Harry Potter and the Saints’ Distress

Harry Potter is dangerous.  That’s why I like him.  Yes, I’ll admit it.  I like Harry Potter.  I’ve read all the books so far and I’m looking forward to the release of the last one in the series.  If it does indeed turn out to be the last one.  If not, I’ll probably look forward to the one after that.  OK, so Rowling isn’t Dostoevsky.  But The Brothers Karamatzov never translated into a billion dollar franchise.  So she’s no hack either. I like Harry.  He’s classic.  The pensive rebel loner hero.  Didn’t choose the path.  The path chose him.  Thrust into the classic battle of Light versus Dark.  Good versus Evil.  Coming of age and coming to grips with his own capacity for mistakes and dark choices.   

All the key characters are engaging, and human (if not always in the strictest sense of the term).  They’re believably fallible and endearingly eccentric without being saccharine.  As for He Who Must Not Be Named, and his minions, they serve well in their demonstration of the encroaching, defiling, consuming effects of power-lust and abandon to darkness.  The plotlines are well woven and entertaining.  It’s easy to lose my interest, and these books have not. Abuse.  Betrayal.  Power.  Friendship.  Loyalty.  Trust.  Love.  Loss.  Despair.  These are the themes that capture the hearts and minds young readers.  And the not so young. Of course, the magic doesn’t hurt. 

But there’s the rub.  The magic.  Harry the Sorcerer.  Hogwart’s School.  Enlightened witches and clueless muggles.  The underlying notion is that there exist two separate classes of humans.  The common folk are best off if benignly kept insulated and unaware of the spiritual realities and power confrontations occurring all around them. After all, most can only react with fear and resentment when confronted with the truth about a world and an existence they will never understand or attain.  Poor muggles.   They are much like fish, oblivious to the water in which they live out their existence.  The exceptional folk on the other hand, the ones who are REALLY alive, cultivate their awareness, perceive, and navigate the currents.  At times, they are able to cooperate with and master forces which can actually form, change and direct the atmosphere.  The awareness and the access are their birthright and destiny.  The perception, the forces, and the raw power simply are, and are for all intents and purposes morally neutral.  Nothing is inherently evil.  There is no “white magic” or “black magic”.  There is simply magic.  Study.  Mastery.  Power.  Light and Dark, Good and Evil, are matters of motive, choice, and character. 

The Harry Potter series has drawn a lot of criticism from conservative Christians.  Many of my friends believe that the books will stir an unhealthy interest in the supernatural and the practice of witchcraft.  Magic, they contend, is real, and is not morally or spiritually neutral.  Real personal dark forces exist and have power to curse and deceive and destroy. Real people encounter real demons and experience real bondage.  Conservative Christians are not the only ones who understand this.  (Read Spiritual Emergency by Stanislov and Christina Grof.  The book contains a variety of accounts of “psychic disruption” that occur when spirit quests and occult dabbling go awry.) Many accuse J.K. Rowling of being an intentional apologist for wicca and sorcery, her engaging stories targeting young and curious minds and leading them into disaffection, quest for power, moral ambiguity, and a spiritual wasteland. 

While I am sympathetic to a number of the concerns raised, I have never been a member of the book burner’s club.  I have no desire to live under a Taliban system, no matter how well intentioned the mullah in charge.  And let’s be brutally honest. Moral and spiritual ambiguities in the pragmatic application of power are real issues in the consciousness of pop culture. We can’t hide from them.  They are issues many are toying with.  Unfortunately, they are issues too few are struggling with. Just google “Jack Bauer” and read the blogs. Witness the widespread evangelical silence over our own government’s approval of torture in the name of national security.  Witness the authority to target profiled individuals and cause them to simply disappear indefinitely. Without rights.  Without charges.  Without location.  Without timetables.  

