Judgment

In my other blog, at http://tonyklinger.blogspot.co.uk I write entertainment related stories. Over the last couple of days that has caused me to research Walden Media and their film The Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian and the original series of books it was based on, written by the British author, CS Lewis.

It transpires that both the Walden organization and the author are linked in a wish to deliver a religious or spiritual message to their viewers and readers. Walden want to teach their audience, in the guise of their being an educator. I have no particular problem with them being educators, as long as this intent is transparent and acceptable to the consumers.

This covert method at “education” strikes a similar chord as it is seems to be increasingly evident, however surreptitiously, within the framework of entertainment celebrities and their beliefs, and their choices of creative material.

An obvious example, cited many times, is Tom Cruise and his Scientology beliefs. Tom, it is now claimed, is the number two man in the entire church, which he appears to deny. He is accompanied in this church by John Travolta. He starred in the flop of the decade, and that’s tough competition, in Battlefield Earth. The Scientologist religion’s late founder, L Ron Hubbard, didn’t live to see the film based on his book of the same name. It is self evident that Ron was very strange and so are the beliefs of this Church.

I have spent some time looking at the Church of Scientology and to me it seems more bizarre than most religions. There are not too many other religious groups, which are formed by novelists such as L Ron Hubbard. I do recommend some of his science fiction books by the way, and the key word in this sentence is fiction. The beliefs in a science fiction type basis for religion, such as that which appears to be the case in Scientology, isn’t much more strange than the beliefs of the Mormons. However there is a difference that makes the Scientologists more threatening than any other recently created and fast growing religion. The key difference is that Scientology seeks to proselytize, sometimes by stealth. I know this to be true from personal experience. I have seen their underhand methods when an unnamed organization offered free educational opportunities to someone in my family in the USA. It was only later that the offer was linked to the Church of Scientology.

Another great running story of a similar nature is the Kabbalah lite followed by the pop singer and mega media icon, Madonna. It does not seem as if Madonna has done anything to influence others to follow her own spiritual path, but because of who she is there are bound to be many who will follow her path purely because she does.

Kabbalah, in its more conventional sense means, literally, “receiving” and in its true sense concerns the mystical aspects of Judaism. It is a set of extremely esoteric teachings to explain the significance of Jewish religious observances. It is so complex a belief system that learned scholars spend decades to explore it. Madonna and her friends seem able to grasp it with a minimal amount of study and some well-placed donations.

What a shame our celebrity examples don’t demonstrate better judgment in their spiritual journey.