Skip to main content

Harry Potter again...

I've been reading around on the web about the interaction between Christianity and Harry Potter. Many of the reactions seem to be something like "Harry Potter will get children interested in magic and paganism and worse, and we should not let our children be corrupted!" One of my favorite reactions seems to be about the pope: Pope John Paul II supposedly said that the books were OK, Pope Benedict said that they were very bad (back before he became pope, anyway). Since I read it on the web, it must be true =)

Here (http://decentfilms.com/sections/articles/2567) is an article that manages to respond thoughtfully and respectfully to the magic dilemma. I like it for a few reasons:
  • he doesn't just dismiss the biblical and traditional prohibitions against magic as old fashioned,
  • he doesn't say that all magical fiction is bad,
  • he has read and thought seriously about many works I really like.
I don't always agree with him, but I appreciate the thought he put into it. My favorite line in the article refers to the fact that the magic presented by Tolkein and Lewis can't be easily imitated:
...a young Tolkien fan who might be taken with the idea of creating fire with a word quite simply has no viable course of action.

C. L. Hanson had a post I appreciated here: (http://lfab-uvm.blogspot.com/2007/08/harry-potter-vs-jesus.html). She points out the parallels between Harry's story and the Christ story, which I am more interested in than the debate about the proper depiction of magic in the stories. Although the world they live in does not contain any overt Christian references, the story reflects the Gospel closely enough to give parents and children something to talk about, and everyone something to think about.

John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Things that are true

"Axial tilt is the reason for the season." (Picture a globe with the northern hemisphere tilted away from the sun...) I believe this is meant to be an anti-theist slogan, although I would point out that I believe there is a reason for the axial tilt. This is a runner up to my favorite true science picture, the "Gravity Forecast." I linked to this when I was a graduate student, but the site is long since down. Picture a weather forecast graphic, but instead of clouds and temperatures, the 5-day forecast predicts 9.8 m/s^2 down. Even the idea still makes me laugh, perhaps I will reproduce it someday. Luke cut his 4th tooth today (Finally!). So far they haven't caused us too much trouble. We'll see what happens when he gets his canines.
8 comments
Read more

Science at home

We had a fun "experiment" yesterday. We took a 2 liter bottle of diet Coke and some Mentos, put 4 Mentos at the same time into the bottle, and shot a huge jet of soda into the air about 8 feet high! It was quite exciting, although I think the warnings that you might want to use eye protection were a bit overblown. I suppose that it was an experiment only in the loosest sense of the term, but Michael forsees lots of fun in the future: using other types of soda, other methods for adding the mentos to the soda, and so on. It did get us out of the house for a while, and had Eleanor and Amanda dropping mentos into the used soda bottle and watching to see what happened---so cute!
2 comments
Read more

A day at the fair

Yesterday afternoon the whole family went to the NC state fair. We had a good enough time that I think we are going back next year, although perhaps we will leave Luke at home with a sitter. We went right after Eleanor's school. Michael picked up Eleanor, I drove Luke and Amanda. Through an amazing bit of timing, we met in the parking lot and walked to the fair together, about a 10 minute walk (not bad at all, really). I had meant to get to the fair much earlier and see the parts that Eleanor and Michael claimed not to be interested in (the animals and crafts, mostly) but I was running a little late. Our area has been in a serious drought for the past few months, so I am not complaining that it rained (hard) on us as we were getting to the gate. But it does seem a bit hard that we planned to go to the fair on the one day in the past 3 months that we had a rainstorm. Fortunately, the rain was scattered, and the clouds soon moved off to water another area. We took the opportun...
5 comments
Read more