Popular Culture

Today is my last post from The Ishbane Conspiracy letters. The sections posted today are just a few random excerpts that I still wanted to include. I hope you enjoyed reading them, and I hope they helped in some way to allow you to see the little ways that Satan works in our lives to try to put wedges between us and our Saviour, and our living for Him.


To Prince Ishbane, From Lord Foulgrin:

Isn’t is amusing how educated men deny fundamental realities uneducated men intuitively recognize? The vermin think of us as they do monsters under the bed, ghosts in the closet, or bogeymen in the basement. As they grow out of believing in them, they grow out of believing in us. It never dawns on them that we are the realities behind those fantasies; we are invisible beings who are, in fact, out to get them. Parents make our job much easier when, instead of teaching their children to resist us, they teach them we don’t exist.



To Foulgrin, From Prince Ishbane:

One of our greatest allies is the flippancy of popular culture. All the jokes about drunkenness, drugs, and immorality serve us well. Even the most grave moral issues are fodder for the Leno and Letterman types. Though humour goes against our grain, many demons now make careers of joke writing. And why not? What could be better than getting the vermin to laugh at what appals the Enemy? To scorn what He holds dear? We don’t even have to persuade them to engage in these things. Laughter’s a form of approval.
Nothing serves the Enemy better than joyful laughter among close friends. Nothing serves us better than cynical laughter that mocks what’s precious to the Enemy.
Fotrunately, we’ve persuaded most [people] that hell is where there’s laughter. And heaven’s the eternal gray, the desolate home of the pout-faced dirge. They know no better…



To Prince Ishbane, From Lord Foulgrin:

I keep them from praying. When they insist, I try to limit it to a particular posture at a particular time. [They] don’t understand prayer isn’t preparation for battle, it is the battle. I don’t fear prayerless study, work, preaching, or parenting. The forbidden talk infuses them with the Enemy’s presence and power. I eliminate it when I can, and minimize it when I can’t.

"choices"

To Foulgrin, From Prince Ishbane:

I’m delighted at Brittany’s willingness to sacrifice her child on our altar. Praise Moloch… As long as the baby is an “it,” not a “he” or “she,” we win. Make it “terminating a pregnancy,” never “killing a baby.” It’s all semantics. If a woman wants her baby, everyone recognizes the baby’s real. Kicking inside her. Clearly visible in the ultrasound. “Do you know if the baby’s a boy or a girl?” they’re routinely asked. But if they want to kill the baby, then shut their mouths about such things. Make them pretend.
We’ve exalted the word choice to a sacred mantra. Keep their focus on the grand notion of choice and off the particular choice in question. Ask them if they’re pro-choice and they’ll say yes. Don’t let them ask the obvious: “What choice are you talking about?: Are they pro-choice about rape, kidnapping, gay bashing, racial violence, and assault and battery? Or course not. Are they pro-choice about killing preborn children? Of course, because every choice is good, isn’t it?


To Prince Ishbane, From Lord Foulgrin:

… I confess I’ve been away from video games for a while and didn’t realize how far we’ve advanced them. The realistic touches blur the boundary between fantasy and reality. Guns are carefully modeled after real ones, wounds have a medically accurate appearance, screams and sound effects are real. There’s even the recoil of a heavy rifle. Men learn to fly in flying simulators. Boys learn to kill in killing simulators.
We’ve built a society in which the primary form of play for millions of vermin children consists of killing large numbers of people! These murder simulators are our training tools for future murderers. … Adults would never trust their children to a sociopathic baby-sitter, yet they routinely entrust them to our sociopathic movies, games, and Web sites. You’ve got to love it.“Why are children killing children?” they cry out, as if this were some great mystery. I get such a laugh every time they ask. Millions of adults kill their smallest children every year just because they feel like it. Gee, I wonder where these kids got the idea that killing children is okay?

