Posted on 07/23/2007 7:04:00 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
If there’s a child in your house, then you probably know what’s going to happen when the clock strikes 12 tonight. The final Harry Potter book—Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—will be unleashed on the world.
The big question that has millions of kids on edge: Will Harry live—or will he die?
But the big question many parents have is: Should their kids be reading novels about wizards and witches and magic?
A Christian expert on Potter mania says, “It depends.”
Connie Neal, a veteran youth pastor and mother of three, is the author of a book titled What’s a Christian To Do with Harry Potter? Neal says parents must use discernment in deciding whether to allow their kids to read Harry Potter. For example, kids with an unhealthy interest in the occult should probably not read these books. Other Christians believe their kids benefit from the moral lessons the Potter books teach.
Neal’s belief that it’s okay for Christians to read secular novels comes from her reading of the biblical book of Daniel. Daniel, you will remember, was a teenager when he was taken away from Jerusalem to live in exile in Babylon. There, he was taught the language and literature of the pagan culture. He studied at a school that trained Babylon’s magicians, astrologers, and sorcerers. The actual practice of sorcery and astrology was, of course, forbidden by God. But Daniel studied it well to understand it.
One day King Nebuchadnezzer called on his magicians and astrologers to interpret a dream; none could do it. In a rage, the king ordered that all of his wise men be put to death. Daniel asked to see the king, who then asked him, “Are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation?” Daniel responded: “No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery which the king has asked, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.”
Daniel had immersed himself in his culture’s pagan literature in order to understand it. But, because of his deep devotion to God, he didn’t defile himself. As Connie Neal told BreakPoint, “God put Daniel in Babylon to be a light in the darkness—and he was. He was not afraid to read literature that resounded in the hearts of the people with whom he lived. He used his familiarity with this pagan literature to reveal the true and living God.” And Neal knows some kids who have done the same in our own post-Christian culture.
Now personally, I don’t recommend the Potter books. I’d rather Christian kids not read them. But with some 325 million of them in print, your kids will probably see them and hear others talk about them, and they’re probably going to read them anyway. So use this occasion to teach them to be discerning—like Daniel. Dare them to have Daniel as their role model, not Harry Potter.
And if your kids do enjoy Harry’s magical world, you should give them copies of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
These books also feature wizards and witches and magic, but in addition, they inspire the imagination within a Christian framework—and prepare the hearts of readers for the real-life story of Jesus Christ.
There is no 'occult' in the modern sense in Harry Potter.
Your version of Jesus is so puny one wonders how He handled satan in the first place.
In all seriousness, I doubt even 10% of the Potterbashers also keep their kids clear of Star Wars, which features a supernatural force.
Exactly...and the Potterbashers seem unable to grasp the idea that Potter lives in a different world from the one we’re in.
I don't do any of those things, but I enjoy reading Harry Potter stories, and so do my kids.
YOU read about them in the Bible, does that make you want to DO any of them?
Why do you assume we don't do both?
Kids understand that within that fictional world, magic is okay. Contrary to your opinion, kids DO understand that magic isn't real, and they can't use it in their everyday lives
So THAT'S how she can change the shape of that bus, and turn those kids into all those different things! Shameless occult for the kiddiewinks!
It’s not a mixed message when God tells you them.
You obviously do not understand the difference between killing (either in self-defense or in the case you cite, by God’s decree) and murder (unwarranted killing).
Umm, she tried to make the point that HP and the Bible teach the same message. They clearly don’t.
The Potterbashers are not the idiots they seem to be. They are committing a logical error, but it is a subtle one.
In Rowling’s universe, magic functions as a TECHNOLOGY. It is part of that universe’s “nature”, has its own laws, and does not involve having spirits do supernatural work for you.
The Bible uses the word “magic” to refer to the practice of having spirits do supernatural work for you. The visible effects of the naturalistic magic in the Potter universe cannot be produced by naturalistic means in our universe, therefore the very word “magic” has different metaphysical connotations in the fictional universe than it does here. Here, naturalistic magic spells do not “work”, except in the Clarkean sense (”any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”).
However, the Potterbashers claim that occult magic, the kind that involves appealing to spiritual beings to do supernatural work for you, IS ACTUALLY REAL IN OUR WORLD AND REPRESENTS A DIABOLICAL TRAP FOR HARRY POTTER FANS.
