Potter Mania

I’m going to be heading out of town for a week, but before I go, I wanted to leave a few posts about the Harry Potter books. I just finished reading the 6th book, which for all of you non-Potter readers is the next-to-last book, so I’m about two years behind the current craze. I’m trying to reserve my final judgment of the books until I read the last installment, but I will give you a few of my thoughts now that I’m 6/7 finished. Don’t worry, I won’t include any spoilers for those of you who haven’t read the books, and I ask that anybody who posts comments remains ambiguous enough to not give away any major points of the plot. Also, if you’re interested, a few of us got into a rather lengthy debate on Sean Scribner’s blog a couple of years ago. You can find that discussion posted here.

I'll be sure to respond to any comments when I get back next week.

My Impressions of Harry Potter…

1. For the most part I think the books are pretty well written and are not an affront to Christianity. In many ways the books actually uphold a Christian worldview. They are filled with virtues like love, self-sacrifice, courage, and friendship. Rowling creates a fantasy world with a distinct contrast between good and evil. I have heard some Christians attack Rowling because they claim she blurs the line between good and evil, but I have no idea what they’re talking about. It is true that there are points in the books where Harry and other protagonists fail to do what is right, but the books never glorify their failure. Rowling uses such occasions as a means of revealing true goodness and allows her characters to repent of their wrong actions and recommit to what is right. Perhaps some Christians think that Rowling blurs the line between good and evil because they think that all magic is evil. I’ll address this view in the post below.

2. Despite my favorable opinion of the Potter books, I think the books fail in a number of areas, and I don’t think that they will go down as great works of literature. I really enjoyed the first three books, and if the rest of the books were more like the first three, I think the books would be highly regarded for years to come. There was an innocent charm about the early books. The world Rowling created was full of joy and delight. I thought the tone of the three books was in some ways similar to the tone of the Chronicles of Narnia, but books four, five, and six lose much of the joy and the delight. I know that Rowling wanted to develop her characters as they grow up through adolescents, but I have found that the coming-of-age elements really detract from the joy that was present in the first three books. Her characters repeatedly act like typical modern teenagers. While this may appeal to a vast number of her readers who are teenagers and can relate to adolescent behavior, I think that it strips the books of the timeless nature that most good fantasies possess. In books four and five, Harry Potter’s constant whining may be an accurate portrayal of a 14 or 15 year old kid, but I don’t really want the hero of the story to act like a typical kid. Books five and six focus way too much on teenage dating relationships, which includes numerous references to the main characters dating other characters, making-out with them, breaking up with them, etc… There were times when I thought I was reading a teen magazine, not a great work of fiction. I think Rowling could have included romantic elements if she really thought it was necessary, but the way she developed the teenage romances was simply tacky.


3. Two years ago, I made the comment on Sean’s blog that if I had kids, I would have no problems with them reading the Harry Potter books. After reading books four, five, and six, I would amend my previous statement. The later Harry Potter books are not children’s books! I don’t think I would let my kids read the books until they were teenagers and able to handle the darker and more mature elements of the later books. I think younger children could handle the first three books, but the later books are pretty serious and scary, not to mention all of the annoying relationship stuff that is geared much more for teenagers. I think Rowling wanted the children who read the books to grow up with the books, but now that kids won’t have to wait two years for the next book to be published, I don’t see how her objective will be accomplished. Would you purposefully read each of the Lord of the Rings books in three year intervals if you were able to read them all at once? I wouldn’t have much of a problem if I had a nine year old son who wanted to read the first Harry Potter book. The problem is that kids tend to be curious and would want to know how the story ends, and I think the later books are way too mature for a nine year old.

