HARRY POTTER
July 23, 2007

What was I doing Friday night while millions of people were waiting in line for the latest Harry Potter novel?  I was at a youth rally at our local coliseum.  There were 8,000 kids present for this meeting.  It was a wonderful event.  I was not waiting in line.  Did I purchase the book?  Yes, I did.  I purchased it for my 22 year old daughter, who is an avid Harry Potter fan.  She is also a fine Christian young woman.  I bought the book Saturday morning, 11:00 AM at our local Waldenbooks store and it took all of a minute and a half (Well, maybe two or three minutes) to complete the transaction.  Then I walked out of the store.  No crowds, no hype.

I haven't read any of these books.  I have too much else to read.  I have listened to my children talk about them.  I know that there are wizards, witches, sorcerrs, etc., in them.  I am also aware that certain Christian folk think it wrong for children to read these books.  They are entitled to their opinion.  If I made a requirement that every book I read have something distinctly Christian in it, I would not read very many books.  I read a good bit of history, and unless the particular historical account is referring to the church or to religion, the subject may not be mentioned at all.  I read lots of novels, some of them Christian and very good.  Some of the other kinds of novels are also very good.  For example, I read THE KITE RUNNER by the Afghan author Hosseini and was thoroughly entranced by the story.  There was nothing about Christianity in the story, but there were several references to Islam or things Muslim.

I love science fiction.  I really liked the Star Trek series and the Star Wars saga.  How seriously did I take them?  Not very much.  They were just stories.  You see, I was raised by my family to understand that some things are real and some things are not real.  Whenever my mother would read me something which was  pure fantasy--like Peter Pan and Tinker Bell the fairy--she would tell me that this was just a story or make believe.  I grew up thinking that make believe was very important because of its exciting of the imagination.  Your imagination is different from the part of your mind which deals with history and reality.

Harry Potter excites the imagination.  It is pure escape and really has no relation to reality.  That is why I think it is so wildly popular--it appeals to childrens' imaginations (and youth and adults, also).  The function of fairy tales, mythology, and other stories like these is to exercise the imagination and to teach certain truths about life.  They are not intended to be religious treatises by any means.  Strong criticisms of the Potter series because it is so "secular" may be off base in this regard.  It was never intended to be religious or to teach religious reality.   You can read the Potter stories and then have a study group at church to discuss witchcraft, wizards, witches, and sorcerers, and that might be a useful exercise.  You can do the same thing with Greek and Roman (and other) mythology and compare them to Christianity, and that would be a good exercise as well.

Bottom line for me?  I'm not going to make the Harry Potter books to be more than they are.  I am just glad that a national "hype" was over a book which kids are reading, for a change, rather than playing computer games or something like this.  I am not going to force them into a religious mold where they do not belong.  Then I am going to try to demonstrate how the Gospel story takes you in another direction altogether.  This is reality and not a product of the imagination.