Occult

To Prince Ishbane, From Lord Foulgrin:

We’ve established a tremendous edge with this generation, even in the churches. Unprecedented numbers of young people are dabbling in the occult. Yet the forbidden fellowships usually do nothing to keep them from us. They think the movies kids watch, the books they read, the symbols they wear, the music they listen to is just a generational thing, the equivalent of bell-bottom pants, long sideburns or Air Jordans. Merely a passing phase. Prey upon this ignorance.
How many people have we sucks into Ouija boards, tarot cards, palm readings and astrology simply because no one told them how we use these to seduce them? This generation of parents has lavished material things on their children. But they’ve failed miserably to cultivate their spirituality or point it toward the Enemy.
The notion of benevolent aliens and angels offers them a taste of the transcendent without requiring them to bow knees to the Enemy or come to terms with His nature and demands…

Neopaganism is perfect for this post-naturalist culture. Paganism’s child sacrifice and sordid liaisons with prostitutes had nothing over the forms Moloch and Eros have taken in Western culture today.
Once they stop believing in the Enemy, the vermin don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything. That’s why atheism doesn’t serve us nearly as well as competing spiritualities. By seeking our New Age substitutes for the Enemy’s faith, they can have the illusion of spiritual enlightenment, without giving up the relativism of their culture.
Worship of a false object not only seduces them, it stops them from searching for the true object.
… Witchcraft has taken off the black cape and put on the white. Witches are lobbying like other special interest groups, cultivating an image as “the pagan next door.” I see on our reading list The Witch Family, which “portrays witchcraft in a positive family setting.” A magnificent sleight of hand.
Hell’s marketing department has reinvented paganism. We’ve given witchcraft a facelift. We’ve become a no-hag main street religion, permeating media, music, and schools! Wicca is our little white lie, drawing in millions of this displaced younger generation…

…The modern Ouija board resides in tens of millions of homes. It was my idea to sell the board’s rights to a respectable company like Parker Brothers. Monopoly, Scrabble, LIFE, Clue and… consulting spirits of darkness. A nice mix of innocent fun, don’t you think? Do you remember when our board outsold Monopoly? We entered 2.5 million new homes in a single year.
Think of the mileage we’ve gotten from The Exorcist. Horrible dreams even among Christians. Seduction toward other books and movies of the kind. Dulled interest in the Enemy. Most of the vermin never realize the book is based on a true story or that the infamous demon possession came about through – what else? – our Ouija board!
When they use the board, they give permission for an unknown spirit to communicate with them. If living in a war zone occupied by Enemy troops, would they open their front door to let in anyone who requested entry? Of course not. Yet that’s exactly what they do in the metaphysical realm. The Ouija board is a powerful door opener.
Commercials for the Ouija board sometimes appear during Saturday morning cartoons. The manufacturer says it’s for those eight years old and above. The younger the better…

… Every day we’re spawning a new genre of magic and witchcraft books for the little tykes. Perfect. It’s like boxing. Lead with the apparently innocent. Lull them in. Then follow with the hard punch, and finally the knockout blow. Think of all the spin-off programs, movies, and products from these books.
Alas, parents won’t overtly sacrifice their children to Moloch. But take heart, Foulgrin. Through what they allow their children’s minds to feed on, they offer them to us as living sacrifices.

Never Fulfilled

To Foulgrin, From Prince Ishbane:

We surround young girl with images of the perfect body, so they spend their lives in pursuit of thinness. There’s no way your Jillian could ever measure up – she lives in the real world. Each of those posed pictures she looks at is the best among hundreds. The perfect angle, carefully retouched. The models are slaves, starving themselves to get the edge. They’re airbrushed, surgically altered fantasy props. Each will dry up like last month’s flowers, withering into depression and self-destruction.
Every women’s magazine screams the message that only thin is attractive. And usually the adjoining page is a close-up of a dessert the women in the pictures can’t eat unless they later induce vomiting.
It’s not just the male minds we’ve programmed with images of sleek yet voluptuous young females. The females have fallen for it too. They think that’s how they’re supposed to look and act. That’s how they’re to attract males. The modesty and self-restraint of young women once kept male lusts from taking control. But now we mentor the girls into promiscuity right along with the boys.

… If we cannot deface the Enemy directly, we can cause His image bearers to either despise or worship their own bodies. What better way to spread graffiti on the Enemy’s portraits?



