brand of philosophy that in no way resembles the actual somewhat mystical Essene-style Jewish faith of Jesus himself, and whose Pauline version of Christianity is pushed by the Roman Emperor and ultimately endorsed as the only true faith. Enter the Council of Nicea, who take all existing 'scriptures' and edit them, to determine which will endorse the officially sanctioned religion and which are to be banned as heresy, because they of course, are the only men qualified to determine God's true will and teachings.

Ironic, isn't it? Where would Christianity be today without fiction? And isn't hijacking a faith of love and forgiveness and turning it into one of judgment and intolerance TRULY Satanic? I mean, if I were Satan, I'd consider that my greatest accomplishment.

The video is just funny. It's like they want EVERYTHING to involve religion and praise it like OCD...

Crazy isn't it. People like that give Christians a bad name.

Willard, I think the fear some Christians have of fantasy is down to the knowledge that myths, if you accept that they're symbolic, must all have equal value as attempts to make sense of the world. Hence, Christianity believes one set of myths - its own - is literally true; but in many cases, it also has to degrade other myths, and imaginative fictions in general, as 'evil'. It looks very like trying to eliminate the competition, and I don't think you can have much trust in your own beliefs if you insist on doing that.

I've known Christians who thought Star Wars was 'based on Satanic Eastern philosophy' and wouldn't let their kids see the movies. I've also even heard some Christians say that the Narnia books and The Lord of the Rings are 'evil', which is hugely ironic when you consider that both Lewis and Tolkien were Christians with, nevertheless, a huge respect for the older non-Christian mythologies. Probably that's the very reason some Christians don't like their work. I read about one guy who wouldn't let his daughter read Madeleine L'Engle, and last time I looked she was a Christian too. The last word, I think, was when some woman said of Harry Potter: 'Jesus is the real thing, so we don't need imagination.'

BTW, I've been involved in what these gentlemen refer to as 'the occult' for decades, and I've never, ever seen the 'ram's head staff crushing a dove's head' symbol he describes. In fact, I've never known anyone do anything with a ram's skull outside a Dennis Wheatley novel. I knew a guy who made cool antler-tipped ritual wands out of roadkill he found, but that's a different thing. Guess I just don't move in Satanic enough circles.

(Who else thinks that guy sounded like he was having way too much fun with the Skeletor voice changer? Betcha he took it home with him after the show...)

By the power of Greyskull!

You know, that Jesus freak in the suit must have had a really bad hair stylist.

Apparently, Star Wars was heavily influenced by the Akira Kurosawa films The Hidden Fortress and Yojimbo.
I'm surprised to read about Christians disapproving of the Narnia books. As you say, Lewis was a Christian. In fact, I thought the Narnia books were meant to be like a children's version of Jesus's story, with Aslan as Jesus.
I'd like to read the Narnia books one of these days! I am quite interested in reading more children's fiction from the pre-television era, just so I can get a better idea of the sort of moral principles they were trying to instil in children back then.
And I don't really have the patience for grown-up fiction anyway.

Christians complaining about subversive and anti-Christian TV shows and books for children has kind of become a running joke in recent years, which is why you can't help being amused by clips like this. (Skeletor is just such a prat!)

I think there is definitely something in some of this though. Not necessarily in the case of He-Man, but maybe in other cases. I think Philip Pullman, for example, has openly admitted his books are anti-Christian.

I've read a lot of interviews with Pullman. He's not anti-Christian or anti-religious in general, he says, he just hates what organized religion has done to people over the centuries. He has a fair point, I think.

The Narnia books were indeed written along the lines you mentioned. What Lewis said was that he was creating the fantasy world to begin with, and he started thinking what Jesus would be like if he'd lived in this particular fantasy world, and that's where he got the idea of Aslan.

To be honest, I thought, when I worked out who Aslan was supposed to be, that the books pushed that side of things a little too much. I thought The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was the best of the lot, imaginatively speaking, but in some of the others the join between Christian morality tale and tacked-on pagan magic creaks rather alarmingly.

What the original question it boils down to is whether there's a difference between non-Christian and anti-Christian. I would say there's a big one, but some Christians would say there's no difference at all.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ1u2_PopPk[/youtube]