SGM Blog
Saturday, August 06, 2005
 
Hocus Pocus
I don’t visit The Singing News all that often (not because of their self-defeating subscription policy, but rather that there’s nothing terribly compelling there), and caught up on Ken’s evangelizing as of late. (And make no mistake about it, he has more and more tailored his writing to manipulating readers rather than informing them.)

A recent target seems to be the anti-Harry Potter crowd. (Disclosure: I have no beef with Rowlings or her books. I don’t believe we have to run every book or movie through a theological litmus test. I like to think God doesn’t mind if we occasionally indulge ourselves in activities just for the fun of it. Hence the existence of French Silk ice cream.)

He targets Caryl Matrisciana, who produced a video slamming Potter.

Matrisciana also made one glaring error in fact when she stated that C.S. Lewis, "came out of the occult, as I did." I have read much about C.S. Lewis's life, and have never found any mention of his involvement in the occult.

Ken doesn’t specify what he’s read about Lewis, but apparently it doesn’t include Lewis’ autobiography, “Surprised By Joy". An excerpt:

And that started in me something with which, on and off, I have had plenty of trouble since - the desire for the preternatural, simply as such, the passion for the Occult. Not everyone has this disease; those who have will know what I mean [I do, very well] . . . It is a spiritual lust; and like the lust of the body it has the fatal power of making everything else in the world seem uninteresting while it lasts.

And he evidently has not read from the C.S. Lewis Institute web site:

At a later boarding school (Chartres), Lewis' encounters with a teacher who introduced him to the occult, as well as Lewis' doubts drawn from the problem of evil, concern over the similarities between Christianity and paganism, and sexual temptation were factors that led to a loss of faith. He lost his faith, virtue, and simplicity. Later he rid himself of unchastity, atheism, and the occult, but not another acquired habit: smoking.

And he apparently didn’t look at any of the 50,000+ references to a google of C.S. Lewis + occult.

Then Ken can’t resist taking a parting shot at Matrisciana:

For a documentary filmmaker, who prides herself on her research skills and commitment to uncover the truth, getting such a basic fact wrong does not bode well for the rest of her work.

Oh my.

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