To Foulgrin, From Prince Ishbane:

What do these young Millennials value and long for? They’re disenchanted with the emptiness around them. They’re tired of having no purpose. No vision. Nothing to live for. Their frustration and boredom can be brick walls to the Enemy and the forbidden fellowship. Or they can be open doors to them.
Whether it’s food, housing, sex, money or religion, those who live to have every short-term longing fulfilled are fools. They lose their grasp of greater longings. They become impatient with any desire that can’t be fulfilled today, here and now.
Through the flippancy of popular culture, we’ve robbed them of the moral imagination so useful to the Enemy. This imagination was once stimulated by the arts, music, and greater literature. And the forbidden book itself. It was used incessantly by the Enemy to draw their thoughts to unseen realities. But we have extinguished those longings – or at least buried them deep – under the flood of short-term satisfactions.
That’s why hell’s marketing schemes are so effective. Nothing’s better than the commercial that convinces them they need what they don’t. Or that they want what we want them to want. Or they must have it immediately. Not in the Enemy’s form, nor in His time, but ours. We’ve replaced imagination with fantasy, joy with pleasure. We fill rooms with empty-souled, vacant-eyed vermin telling sleazy jokes and mocking the Enemy’s ways and laughing as though their hearts were full of joy. In fact, they’re full of cynicism and hopelessness. Their misdirected longings will never be fulfilled.

"love"

Today I’ve included many sections from several different letters. They all touch upon the topic of “love” and the way society today views love, relationships, sex, etc. The excerpts here highlight just how far we’ve wandered from God’s definition of love. They also highlight the affects different media has on our thinking of love, relationships, etc.


To Foulgrin, From Prince Ishbane:

Keep feeding all of them with our sexual propaganda. Jokes and conversations about heterosexual and homosexual experiences are the norm on prime time television. Especially in programs targeting the younger audience. Slide them into the notion that while they would recognize voyeurism through a window as sick, voyeurism through a television set is perfectly normal.
Don’t ever let the MTV generation imagine the despicable truth – that the best sex happens among the married.
Think of it, Foulgrin. A hundred years ago parents allowed their adolescent children virtually no unsupervised time together. Little leisure. Little money. No cars. No billboards. No movies. No televisions. No computers. Few magazines. Almost no pornography. Back then they gave them training in moral absolutes not only in church but in school. Parents taught their children to be disciplined and hardworking. Yes, we still managed to lure some of them into immorality, and a thousand different sins, but in those days it really took effort. Now, it’s like falling off a log.
All they have to do is tread water and we have them. Only the Christian vermin have the Ghost’s power to swim upstream. And even then many of them fail to draw on it.
We’ve so permeated their culture, and their culture has so dominated their minds, they end up going with the current. Finally they go over the waterfall, smashing on the rocks below…

…A dating relationship can be detrimental to our purposes when it helps them prepare for marriage. Fortunately there are few young vermin for whom this is the case. Instead, it will twist their perspectives. Compromise their purity. Deaden their ability to carry on an exclusive lifelong commitment. After enough years of the smorgasbord of dating, they find it difficult to make one selection and stick with it.
You must see the teenage vermins’ lives in the larger context. Teenagers are a recent invention, created in America during the 1950s. Yes, there have always been people between the ages of 13 and 19. But they were immersed in family tradition and work. Adolescence was nothing but the continuum between childhood and adulthood. There was the gradual relinquishing of childhood privileges and restrictions for the responsibilities and freedoms of adulthood. But in the 1950s teenagers became a socio-economic identity. Suddenly they had their own music, tastes, and subculture. They became big business. Their preferences were catered to. Needless to say, we capitalized on this.
If we can hold them while they’re young, they’ll seldom slip through our grasp when they’re older. Our strategy mirrors the Enemy’s. Get them while they’re young and hold on to them. The older they get, the less chance they’ll ever change. And the shorter they’ll have to live even if they do. We lead them to small choices that turn into larger habits that become ongoing lifestyles.
When working with Christian vermin, make them just a baptized version of the world. If the church is simply the world, only a little better, swearing a little less and giving a little more, it’s no threat to us. The Enemy calls them to be radically different. We can put up with little differences. It’s the revolutionary changes that mess us up.
The Enemy doesn’t want a “little” of them. He wants it all.

