Some Thoughts on the Harry Potter Series

Lifecenter ^ | Michael O'Brien author of "A Landscape with Dragons" and "Father Elijah"

[jjbrouwer]

Why should I and people like me be held to the same set of rules as those who make a mess of their life. Is that fair, just because some people go out of their way to screw up should I be subjected to the controls these people need.

Exactly! This is my main objection to some of the more radical born again Christians. Many of them apparently had a high old time destroying themselves before finding salvation. Yet they seek to prevent others indulging themselves too.

Do as I say, not as I do.

[Aquinasfan]

We struggle not against flesh and blood, but something far more evil.

Thanks for posting your experience. I very much appreciate it. Let the wise person take heed.

[Aquinasfan]

I wound up cold and homeless on the streets of Oakland and am lucky to be alive. I had to work my way out of poverty and to rediscover the freedom found in the path of obediance.

Praise God!

[Aquinasfan]

Because it is better for a society to follow God's Law than to pretend that WE KNOW better of the knowledge of good and evil.

Reminds me of something I heard recently.

A wise priest said to the confessor, "the only reason that you are not a saint is because you don't want to be one."

[tonycavanagh]

LOL Exactly how many times do you get some rock an roller or politician or anyone else on TV or in the papers telling you about the fun they used to get up to the sex the orgies the drugs and rock and roll.

At the same time I was drilling or on exercise or getting shot at.

And then they have the cheek to lecture us telling us its all bad, and not just there excesses, but are simple pleasures are now under threat.

I bet it was not because they found God it was because they got to old to hack it anymore and just like an old spoil sport want to stop everyone else having any fun.

Cheers Tony

[jjbrouwer]

Their warnings usually have the opposite effect to the intended one...

[Nate505]

"By contrast, the pro-Harry articles lack any serious reflection on the issues involved."

Probably because there are no serious issues invloved with the books in the first place....

[Nate505]

Potter is fiction. As such it is optional. The Bible is not.

So people really did live past the age of 500 back in the olden days? I'm impressed....I'd like to know their diet.

[Carry_Okie]

Excuse me, but where did I suggest banning anything? If this kind of intellectual dishonesty (straw-man arguments putting words in people's mouths) indicates the lengths to which you must go to "win" an argument, what does that suggest about your thesis?

[Nate505]

If it was just Harry Potter, I don't think you'd see a "passionate" reaction. But it's everything. We must beware of Smurfs, Teletubbies, Barney and Britney Spears.

Ever notice how Papa Smurf wore red and some of the Smurfs didn't have jobs but all were treated equally? Sounds like a design to teach our kids communism to me.....

I seriously knew someone who believed that.

[jjbrouwer]

Excuse me, but where did I suggest banning anything?

I was just anticipating one of your later posts.

[Carry_Okie]

I was just anticipating one of your later posts.

Oh, so you know so much about my positions that you can predict what I will post? I see.

Since you are so prescient, please cite where I eventually did.

[jjbrouwer]

Since you are so prescient, please cite where I eventually did.

Nowhere. I shamed you into silence.

[stuartcr]

It would appear that a great many freepers think the Potter series are bad/evil. I can only conclude then, that these people have a deep-seated belief in magic, otherwise I don't know why they would fear it so much. If that is so, since I believe that all things have opposites, what would be wrong with good magic?

[k2blader]

As a Christian, one will be doing some sort of filtering of the culture at all times. But this is to be done internally as an individual, communally as a body of believers, and in the home as a family.

Most definitely agreed.

It's not necessarily a subject for press releases, crusades and campaigns that only serve as platforms for people who want to be in front of the camera or behind a microphone.

Far as I know, O'Brien doesn't want to "be in front of the camera." Seems the source of the article is Family Life Center International, which is an on-line Christ-centered community.

If you don't know "magic" is something to be considered carefully as a Christian, then you've already lost. And no amount of chicken-little articles will change that.

Here we disagree. I think there are too many Christians out there who need to be taught *more* about the hazards within our secular culture. Knowing that "magic" is something to be considered carefully as a Christian isn't enough. What's important is the kind of action one takes in response to what one knows. And not knowing does not mean one has "lost," because one can always learn.

IMHO, O'Brien's intent is foremost to educate Christians who are ignorant about the subject of "magic." Secondly, if he is able to bring a few non-Christians to an understanding of his views, all the better.

[Carry_Okie]

Oh, I see!

Yours is an excellent example of the tautological reasoning I DID originally cite as the basis for the arguments that you and your dishonest ilk would offer:

"I think I am OK, therefore what I think is OK must be so."

The corolary being:

"I deem you not OK therefore you are wrong."