Potter and Evil

The reason I first picked up the original Harry Potter book was because I kept receiving forwarded emails from Christians who claimed that the Harry Potter books promote Satanism, witchcraft, and all sorts of evil. Rather than ignorantly forwarding those emails to other Christian brothers and sisters, I decided to read the books to see if there is any credence to these attacks. While I do believe we ought to be very careful to monitor what our children are reading, and as I mentioned above, I think the late Potter books are too dark for younger kids, I do not think that these books promote evil. It seems to me that too many Christians have adopted the methods of protest and boycott as their only means of engaging society, so they quickly apply these methods to the Potter books. I’m sure such Christians are well intentioned in their attempt to avoid compromising their values and to protect their children from evil, but I am yet to hear a convincing argument for why the Potter books are so evil. Here are my main reasons for saying this:

1. Most Christians who attack the Harry Potter books simply because they include witchcraft, wizardry, and magic often fail to criticize so many other books and stories that include these same elements. The same people who preach against Harry Potter for all of its magical aspects are typically the same people who praise stories like The Chronicles of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings which include magical elements themselves. My point here is not that Harry Potter is in the same league as Narnia or LOTR; I’m simply pointing out that they need to do a better job of explaining why the magic in Harry Potter is so much worse than the magic in all other fantasy books that they tolerate.

2. I tend to think that the witchcraft/magic in Harry Potter is only a plot device that isn’t supposed to be taken seriously or seen as being in any way real. Some Christians have responded to this “plot device” argument by saying that witchcraft is in fact real, and they quote Deuteronomy 18:10-14 to back up the grave nature of its reality. Let me just say that I do believe in the reality of evil spirits, Satan, witchcraft, etc… and I don’t mean to make light of any of it. I will also readily admit that occult practices are real and should not be dabbled in. However, I don’t think the magic in Harry Potter resembles real witchcraft and occult practices. From my limited knowledge on the subject, it seems to me that true occult practices involve real spiritual elements like worshiping some form of spirit or interacting with spirits through séances, weegie boards, etc… The magic in Harry Potter includes none of these spiritual elements. It is not grounded in any spiritual reality at all. It includes things like invisibility cloaks, flying brooms, and the ability to transform into animals, and I seriously doubt that any of these are supposed to be taken seriously or are supposed to resemble real occult practices.

Of course, the seventh and final book could reveal that Harry Potter does in fact worship Satan, and if this is the case, I will certainly have to change my opinion.

New Tunes

I’m digging a new CD that I picked up last week. It’s the first album released by a fellow Buckeye named Joshua Radin. If you’re into mellow/acoustic/modern-folk music, you may want to check it out. You can listen to four of his songs on his myspace page here.

My favorite song so far is “Winter” which begins with the words:
“I should know who I am by now; I walk the record stands somehow thinking of winter. Your name is the splinter inside me while I wait.”
Anyway, the song has a sentimental quality that fits my general mood of late.

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A God Who Suffers

I just finished my final course for seminary, so I now feel an incredible freedom to read any book that I choose to read! Yippee! I ordered a few used books off of Ebay, and I just finished the first book to arrive: "Night" by Elie Wiesel. It’s one of the most captivating and haunting books I have ever read. "Night" is Wiesel’s autobiographical account of living through the holocaust as a young teenage boy. If you have not read this book, I highly recommend it. It is difficult to stomach, but it is also inspirational and deeply moving.

In the most interesting passage of the book, Wiesel recounts a story of a likeable and sweet Jewish boy who is brutally hung to death by the Nazi SS. He writes:

“But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light was still breathing…And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished. Behind me I heard the (a man) asking, ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where He is? This is where—hanging here from this gallows.’”

As a boy Wiesel passionately believed in God and even desired to become a rabbi, but the holocaust made him lose all faith in God. I wonder if his experience would have been any different if he had believed in a suffering savior, a God who descended to human form and suffered an atrocious death on a cross. I cannot pretend to imagine the horror that Wiesel suffered in the midst of Nazi oppression and the horrors of the concentration camps, but I wonder if his faith in God could have survived if he was a Christian and knew the suffering of Christ. It seems to me that the only faith that would have had a chance of surviving such a horrendous experience is the Christian faith.