What does Harry Potter and the Blogosphere teach us about Xian leadership? (spoiler warning)

Executive summary: Harry Potter shows us that the leaders are sadly deficient and the blogosphere show us that most Christians are not.

I’ve left all this to my del.icio.us links, but I can’t stand to let it go. Newsflash to Harry Potter critics: The Bible nowhere ever says it is wrong to say Latin-derived words while waving a stick. There is nothing wrong with a fictional construct where people who show paranormal powers as the approach adolescence receive special training in how to use those powers. The X-men has been using the premise for decades without calling down railing judgments from Christian leaders, despite being a vehicle for pop-evolutionary mythology. Now there’s something for a Christian to object to.

But no. Our energy must be conserved for a woman who has just sent who knows how many thousands to google to try to figure out the significance of, “the last enemy to be defeated is death,” or “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Let me change my executive summary: Harry Potter shows us that Stephen King is a more discerning guide to literary matters than a herd of Christian literary reviewers. Christian bloggers will actually find something valuable and worth considering in Stephen King. Compare this to Michael O’Brien’s intellectual pornography. What is going on?

Dip into O’Brien’s piece at any point, at any paragraph and virtually any sentence, and one is immediately overwhelmed by a need to think hard and find some way to believe that he was not self-conciously lying when he wrote his totally inaccurate claims about that book. Rowling believes children are innately good? Anyone who has read the series knows that is not remotely credible. But perhaps that’s what she thinks. Maybe he read it somewhere.

Harry knows only “selective love”? He died to protect the whole world Muggle and Wizard, Malfoy and Granger, Dursley and Weazley, alike. When he came back, Voldemort’s magic was no longer deadly to anyone.

What kind of idiot allow this sort of filth to be published? No, what sort of spiritual blindness and perversity thinks that this sort of garbage is actually pious?

Ooooh, here’s a nasty accusation.

Then there’s the adolescent romance in the atmosphere, a potent element when mixed with magic, usually latent but growing with each volume and culminating in domestic bliss for the central characters at the end of the final volume. Yes, Harry faces near-satanic evils, passes through an unceasing trial of conflict and woe, triumphs against insurmountable odds, saves the world, marries Ginny and brings forth with her a new generation of little witches and wizards. If it were a spoof or satire we might laugh.

That’s right. Rowling shows adolescent confusion abandoned in favor of true love, marriage, and multiple children. She’s going to Hell for sure. Laugh away.

By the way, I don’t like snogging among teens. It is foreplay for people who should be waiting (of marrying early). But I and a great many other Christian parents have noticed that our children find the whole idea gross and see that it doesn’t lead to any real good for Harry or his friends. But maybe Rowling is guilty for being too accepting of an overly permissive culture. If so, notice that the disappointment can be registered in a single sentence and that it doesn’t follow that therefore her books are the AntiChrist.

“The death of God?” many a reader will respond. “Surely he is making too much of the matter!

No, that’s not it at all. Try this.

“The death of God?” many a reader will respond. “Surely he is out of his #@$%#$@!% mind. Surely he is a know-nothing who makes his living by fear and offering to his audience a rationalization for arrogance.”

I’ll end with this question for your consideration: Does anyone remember Rowling making even one reference to traditional religion/magic either through the mention of voodoo or medicine men or the Qabbalah (sp?). Isn’t that strange? She had international wizards yet I don’t remember even one mention to a true cultural form of witchcraft. Everyone does magic the Tolkien way, not the actual way that magic is done in pagan cultures. How could she miss such an opportunity. Her books would not have sold much less. That would have made a real connection with forbidden occult practice that the Bible condemns. But instead she stayed firmly in the realm of Merlin and made-up tolkienesque “magic.”

7 thoughts on “What does Harry Potter and the Blogosphere teach us about Xian leadership? (spoiler warning)

  1. pentamom

    Some of it, I think, is that Christian reviewers seem to think it’s a credible criticism of the overall morality of the series to point out that Harry is weak, sinful, sometimes spiteful, often selfish, frequently immature, and is tempted to hate those who hate him.