You think my position is wrong, therefore you attack my life of twenty-five years ago. To do so, you choose to defeat totally imaginary (read "false") arguments you project by presumed association, with no supporting evidence (not exactly smart, is it?). Meanwhile, you selectively ignore the thesis I have repeated at least twice because you can't disparage that. You never ask what it was that returned that life to one that is excellent, preferring to offer the original downfall when I ignored God's laws as proof that the argument (that to do so is perilous) is logically flawed.

If you are representative of your ideological cohorts, then perhaps I waste my time.

Your dishonest and, frankly, pathetic means bretray your moral and intellectual frailties, thus proving one of my points: Pursuit of excellent reading material for children is preferable to offering them Harry Potter with it's enticing justifications for repudiating some of the essential moral and intellectual foundations of Western culture, offering instead a paragon that disparages that culture as stupid; i.e., "Muggles." It is an ethic that regards entertainment as joy, gratification as satisfaction, and the projected superiority of self-justification as an objective of achievement.

It doesn't look to me like it serves you very well.

[ChemistCat]

Anne Rice's vampire-fiction is pretty icky. However, give FEAST OF ALL SAINTS a try. It's historical fiction about pre-Civil War New Orleans, and it is absolutely wonderful. Not something I'd hand a teenager because of content; the free black community of that time had two principle elements: one hard-working entrepreneurs and plantation owners, and the other a network of half-black "mistresses" who were kept in relative comfort by wealthy whites. One such mistress with two teenage children tries to use her daughter's beauty to try to get her son to Paris, where he could truly be a gentleman in a world where his color mattered less. There's nothing supernatural in this book, only good research and vivid description. I love it that the major character has to take responsibility for himself after having been raised to expect to be able to do anything he wished. It's much better than anything else of hers, IMHO. (I admit I only read the two Lestat books, and I would not reread them.)

[Aquinasfan]

I can only conclude then, that these people have a deep-seated belief in magic, otherwise I don't know why they would fear it so much. If that is so, since I believe that all things have opposites, what would be wrong with good magic?

Just about every Christian believes in the existence of magic because it's Biblical. The Bible records Moses dueling pharoah's magicians in performing wonders.

Is there good magic? Not for Christians, because magic is the acquisition or super-natural powers through unholy means, especially witchcraft and interaction with the demonic world.

It is explicitly forbidden. Deuteronomy 18:10-12: "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD

Now what about Moses performing wonders? Or Jesus performing miracles? Moses didn't seek to perform wonders by interacting with the demonic world. Exodus 7:9-11:  "So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake." On the other hand, "Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs.

And Jesus, of course, performed miracles because he was God.

[ChemistCat]

Magic is violation of physical laws without the will of God. And what doesn't come from God, informed reason, or physical laws MUST come from Satan.

When I was a new Latter-day Saint many years back I had to learn that lesson in a rather painful way. My best friend (also LDS) had happened upon some silly fortune-telling trick of using one's wedding ring and a chain to predict how many children one would have, and birth order (boy-girl-girl et cetera.) We found it uncanny, as it seemed to be accurate in reporting "the ones on the ground" and so we enjoyed playing with it, and showed it to others.

It predicted that I would have BOY GIRL BOY. I already had the first two, and since we had fertility problems I took it rather too much to heart. It predicted a whole string of kids for our friend Harlan, whose second marriage had just dissolved very painfully and whom we had heard to say would never have anything to do with women again. (I am glad to say that he and his wife have just had their first child together, and her son-from-a-previous is happy to have a brother!) We showed it to a Catholic friend of ours. Linda was pregnant with her second and her husband was being vile about it, since he hadn't even wanted the first kid, so she took the charm's prediction of several more to come as a sign that he would change his heart. It made her very happy, so she showed it to a Holy Roller friend of hers. (I want to say Assembly of God but this was years ago.)

Well, Linda told them we were Mormons who had taught her this, so now there's someone out there who believes she has convincing evidence that Mormons teach witchcraft. Linda was needlessly upset, and we felt bad that this stranger from another church actually was RIGHT. This charm, if it revealed anything true, must derive its power from the opposition to Jesus Christ, not from Him! And it certainly hadn't been harmless amusement, AND it was indeed against the teachings of our church! We had to repent, and it felt even worse to have to repent for something so darn SILLY. I'm on my guard against any such practices; I believe that the only right source of knowledge are reason informed by faith, and faith informed by reason! Horoscopes, telephone psychics, tea leaves, palm reading, even stock market analysis and doctor's prognoses CANNOT substitute for revelation through prayer, scriptures, and studying the physical world. (As a chemistry student, I believe that the physical world IS a testament of Jesus Christ.) It is belief in something outside God's power and creation that makes a thing evil.

My third child was a girl.

[stuartcr]

As a non-Christian, I am constantly amazed at how much is known about good and evil.