Posted on 06/23/2003 7:13:28 AM PDT by Xenalyte
If provoking others to sneer is your thing, I've got the trick: Just walk into a room of Christians and say, "I love Harry Potter!" It works like magic.
Take the case of Beliefnet writer Anne Morse, who has taken it on the chin for her support of J.K. Rowling's series of children's novels centered on the muss-haired, bespectacled boy wizard.
"Dear Ms. Morse," one reader began, "You are the handmaiden of Satan, a succubus from the pit of Hell." I suppose few folks ever win points for timidity, but isn't this going too far?
The four Potter novels I've read have been very well written. The characters have deepened and grown considerably since book 1, making their continued stories of great interest. Rowling's humor works, and her sense of pace is nearly perfect. As the plots gain complexity from book to book, this is especially important. Rowling carried off the 700-plus pages of book 4 with hardly a bump – unless we're talking about "witchcraft."
Sure to trip up at least some Christian readers (Frank Sinatra did say it was "strictly taboo"), I put the term in scare-quotes because the kind of "witchcraft" you get in the Potter novels is like the stuff you get from the green lady with the warty nose in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons.
My wife, a Wiccan before converting to Christianity, can well attest to the fact that flying broomsticks, wands, magic potions and the like are all, for lack of a better term, hocus-pocus. The use of these items in the Potter novels is pure fantasy and fancy.
Rowling ties some of the "magic" to the darker arts, sure, but that is only to create the necessary evil in the story. No conflict, no story. No bad guys, snore. In the end, the type of "magic" used in Harry Potter is no more diabolical than the so-called "magic" of the Tolkien or Lewis stories. (Note also a few other great Christian novelists who use "magic" to entertaining ends: Charles Williams, George MacDonald, Stephen R. Lawhead.)
What's more, Douglas Jones, senior editor of evangelical culture-and-thought magazine Credenda/Agenda, makes an insightful argument about the general shape of worldviews and the hat-tip that Potter – however unconsciously – makes toward Christianity, not against it:
One of the most overlooked features of modern stories like the Potter series is their implicit confession of the triumph of Christianity. This compliment to Christianity is not just the fact that the Potter stories are decidedly Christ-figure stories – an elect son, threatened at birth, who sacrifices His life for his friends and triumphs over evil in an underworld, even coming back from death for a feast. Those narrative categories are complimentary enough, but the deeper compliment is the story's use of a Christian psychology. In its generic sense, a psychology is just a worldview's characteristic way of interacting with life. There is a distinctive Christian psychology, a Hellenistic psychology, a modernist psychology, a postmodern psychology, a Wiccan psychology, and so on. The Potter characters could have been written with any of these. They could have acted like those resentful infant-adults of the Iliad; they could have had the psychology of ancient druids. But they don't. Instead, the Potter stories give us largely Christianized witches, witches who have fully absorbed Christian ethical categories: love, kindness, hope, loyalty, hierarchy, community, and more.
Young Potter and his friends learn the importance of bravery, self-sacrifice, duty and defending the weak. And the story portrays a striking moral divide.
Take just the first novel: The lie of the main antagonist, Voldemort, spoken through an enslaved professor from Potter's school, is that "There is no good or evil, there is only power, and those too weak to pursue it." Harry knows the truth and fights to the point of death to keep Voldemort from seizing the power he desires.
On a more minor scale, The Mirror of Erised ("Desire" backwards) teaches a lesson about covetousness, contentment and spending too much time wishing after things wanted instead of going out and actually doing.
Some have complained about Potter's disrespect for authority and how he is seemingly rewarded for breaking school rules. This is poppycock. Rowling puts Harry into situations that make for good storytelling: The rule says one thing, but not confronting the danger lurking around the corner is far worse than the consequences of breaking the rule. The dilemma creates the tension that motivates the character. Moral and ethical dilemmas are what make or break stories. In short, Harry isn't rewarded for breaking rules; he's rewarded for sacrificing himself, saving lives and fighting evil.
What about the danger that people will miss the obvious moral message and heroism and succumb instead to the supposed proselytizing for paganism? Jones has the blunt instrument: "Harry Potter can't be a threat. Wizardry doesn't really work. And if your kids are really tempted to join a coven, then it's not a giant leap to say that you've failed miserably as a parent."
