Steven Bancarz Talks Magic in Entertainment

so where do we as consumers like christian consumers because i've talked to people who are like i just threw my tv out like i don't i don't even watch anything anymore right i don't consume anything because they they lump it all as evil and wrong together okay so like where where should we in our discernment draw the line on some of these things like do you see a difference between say like harry potter and the lord of the rings like lord of the rings has magic in it as well right right or even narnia has magic uh disney world their whole slogan and i'm a huge disney fan so i'm curious to see what you have to say on that but um but you know it it really is like in in the more that i research the new age and i listen to you um it's like we we do kind of make light of these things that have at the very least very originally originated and very very evil dark stuff right and here we have mickey mouse saying you know come experience the magic with you know what i'm saying right like where do we draw the line yeah right so there's with any kind of with any um anything that has a moral dimension to it there's going to be varying degrees of danger varying degrees of sin if we can say like jesus talks with those who have the the greater sin um he says the pharisees are making others twofold the child of hell that they are he says there will be some beating with few stripes some being with many stripes so you see throughout scripture like god doesn't treat all sins equally yeah um all sins require the blood of jesus jesus to be forgiven all sins are worthy of eternal separation from him but not all sins kindle his wrath in the same way when it comes to the occult the theological foundation for god's prohibitions against the occult is his jealousy okay so the second the second commandment he gives to have no graven images representing like other deities or other gods is because it provokes the lord to jealousy over his people idols statues of other deities and so forth he refers to these in ezekiel 8 verse 3 as images of jealousy that provoked jealousy and every single time in the torah in the first five books of the bible that we see um god lashing out in wrath against his people on the grounds of jealousy it's because of their either practice of idolatry or the presence of idols right so false spirituality it provokes god to a jealous wrath and the question is is in this story is the magic aspect of the story peripheral to some other narrative that this is a small part of and the narrative is actually about like good and evil and friendship and like love or something or is the purpose to make the witchcraft itself look extremely attractive and appealing and almost glorified and put on a pedestal so i think a question would be like how to what degree do the occult elements um saturate the material to what degree are they being exalted or glorified or held in high esteem yeah right so for example i watched lord of the rings for the first time the first three um last year just last year just last year well i'm glad that you watched them i have many friends who i've had to show them the lord of the rings because i'm like y'all are missing out people usually usually tell me like you're missing out man yeah and i was like i have to watch it i was like i was missing out like that was really good yeah yeah that's awesome right they were as good as they said they would be yes um and i was watching a few scenes there were a few scenes where i was like like gandalf like went full white wizard mode and here there's actual like sorcery happening in a scene and i was like i was like starting to feel uncomfortable and i was like okay that's actually really intense and really like dark yeah but you can count on one hand throughout the course of the three movies the amount of times there is actually active wizardry or active sorcery present it's more of a story yeah of conquering evil yeah and so for me it's a question of like saturation as well um and like what is the worldview being communicated here like what am i coming away thinking about the occult yeah or thinking about witchcraft am i coming away desensitized to it um i want to make sure that i stay matched and in alignment with what god says about these things and if a film starts to deviate me from the way god sees these matters i would say that's probably not a very good influence on us yeah um but like you said okay when it comes to like disney and mickey mouse and stuff like that i don't want to offend any disney i'm a disney fan too i'm not going to go after disney yeah okay no we're all like okay we're good now okay yeah i'm not gonna go after like the fox and the hound or something great movie though like yeah serious very underrated yeah um do i wish that there weren't magic elements in mickey mouse yeah um but do i think that they pose any real threat to a child um no i mean people like mickey mouse not for the magic aspect but because he's a mouse he's a big goofy looking mouse i think he's awesome right versus like when children watch harry potter they're like oh i want to be a wizard i want to go to the school of wizardry i want to dress up as a wizard for halloween yeah and i want to start casting spells and do things with my wand so you feel like harry potter actually influences people to look more into magic itself in in actually doing these things themselves like that that's sort of