…Your report on watching the video at Ian’s was most encouraging. Pleasantville? Yes, I see it here on our recommended movie list. “Pleasantville is a youth movie with a clear message: unrestrained sexual indulgence leads to increased health, creativity, intelligence and inner peace. Those vermin who embrace the Enemy’s morality are depicted as dull and lifeless people in black and white. Once they violate the Enemy’s standards, they become truly alive, depicted in full colour. Highly recommended. Particularly effective when watched by Christian youths. Rated VUP: Very Useful Propaganda.”
The Enemy says to them, “Among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity.” Yet they entertain themselves with these very things. They join us in laughing at the things the Enemy despises! When they watch a movie and two people are attracted to each other, what always happens? They go to bed together, naturally. Do the vermin in the movies ever examine their souls and ask whether it’s morally right? Of course not.
When this is their steady diet all their lives, how could they ever be shocked at it? How could a fan of Dawson’s Creek or Friends consider fornication anything but normal? It’s not the exception, it’s the rule. It’s how life works. Why shouldn’t it work for them that way too? I’m always amused when the same parents who’ve let their children be entertained by hundreds of fornications are shocked when they discover little Johnny or Sarah has fornicated. Duh… why wouldn’t they? Choices flow out of worldviews, and worldviews flow out of whatever they feed their minds on.

… We’ve redefined “single” to mean “I’m not currently dating someone.” Even the Christian vermin forget that in the Enemy’s eyes they’re single until they take their marriage vows. I love the notion “we’re nearly married.” Do what you can to get them to act like they’re married when they’re single, then act like they’re single once they’re married.

… Fill their minds with suggestive comments and jokes, from radio DJs and sitcoms and movies. Use clothing and swimsuit styles and low-cut, side-slit prom dresses and a hundred other strategies to provide that “hint,” and more, which He warns them against. What He forbids, we normalize. How successful have we been? Look around you. For them a “good movie” is one where people commit adultery but the camera cuts away just before intercourse, and obscenities are used “only a few times.”

Distraction, Distraction, Distraction

I appreciate the way this book (The Ishbane Conspiracy) makes one think about certain tactics that Satan may (and does) use to distract us from living out our faith. One of the most evident ways is through all of the different entertainment and electronics available to us. As it says, one of the best ways to keep Christians from living their faith is “distraction, distraction, distraction.” These following sections from various letters highlight this, and also look at the topic of parent/children relationships.


To Foulgrin, From Prince Ishbane:

This is the connected generation – connected to computers, telephones, videos, television, music. But they’re also the disconnected generation – disconnected from parents, church, and moral absolutes.
The more hours they spend on the Internet – and their other substitute realities – the more stressed, depressed, and lonely these kids become. It hampers their ability to communicate with real people in real life. The online world is a virtual reality without responsible adults. But the Enemy has made them to need adults, just as adults need them. Our job is to divide the generations. Convince them they don’t need each other, they can’t understand each other. Drive any wedge you can between [them]…

… Parents believe ceaseless activity will keep [their children] out of trouble. What it really does is keep them from pondering what’s missing in their lives. They’ll never turn their attention to the Enemy. Not as long as we can lock them onto our long lineup of alternatives…

… This generation has been given more and less than any other. More wealth, recreation, technology, and free time. Less morals, guidance, discipline, and inspiration. Parents smothering their children with toys and technology is my favourite kind of child abuse. The more they have, the less they enjoy. The more activities thrust upon them, the more they’re bored.

You must bombard [Jillian’s] life with so much noise that she cannot hear the Enemy’s still small voice.
When the Enemy whispers to her about her deepest needs, prompt her to open the refrigerator. Or turn up the radio. Turn on the television. Pick up the phone. Let her do anything besides examine her life, her emptiness, and her morality.

