"They... walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward and not forward." Jeremiah 7:24

Avatar, Twilight, Harry Potter, The Shack, and now Hunger Games.

Hunger Games fits into a dark world that has supposedly replaced our own increasingly corrupt land. With today's delight in digital deceptions and mind-changing stimuli, our former free and moral nation may well fade away, swallowed up by a dictatorship that could encompass the world.

The setting for this trendy teenage tale is an oppressive nation called Panem that occupies what once was America. From its well-protected Capitol, it controls its 12 regional Districts using sophisticated surveillance and communication technology.

Each of the 12 Districts must offer a yearly contribution to the Capitol in the form of two chosen "Tributes": a boy and a girl (ages twelve through eighteen). According to standard government rules, those twenty-four Tributes will kill each other until only one is left. And while the teenagers fight for their lives, the eyes of every household across the land are glued to the televised battlegrounds. That's the law.

The realm of myth, imagination and occultism have their own ways of making mysterious manifestations and reincarnations seem plausible. Many are found in the myths and practices behind shamanism, Hinduism, sorcery, witchcraft and Native American traditions. They all clash with Christianity.

Consider these warnings:

"There shall not be found among you anyone who... practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord..." Deuteronomy 18:10-12

Book Review by Berit Kjos, movie scheduled release date;  3/23/12