This may be too general a statement, but I think it's generally true: The morality of the Harry Potter novels is impossible to miss; the immorality has to be blown out of proportion or imported entirely.
Perhaps instead of railing, my fellow Christians should start reading. The Potter novels certainly get many things wrong, but they get a lot of things right, and if we are discerning, we can learn from both.
That is a lie. You are twisting scripture. if this is the verse i think you were citing. It was the verse where Christ says that by their fruits you shall know them. By their deeds "good or Bad" you will know.
And children who inquire into Wicca will learn zilch about Ouija boards or seances. Neither of those goofy practices (one a Parker Bros. board game, the other popularized by professional stage "mediums" in the 19th century and hanging on ever since among the credulous) has anything to do with Wicca.
And for kids with other problems (such as broken homes, etc.) joining a gang would seem to me to be the more likely choice rather than latching up with a bunch of holdover nuts-and-granola Earth Children, which is by and large who populates your average Wiccan group.
No, I don't think you ought to do that. There were some really weird ones out there, who basically lived their lives around the characters they created for the games. But most of us were fairly solidly based in reality ... and still like to play, although now on computer.
Gee, I never would have expected that response.
This is the fallacy of guilt by association. The priest himself is not accused of child abuse. In this case, his competence to judge what forms of "entertainment" represent entranceways to the occult follows from his performance of 20-25 exorcisms per year, in which case, his judgement carries more authority than yours.
Regardless, despite the media hype, the percentage of "diddlers" in the Catholic Church is comparable to that in other Christian denominations (and probably to teaching, although I don't know of any reliable numbers). Not that the problem isn't horrible, but these facts help to put the problem into perspective.
Furthermore, sexual abuse within families is far more common than sexual abuse by clergy, yet no one advocates the dissolution of families for this reason.
The real problem is two-fold, the transferral of priests accused of child abuse by bishops and the admittance of homosexuals into the priesthood. Both are the result of poor decisions by individual bishops. The Catholic Church does not hold that bishops are infallible or impeccable. Judas was a bishop, chosen by Jesus Himself.
Guilt by association fallacy again. You can ignore the argument all you want, but your desire to avoid the logic will be transparent to lurkers.
False dichotomy. Why not avoid both?
So.... 100 souls interested in witchcraft is nothing to be concerned about?
Matthew 18:6But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
Matthew 7:15-20 15 "Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 "You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? 17 "So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 "A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.
My question is: who is closer to God; the writer who uses parables and metaphores to teach about the virtue of love, or the scold who sits back and says "Someday you will answer to God for saying that?
Well, if you are still playing D&D or C&S and not a more recent system, you are certainly hopeless. ;-)
I think the concerns many Christians have about Harry Potter and role-playing are overblown but there is a grain of truth to them. If I wanted to contact the neo-pagans in my area, I'd try (A) an SF/Fantasy convention, (B) an RPG store or convention, or (C) the SCA. These hobbies do attract a lot of neo-pagans and I've been my share of anecdotal evidence that these hobbies do generate at least some interest in the occult. And I've attended an RPG panel at a Science Fiction convention (that included Ken Rolston and Sandy Peterson) where the neo-pagans laughed heartily at the idea of parents being concerned that their children were being introduced to pagan concepts but got quite nasty at the idea of children playing a Christian-themed RPG after school. A lot of neo-pagans, in my experience, have quite the chip on their shoulder about Christianity and seem to enjoy the idea of children being led away from Christianity so I don't entirely discount the stories I've heard of Harry Potter being displayed next to occult books in books stores, either.
Do I think RPGs or Harry Potter should be banned? No. Do I think you will go to hell if you play or read them? Of course not. But good art can be powerful and emotionally troubled people can misuse it. Excercise some reasonable caution and care.
Go to your local library and check out the Harry Potter display in the children's section with all the other books about witchcraft. Ask the librarian if children have checked out more books relating to the occult since the advent of Harry Potter. Ask her how much interest in occult-related books has increased.
Ask your child's school librarian the same thing.
If you refrain from bringing in the church to bolster credibility I agree not to mention the failings of individuals within the church.
Uh, actually, it's Voldemort who comes back from the dead.
I think they moved on to Everquest...
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