    There’s apparently an unstated premise that no central character in a literary series of merit can be obviously flawed in a way that the vast majority of us are, even most Christians (excepting those few people we observe to be particularly sanctified and tell ourselves are exceptional for that very reason.) It doesn’t matter what he does in the end, it doesn’t matter how the positive traits and faithfulness shine through when it really matters — Harry is often a stupid, selfish kid and therefore the books have an evil tendency. I think that’s where the “loves selectively” comes through — a teenage boy doesn’t have any conscious love for the parent-figures who abused him his entire life. He imagines vengeance upon and takes joy in the discomfiture of a peer who seems to spend nearly all his free time antagonizing him. (The very peer whose life he saves at the end when he could easily have seen him finished off without any trouble to himself.) Well, call CNN, we’ve got a scoop. A human being hates his oppressors.

    I don’t get this at all. Nobody says Dickens is unfit for children for the reason that Pip is selfish and despises those whom he should love most, until he finally comes to maturity. Has evangelical literary appreciation just been entirely destroyed by too much Alcott and Elsie Dinsmore?

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  2. pentamom

    Okay, I just gotta Fisk this paragraph:

    “The series is also about the usefulness of hatred and pride, malice toward your real or perceived enemies, seeking and using secret knowledge, lies, cunning, contempt, and sheer good luck in order to defeat whatever threatens you or stands in the path of your desires.”

    “Your desires” equalling the prevention of ultimate evil from taking over your entire country.

    “It is a cornucopia of other false messages: The end justifies the means.”

    I actually think there’s some validity to this one.

    “Nothing is as it seems.”

    Not always a bad message — sometimes a very biblical one.

    “No one can really be trusted, except those whom you feel comfortable with, who support your aims and make you feel good about yourself.”

    A useful message in time of all-out war, assuming your “aims” are something on the order of overthrowing ultimate evil, and “those who make you feel good about yourself” are those who have stood by you in life and death battles, as opposed to those who scorn and mock you because of their unwillingness to acknowledge reality.

    “Killing others is justified if you are good and they are bad.”

    I wonder if this guy has a problem with WWII, or police shooting armed and aggressive criminals?

    “Conservative people are bad, anti-magic dogmatists are really bad and deserve whatever punishment they get (hence the delicious retributions against the Dursleys).”

    First, if he wants to self-identify with abusive, know-nothing bigots as “conservative people” I’ll get off at the next stop, please. Second, the “anti-magic dogmatists” were not people who were warning Harry away from magic for the sake of his own soul — they were anti-supernaturalist unbelievers who couldn’t care less about the state of anyone’s soul, only their own untroubled, peaceful and let’s keep it that way thankyouverymuch lives. The word “Pharisees” comes to mind. I don’t expect this nuance to be picked up on, though.

    “The ultimate cause of evil is rejection of magic: the arch-villain Voldemort, for example, first went off track when he became a dysfunctional boy abandoned by his anti-magic father.”

    Okay, in this guy’s world, what should Tom Riddle have done? Since rejecting magic is good, Tom Riddle was a good guy for rejecting his wife and letting his child grow up neglected in an orphanage? Or was that a bad thing to do? If it was a bad thing to do, then is it pro-magic propaganda, or is it narrative realism, for the kid to become embittered against those who hate magic and all who do magic, and ultimately become really bad?

    The analysis seems to be based on the premise that if you paste the word “magic” into a situation, all the realities of sin and virtue, truth and falsehood, love and hate, cease to obtain. If magic plays a positive role in a scenario, then love is hate, but if magic plays a negative role, then hatred is virtue.

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  3. COD

    I think there is a certain air of pomposity to some of the negative Christian reviews I’ve read. Something being enjoyed by that many Jews, Pagans, atheists, etc simply can’t be good for a Christian.

    Side question – should atheist be capitalized? I personally don’t subscribe to the belief that atheism is itself a faith or religion. Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.

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  4. pentamom

    It probably depends on the atheist, Chris. For some people, atheism is like being a member of the “down with stamp collecting” society, which is very hobby-like. For them, it really is a religion. For other cases, it’s perhaps more debatable.

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  5. mark Post author

    I follow Plantinga and try to use the term “atheologian,” precisely so I can avoid this question. But sometimes “Atheist” stands for a comprehensive ideology like “Marxist.” I realize Marx comes from a proper name, but it seems unfair to decapitalize other ideologies (though I suspect Marx wanted to decapitalize everyone…. hahahahahahhahahahahahaha… sometimes I amaze myself… no, don’t applaud. I’m too humble for that).

    I would capitalize “Matierialist” in most sentences though that too is arguably not a religion.

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