I MISS SCOOBY-DOO

I miss Scooby-Doo.

When I was a kid, Saturday morning cartoons were a thing. We didn’t have a Cartoon Network or a YouTube in our pocket. Instead we got our cartoons on Saturday mornings. And on Saturday mornings I would get up early and head to the kitchen.

Generally, my dad would be up making some kind of breakfast. And as soon as he finished, we would go into the living room where he would sit in his big recliner and I would sit in his lap and we would watch Scooby-Doo.

If you’ve never watched Scooby-Doo, particularly the early episodes, it went something like this. From the Wikipedia entry:

Each episode featured Scooby and the four teenaged members of the Mystery, Inc. gang: Fred, Shaggy, Daphne, and Velma, arriving to a location in the “Mystery Machine” and encountering a ghost, monster, or other supernatural creature, whom they learned was terrorizing the local populace. After looking for clues and suspects and being chased by the monster, the kids come to realize the ghost is anything but, and – often with the help of a Rube Goldberg-like trap designed by Fred – they capture the villain and unmask him. Revealed as a flesh and blood crook trying to cover up crimes by using the ghost story and costume, the criminal is arrested and taken to jail, often saying something to the effect of “…and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!”

It was always a relief when we got to the end of an episode. Because when you stripped away all the supernatural trappings it wasn’t really that scary after all.

As an adult, however, it’s not so easy.

Today I read a story of a mother who found out her 15 year old daughter, presumed dead after being missing for a number of years, was actually alive. She was being used to create pornography right here in the United States. Kidnapped, drugged and abused for years.

A couple of days ago, I visited with case workers from the Department of Family and Protective Services. Do not ever ask these people to tell you stories. But do pray for them. They face the real nightmares in this world.

Kinda makes you wish for a ghost or a goblin doesn’t it. Seems that the older I get the more I realize that peeling away all the supernatural veneer only reveals something even scarier beneath. Makes me miss Scooby-Doo.

But Scooby and the gang got it wrong. The supernatural is not the facade – it’s the reality. Evil exists in our world and it puts on a nice face so that no one will notice. But the reality is that beneath the surface are supernatural forces who seek only to destroy you in whatever way they can.

Peter says it this way:

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.      1 Peter 5:8

Today we tend to think the world has been rid of the dark forces–the ghouls, ghosts, demons and monsters. But these occult forces of evil haven’t been expelled, expunged or exorcised. They still haunt and torment. And unfortunately the face beneath the mask is much scarier than the mask itself. Kinda makes me miss Scooby-Doo.