Their error is NOT that they think occult magic is real, and trying to argue against this belief misses the point.
Their real error is that they can’t tell the difference between summoning supernatural spirits, and pretending that there is a naturalistic magic in our universe. Their deficiency is being unable to get past the WORD “magic” to discern that two very different kinds of activity are denoted by it in fiction.
If Rowling’s “good” wizard characters had summoned demons to do their bidding, I would agree that the books were spiritually unhealthy. If she had even had “bad” wizard characters do this, I would regard the books with serious reservations, because of the confusion of the two senses of the word “magic” that this would lead to. But she quite properly did neither of these things, and so her books are no more spiritually dubious than the Narnia books (which also had naturalistic magic performed by “good” characters such as the Hermit in “The Horse and His Boy” or Coriakin in “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”).
There is a genuine theological point at issue here. My argument depends on the assumption that REAL demons only come when they are personally addressed, and that playing at magic spells WHEN NO SUPERNATURAL BEINGS ARE ASSUMED TO BE INVOLVED will not cause demons to come and tempt those who are playing by offering actual supernatural work.
Those Potterbashers who think that children playing at magic will not be protected from demonic temptation have an understandable reason to shun the Potter books, but I disagree with them on the key theological point (which is not whether demons exist, it’s whether they will perform supernatural work even for people who have no intention whatsoever of communicating with supernatural beings).
No, but there are many kids who do get interested in the occult from HP. They think it’s a safe thing to get involved in because of what they’ve read in HP - namely they will be okay doing magic if they have good intentions.
Not every single kid. You do realize there are people that become involved in witchcraft for real, that they actually call themselves witches and wizards, and cast spells and such.
No, the error is yours. The Bible is clear that what people think is magic is actually demonic spirits carrying out the persons’ commands because they have some knowledge of how to interact to get the spirits to do what they want (for awhile). That is why He wants people to have nothing to do with this kind of stuff.
You are falling into the trap because you believe Rowling’s concept of magic being a force the person uses without anything else’s help. That is not what God tells us is behind occultic powers.
BTW, the Boy Scout Handbook doesn't teach the exact same message as the Bible, but I don't see anybody freaking out over that.
Prove it.
You ALMOST got my point, but not quite.
When you say “The Bible is clear that what people think is magic is actually demonic spirits carrying out the persons’ commands because they have some knowledge of how to interact to get the spirits to do what they want”, you SUPPORT my point that the people doing “magic” in the Bible were addressing supernatural beings, rather than taking advantage of “natural” laws as technologists do.
When you say “you believe Rowling’s concept of magic being a force the person uses without anything else’s help. That is not what God tells us is behind occultic powers.” you miss two subtleties.
First, I don’t “believe” IN Rowling’s concept of magic, and neither does she in real life. But I do “believe” THAT, in her FICTIONAL universe, the thing CALLED magic is indeed a force the person uses without anything else’s help, and that belief of mine about the meaning of the concepts in her books is due simply to my being a competent reader of fiction.
Second, when you say “That is not what God tells us is behind occultic powers.” you fall right into the error I had just warned about — YES, that is not what God tells us is behind “occultic powers”, but “occultic powers” IS NOT THE ONLY THING WHICH THE WORD “magic” CAN REFER TO!
The Potter books do NOT have the wizards using “occultic powers”, they have the wizards using something naturalistic which they call “magic”. You may believe that, in OUR universe, the feats they accomplish can only be done by “occultic powers”, but they live in a fictional universe in which that is not the case. In other words, you may believe that the two linguistic terms “magic” and “occultic powers” coincide in our world, but you may not validly trade on this equivalence by substituting one term for the other in a discussion of a FICTIONAL world.
Spooky stuff.
If a christian parent wants to let their child read Harry Potter, in light of some of the controversy, or because of the subject matter, I would hope they would read the books themselves before deciding one way or the other.
Just the same if a high school kid came home with the assignment to read Mein Kampf, a wise parent would judge the ability of the child to properly grasp all aspects of the book, and the discussion that was going on in the class room.
There are PLENTY of good books out there to get a child to read, and interested in reading. A parent should never have the opinion "that as long as they're reading, all is ok." They should be actively involved with the inputs into their childs life.
As the computer saying goes:
GIGO=Garbage in garbage out.
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