… The Enemy’s music can lift their hearts and deepen their minds. Worst of all, it can lead them to worship. Yet Jillian can sing her horrid little “praise songs” at the church youth group, then pull out of the parking lot that same night singing along to a song on the radio about the pleasures of fornication. She doesn’t think of it in those terms, of course. It’s your job to see she never does…

… Of course you should do everything you can to distract her from the forbidden book. If it’s a seedy romance novel of a video promoting materialism and superficiality, all the better. The media is our most effective gateway to their puny minds. Program her mind like they program a computer – what goes in is what comes out.

… Think how time-consuming it would be to individually deceive every human heart. That’s why we need the media. Through screens and speakers we control their pulses, fuel their passions, and pour their soft squishy minds through our funnel into a Jell-O mold of cultural conformity. Their minds dulled, their senses numbed, they become our automatons. Even in their enslavement, we convince them they’re free. It’s Christianity that enslaves, we tell them. It seems ludicrous to think they’d fall for it. But they’ve been doing it for centuries.Poison a water supply at its source. Their minds are the headwaters of their actions. Our lyrics run down their minds like rust runs down a sink drain. Nothing distracts and contaminates like a nicely placed television commercial or a song on the radio…

Friends

The sections from specific letters I wanted to share today deal with the topic of friendship. These excerpts highlight some truths that are very evident, especially in teens, as they face the pressures of today’s world.


To Foulgrin, From Prince Ishbane:

It looks as though Brittany will prove your greatest asset in taking down Jillian. She’s materialistic and cynical? She tugs Jillian away from spiritual interests? Stretches her moral comfort zones? Keeps her from developing deeper friendships at the church? Perfect. She’s a page right out of hell’s playbook.
Brittany’s convinced the church is a hangout for hypocrites and losers? If there’s one thing these teenage sludgebags don’t want to be, it’s losers. Cool is everything.
Implement our usual strategy with Jillian. Make her think that because she’s doing her good Christian deeds, she’s pulling Brittany up. Of course, her friend is actually pulling her down…

…Being a friend these days means not saying anything that makes someone feel bad. In the interests of “not judging” and “loving” each other, they aid and abet each other’s self-destruction. Our semantics department has brilliantly twisted the word friend. The Enemy defines a friend as one who acts in another’s best interests. This includes warning him to stay away from danger. And encouraging him to choose the path that brings safety. Our definition of friend is one who gives moral support by saying yes – even when someone’s walking toward the edge of a cliff…

Ishbane

One of my favourite books is called The Ishbane Conspiracy, by Randy, Angela and Karina Alcorn. I’ve read this book over 5 times already and I know I’ll read it many more times over the years to come. The book is reminiscent of The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis), as each chapter consists of a letter written between two demons – Lord Foulgrin and Prince Ishbane. In these letters they discuss how they are going to draw four humans (the main characters of the story) away from God and win them to Satan. In their letters they bring up countless tactics that you then see played out in the lives of these humans in the “story” part of the chapter. The main storyline is somewhat geared towards teenagers, as the main characters are all teens – but the things the demons discuss are applicable to anyone of any age.
I want to share excerpts from the letters… I think they’re great eye openers to show little ways that Satan works in this world; ways that are sometimes easy to disregard or be covered up. So, the following bits of reading are parts of various letters taken from the book. In them will be mention of the names of the characters, but insert your own name or your friends’ names and you’ll see just how much these words can hit home.

I’ll start today with a letter that is particularly appropriate for this time of year:


To Foulgrin, From Prince Ishbane:

New Year’s is one of my favourite seasons. It means Christmas – or as we prefer to call it, the “winter holidays” – is safely behind us. We’ve buried the manger under mountains of toys, videos, and designer clothes. But there’s always the threat of the Carpenter rearing His head and being seen for who He is. The Enemy has this annoying habit of enabling some of them to see through our blanket of materialism. They grasp the terrifying significance of His invasion of the dark planet. As long as the Carpenter stays in the manger, it’s tolerable. But if they see Him crucified and risen, beware. All heaven could break loose.The New Year always raises hopes in these bloated bags of chemicals the Enemy calls His image-bearers. We dash their hopes until they become cynical, resigned to eking out their miserable existence. Then they die and victory is ours. The New Year inspires innumerable resolutions broken before the frosts of February. All their efforts at self-reform divert their attention from the Enemy’s offer of lasting supernatural change…