the discernment the difference there i think it's the first step to it yeah i think it's the first step to at the very least it's desensitizing them to it like i i've watched i watched disney growing up yeah i could i don't even think i've seen any examples of magic in there um movies i'm sure they're there but i haven't seen any um except maybe genie and the aladdin but when it comes to like we have to take this very seriously right like jesus says that whoever causes so basically whoever causes one of these little children who believes in me to stumble right to sin um it would be better for a millstone to be hung around his neck for him to be cast into the depths of the sea um so there's a higher penalty on provoking children to sin than there is to provoking adults to sin yeah and if we see the effect that you know so there's more witches in the united states right now than presbyterian christians yeah which is outnumber presbyterian christians by about 100 000 in america yeah um people on polls when they're asking people to identify their like religious classification the those who identify as witches continues to grow while those who identify as protestant christians declines and i would we have to say like what is responsible for this massive resurgence of what what the bible classifies as the doctrines of devils you know acts 16 16 says that these things are done through the agency of demons um you know what is responsible for the pervasiveness so you would say entertainment is a huge influence on that then i would say i would say that yeah i mean if we look at literally four to five hundred million books sold in total from the harry potter series yeah um not to mention the movies and how many people saw those yeah um is it not likely that there's a correlation between the pervasiveness of occult spirituality in the west yeah and fictional occult media yeah um no i i really don't think that i like i don't think that i could create an argument necessarily i'm sure you could i don't think i think you'd be hard-pressed to link the lord of the rings series to the fact that everyone is involved in witchcraft that makes sense right um so when it comes to more mild elements like in disney or something i mean there are some parents who won't show their kids disney right and i think there are matters of conscience yeah right there's going to be gray areas with anything but we can only call an area gray because we know what's black we know what's white yeah right and so the middle area implies that we know what the middle isn't right and so i don't have a a problem with disney if i did see some weird magic and then in an episode probably tell my kid you know hey this is you know not good stuff but um we do even see disney starting to even like their company starting to switch more and more this way there's a new tv show out where they're witches and they're like uh communicating with demons and stuff i believe i i can't remember what it's called is under a movie with angelina jolie called like malevolent or something uh maleficent yeah and she's got like this baphomet yeah well because she's the character from sleepy sleeping beauty okay so um so yeah that's it's based off of her and her character but they do have this new cartoon tv show for kids where they're actually i i'm believe i'm remembering this right that they're actually practicing witchcraft and like communicating with demons and and things like that so uh yeah it's called owl house yeah that's what it's called so it's like that is kind of concerning like when you see even a company you know as great as disney as far as branding with family entertainment and stuff that you start noticing when they don't really stand for i i would argue the biblical christian worldview maybe they've incorporated a lot of those values throughout the years but but when they don't really stand solidly on that i think eventually we're gonna see them like maybe not in our lifetime even but i think we'll eventually see them go completely just reflective off of what's going on in the culture does that make sense right yeah and what's going on in the culture is a resurgence of pagan spirituality yeah where statistically it's blowing up in the west um especially compared to decades prior where it was more so atheism that was having a resurgence where you had people like richard dawkins and christopher hitchens and um lawrence krauss and sam harris and daniel dennett and they were kind of like the horsemen of new atheism and now they're like atheism's dead and now what what's becoming popular is like fast food spirituality right fast food meditation fast food yoga fast food chalk or cleansing you know psychic readings astrology yeah and that's becoming the dominant threat to the church and the dominant theme in our culture you

Channel: Hallford

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Keywords: steven bancarz interview, Steven Bancarz world stage reform, Steven bancarz, steven bancarz cody hallford, steven bancarz entertainment, christian entertainment, christian discernment, world stage reform, world stage reform interview, cody hallford interview, steven bancarz theology, new age occult entertainment, christians harry potter, christian lord of the rings, faith based movies, christian movies, christian new age, steven bancarz new age, steven bancarz occult

Id: cIk8q4_dwRs

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021