What’s a Christian to do with Harry Potter?

I was raised in a Christian home and went to a regular, public school. Being the cool, rebellious kid my form of ‘rebellion’ was, as I will describe in a later article, against ‘the church’. In the past few years I have become more adamant about my faith and have looked into it more, but most of all, more passionately defend it. I say that only to not let this article start off with the impression that I think myself some over-zealous religious nut bag. Although I am for certain a nut bag, it is not of the religious type.

I work at Christian family camp, I love it because it does not see Christianity as a religion, as I do not either. But of course, the staff is speckled with a few aforementioned zealots. The irony of these said people is that their passion jades their actual understanding of what they are offending or defending. It is for a sake of my own mental well being that I forgot this one zealots name. She was the kind of nut bag I was not. This is where I start off.

There is such an overwhelming and hilariously-disgusting, uneducated view on Harry Potter. There is an entire culture, it seems, that try their darned hardest to act like literary Jack Thompson’s. One day, near the 4th week of working at camp, I was sitting with a friend on the camp patio debating the awesomeness of the Hufflepuff house versus Ravenclaw. In popped in this very creepy ‘female’ of my age into out conversation. This was a year ago, so accept the following quotes as paraphrases only. That is a word and you know it. This woman epitomizes the Jack Thompsonite school of learning;

Jack Thompsonite: You don’t actually read the Harry Potter books, do you?
Andrew Littler: (holds up a book) what gave you that idea?
JT: Why?
AL: I am in love the characters.
JT: HAHA, how can you be in love with something that is not even real?
AL: Well I mean, not in love, they are just very well written.
JT: Don’t you know those books are Satanic?
AL: No I do not, but please tell me how, so I can post this on my Blog years from now.
JT: Its a book about magic! And witches and wizards! The Bible says not to do those things, as they are Satanic.
AL: Then CS Lewis is burning in Hellfire right now.
JT: No! Its okay because he is Christian.
AL: And Rowling is not? I mean, she goes to church and all…
<she ignores me for a while>
AL: Have you actually read the books? A book at all?
JT: I would never read such filth.
AL: So how do you apparently know so much about it?
JK: I read it on a website, a website that called it Satanic because they conjure the power of demons and talk to animals.
AL: So

these opinions are not of your own? You just accept what anyone says without being the least bit smart about it? Lewis talks more of ‘demons’ than Rowling, and all of Narnia is about talking animals…
JT: But it’s a book about magic!
AL: Go read a damn book and you might see that is aint.

You get the idea… we live in a sad age where, as information is so easily attained, no one wants to spend the time checking the credibility of their source. This is a bit off topic, but look at all the kids ranting about the conspiracy of 9/11 after watching movies like Loose Change and Zeitgeist, although extremely controversial, they are basing their entire opinion on stuff like this. These days, opinions are based off of easily acquired ‘intelligence’ and that is exactly what this girl was doing. she adamantly ranted and attempted to tear apart the Potter series without actually knowing a thing about it. Mind you, these opinions are easy to spot and fun-as-hell to open up.

One of my main problems with ‘religious’ groups (Biblically, Christianity is seen as a Faith and not religion, so no sacrilege here) is that they seem to trust anything any other group says about something they don’t like. I mean, just Google “Christianity Harry potter” and you will see a whole list of uneducated bull.

I found this quote that zealots like to ignore, by Rowling herself;

“To me, the religious parallels have always been obvious,” Rowling said. “But I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going.”

Rowling was right by this, and it was the basis for my opinion (that was right, so hah) that Harry Potter would come back from the ‘dead’. Jesus, anyone? The entire series had religious parallels, as said in the aforementioned quote.

But what about the magic? Go watch any movie involving time travel (Army of Darkness, anyone?) and any aspect of technology will be called ‘witchcraft’. As his car is nothing but mechanics, the magic in the Harry Potter is generally a mechanical magic - it just does stuff for you. And even when/ if Potter is busting some DnD mad-spellz… it’s bloody literature. Every spell has a reason. Everything forwards the story, theoretically. Ron Weasley failing his first try at Apparition was to show some of his character. Unbeknownst to the aforementioned Jack Thompsonite of before, it is not a book about Magic, it is a book about characters that just knowmagic.

I also love how American’s get a ‘dumbed-down‘ version of the series.