We cannot hide from the world and what is going on in it.  We cannot hide from reality, or “the issues”.  Kids think.  More so than some adults, I would venture.  They struggle with growing up in the world and understanding.  They take mental snapshots and try to process.  They surf the net.  They read.  They hear.  They question.  They push the envelope and when presented with less than honest answers, their “crap detectors” go off.  They haven’t been around long enough to have learned the editorial value of ideology. The “muggles” around them ignore what they see, carve out their little spaces on their little Privet Drives, and content themselves to live out their days in denial; fat, happy and stupid.   The actual world is big and confusing and frightening and evil is real.  Ozzie and Harriet have been dead a long time, and there’s something truly attractive about power, if it means that someone small can make a difference or at least avoid being a victim. 

Is it possible that the Harry Potter series is threatening to so many Christians precisely because it offers something to their children which the church has not?  Something like…understanding?  And the possibility that there exists something beyond what they see and experience?  Hope?  Destiny? Authentic spiritual power?  Put bluntly, we as Christians need to put up or shut up.   Parents need to seriously work at being parents.  And teachers at teaching.  We are in this for the long haul.  As a Christian, I am profoundly concerned with how my children perceive and respond to the world. I am concerned that they learn to perceive and respond to it Christianly.  That means that I need to do so.  I need to take the time to think and hear and question and talk and push the envelope and turn on my own crap detector.  I need to read Harry Potter, and talk with my kids about abuse, betrayal, loss, despair, friendship, loyalty, love.  We need to talk a lot.  About real good, and real evil.  About a real spiritual war that spills over into their world.  About redemption. About Harry’s world, our world, and biblical faith.  And power. And the destiny of a generation. 

I like Harry Potter.  He’s forcing Christians to think.  He’s dangerous. 

 Firedancer 

SLOUCHING TOWARD FASCISM

“NEIGHBOR CAPTURES INTRUDER, CITED FOR FIREARMS VIOLATION”…The headline covered the entire front of the pulp weekly “news” rag next to the candy bars in the supermarket checkout lane.  I usually tune these things out, treating them them as a cross between intellectual porn and visual white noise.  Besides, I was man on mission.  We were having nasi-goreng for dinner and there were no eggs in the house. My oldest daughter, then about 11 years old, was along with orders to keep me on task. (Ooh…shiny object…)  She tugged on my sleeve and pointed to the headline.  “Why?”, she asked.  I told her that the neighbor was probably charged with failing to register his gun.  “But he stopped a burglar,” she said.  “That’s stupid.”

Now we had long suspected this child to actually be a small adult in a really convincing kid suit.  It simply never occurred to her that she might want to restrict her questions, conversations, reading, viewing, or interactions to “age appropriate” categories.  I think she was born without an ability to grasp the concept of “peer”. 

Enter what my wife refers to as “the babe”.  Freshly couiffed, wrinkle free in every sense, dressed to the nines, and seeming at least mildly disoriented and defiled by the requirement of eye contact with a cashier.  But singularly focused.  Emergency.  Salmon for dinner and nothing but red wine in the house.  She stopped mid-sentence, turned slowly for effect, and glared over her readers.  Could she muster a gaze capable of boring into my innocent daughter’s soul?  Not likely.  She cleared her throat and the check-out line fell silent.  In my head I could hear the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  I stepped back.  “So!  In YOUR opinion, gun control is ’stupid’?”

My daughter smiled.  “No…  I favor gun control.  I think it’s a great idea.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes.  You see, it serves to cull the herd.”

“It what?…”

“It culls the herd.  I would probably never personally own a gun, but I agree with G. Gordon Liddy.  He wrote that anyone stupid enough to register a perfectly good firearm probably isn’t bright enough to be allowed to own one in the first place.”

“The babe” simply blinked, sniffed, collected her chardonnay, and went home to her salmon.  I could swear I heard, faintly, the opening strains of Sprach Zarathustra.

I’m not a card carrying member of the NRA.  I don’t vote libertarian.  I only occasionally visit Prison Planet.  (Don’t get your pantyhose in a knot.  They’re already monitoring private citizens’ internet usage.  Get a life.)  I just continue to be astounded at how few people, Christians and non, are really thinking about the long-term consequences of the increasing restrictions and scrutinies we have come to accept as commonplace and “necessary for civilized society”.  I think it was Benjamin Franklin who said that the people who surrender liberty in order to increase security will soon have neither.

I don’t remember what happened to the eggs.  (Ooh…shiney object)