Dozens of books have been written warning us of the evils of Harry Potter and how reading J.K. Rowling’s books will secure us a ticket to eternal damnation but many people are now claiming Harry as some kind of Christ figure.
Potter fans around the world have been devouring the seventh and final installment of the book series and some leading Christians are now talking about the themes of redemption and sacrifice between the pages. The latest book even contains quotes from the Christian Scriptures.
I’m sure that there’ll be hot debate on the issue in the coming days but it opens up a wider conversation. How far should we go in drawing spiritual parallels from contemporary culture?
The Apostle Paul drew lessons from the Greek poets to point people to Christ. He talked about their ‘unknown god’ and suggested that this god, who they claimed not to know, was actually the one true God who created the world and everything in it. (Acts 17)
Are we in danger of losing our focus or should we be looking for those reminders of God in everything around us?
My regular Wednesday morning guest on 98.5 Sonshine FM is Ross Clifford who is the Principal of Morling College in New South Wales and current President of the Baptist Union of Australia. Each week we chat about a range of issues relating to spirituality and belief.
Last week we took a look at a book titled Mixing it up with The Simpsons by Owen Smith. The book encourages churches to use episodes of The Simpsons to teach lessons on faith to young people.
There was so much to say on the subject that we continued discussions on The Simpsons today. We then went on to discuss Harry Potter and the legitimacy of drawing spiritual lessons from our secular culture. We even touched on the writings of C.S. Lewis and Tolkein.
I’d love to hear your point of view but can I ask you to listen to today’s discussion with Ross first so that we’e all on the same page? Just click here to hear what Ross had to say.
If you’d like to hear last week’s discussion just click here.
Posted by Rodney Olsen
Technorati Tags: The Simpsons – Harry Potter – Spirituality
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Good interview, Rodney. Agreed with Ross about the need to be able to use these art forms to relate faith to culture. Still won’t let the kids read HP, though! At least not until they’re older. I enjoy the fantasy genre, but HP (esp. later ones) are a bit dark.
I wouldn’t exactly call Harry Potter secular culture. It’s from an author who appears to be as Christian as C.S. Lewis, and she does work Christian themes into the stories in at least as significant a way as Tolkien did. It’s not Narnia, which is overtly sledge-hammer allegory, something Tolkien criticized in Lewis. But some of the Christian themes are there.
I would tend to think (and this is my personal opinion before anybody starts shouting and threatening to burn my house down) that most religions will use any and all devices in order to indoctrinate more people.
As the saying goes – “there is no such thing as bad advertising”. A Church damning something is better in many ways than agreeing with something – especially in the culture of bad news that pervades the media.