So last night I went and saw Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. I haven't read all the books, and I don't wear Harry Potter gear or rave about it 24/7, but I like it and I keep up with it to a certain extent. One thing that I have always been curious about is magic, especially from a Christian's point of view. At first that was what always shot down the Harry Potter books: All Harry Potter is a thing which containst magic. No Christians should be affiliated with things which have to do with magic. Ergo no Christians should be affiliated with Harry Potter. (Modus Ponens correct?) While respecting the people that said that, I was always a little curious why we should quarantine ourselves from that evil Harry Potter madness.
What got me even more curious is when I read Lord of The Rings. There are very few Christians that I know of that would say that Tolkein is not a Christian. I take that back... I don't know any. And yet Tolkein created a major character who is a wizard. This befuddled me for a while. The Tolkein part I solved fairly early. But the Harry Potter part continued to bug. But here's my take.
The magic in Harry Potter does not seem to be tied in with religious activities what so ever, unlike orginizations such as Wicca. It seems to be more mischivous play early on, but later the magic is used in the protagonist vs. antagonist movement. The good guys use their powers to fight the bad guys and vice versa. Magic in Harry Potter looks more like a tool than a form of worship. There is an in the third film of crystal ball/omen/chance foresight stuff, but even though the omen comes true the actual practice is pretty heavily condemned. In the fourth film, Professor Dumbledore (if I am not mistaken) states that "there is no spell to bring back the dead".
There isn't much fading of the lines in the films. The good guys look good and the bad guys, especially in the fourth film, look bad. There are some characters that you are a little confused about, but you see where they lie pretty quickly.
Is there a difference between different kinds of magic? Because the magic that is being promoted in Harry Potter does not look like the magic that you see in the Bible, the stuff that usually gets condemned. In the fourth film, viewers are introduced to the "three unforgivable curses". They are, without the hard to remember names, the curse of torture, the curse of possesion, and the curse of death. As a wizard, you cannot place a curse upoon someone that causes torture, you cannot posses that person (as in take control over them and make them obey you), and you cannot kill that person.
The Didache, an early Church handbook for chatecumins, says that a Christian ought not to perform magic for it leads to idolatry. I think that is what Wicca does. It is much more a religious practice than anything that is in Harry Potter.I think that magic is very much real, but even though it seems as if it is possible to pursue it without falling into idolatry, its dangerous business.I think that the Didache serves as a warning, that even if you could perform magic without falling away from the Christian faith, it is very hard not to.
To get back on track, I'm not sure that I see anything really wrong with the magic in Harry Potter. I can see how kids might get all stoked up about the magic part (I think its pretty neat), and then join groups which follow magic, such as Wicca. I think it just needs explaining. If you're going to go to Harry Potter and are really get into it, you have to know about that kind of stuff.
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8 comments:
Master Salvatore,
I'm glad that you have returned to the blogosphere.
I think your elequent syllogism is an AEE-2, (which is a valid form) although, you could make it into a modus ponens.
Modus Ponens is a mixed hypothetical syllogism with the form:
If P then Q
P
Therefore, Q
Is magic a twisted form of taking dominion?
That is: man is told to subdue the earth and make it more useful and beautiful. Perhaps magic is the attempt to subdue the earth outside the bounds God set for us humans; trying to circumvent God, to have the knowledge and power not given us: a second forbidden tree. That's why the Didache calls magic idolatrous.
However, the magic in Harry Potter seems almost scientific, as in, some knowledge which these special people have, which makes them able to manipulate the world around them. I don't remember for sure, but do they call up other-worldly characters or ghosts to work their magic? Or are there just people in Harry's world who happen to have these abilities and this knowledge? Maybe, just maybe, then magic wouldn't be idolatrous.
It also seems that in Tolkien's world, certain creatures are given authority to perform magic, so they aren't going outside of what God, or whoever is the ruler in Middle Earth, has given. We may liken them to angels in our world, who are able to "perform" things which as mortals we aren't able to do, at least lawfully, like changing shape and appearing and disappearing. Maybe Gandalf is like an angel.
Of course, those who DO go outside their proper bounds in Middle Earth, such as Sauron and Saruman, are the evil characters, and Gandalf himself will not take upon him the ring of power, since he knows that (a) he's not authorized to use it, and (b) it's stronger than he is. Middle Earth really teaches a very good view of magic. Don't dabble in what's too strong for you, and don't do what you have no authority to do.
Miss Steinberg,
Gandalf is, indeed, an angel. Interestingly enough, however, Gandalf is one of the lower, less important and powerful angels. These lower orders of angels were sent to Middle Earth (I can't remember when, but they've been around a while by the time the LOTR's happens) to help things move the right way.
Of course, part of the intersting stuff of Tolkien is, of course, that the angels all have their moral dilemma's as well.
For what it's worth, if I remember my reading from childhood correctly, there were five angels sent to Middle Earth: Saruman the White, Gandalf the Grey, Radagast (sp?) the Brown (who makes an appearance in LOTR) and two blue angels that went to the East, as I remember it.
So, of course, Saruman fails in his calling and fails in his moral dilemmas. Part of the interest in Tolkien's world is the multi-layering of the world. Saruman is one little pipsqueak in the history of Middle Earth, yet in his time frame he looks rather mean and nasty and large. Sauron himself is only the servant of Morgoth (if I remember my Middle Earth history correctly) but is plenty big enough and real enough for Gandalf and company to deal with.
At the end of the day, I don't know if Tolkien's world doesn't look a lot more like the Biblical reality of power and authority weilded by spiritual beings than it does any sort of magic as we generally conceive of it.
A few thanks:
Mrs. Foos: Thank you for your comment. I am ashamed that I goofed up so grievously.
The Muses: I did indeed read that article and thought it was very interesting. It was one of the things which influenced me to write this. Thank you for bringing it up though.
Miss Steinberg: Good point, I had not thought of that at all. There are ghosts and mythical creatures, but other than that there isn't much reference to any sort of religion at all. The chief followers of Valdimorte (spelling?) look an awful lot like the KKK which was rather frightening. But the ghosts don't play a huge role. You see them around Hogwarts, as if they just live there and stroll about as if there is nothing to do. But they are more comical characters than the ideas of ghosts that we have when we think of ghosts associated with magic. There is a scene in the fourth film where you see the ghosts of Harry's parents long dead. And that is where Dumbledore gives the quote about not being able to raise the dead through magic. That was all he could do, raise glimpses of them, it wasn't like he was calling zombies. Very interesting though.
There was a kid who nearly jumped off the third story of a building because he thought he was superman. So is superman evil? Perhaps if your child has a difficulty seperating fact from fiction, there's a bigger problem then just the fiction.
Just for the record, the valor (angels) were sent to Middle Earth when Morgoth came to decieve men. I believe they were sent.... right after the fall of Numenor?? I forget the name. It was that big island that the great men lived on... It's been a few years since I read the Sillmarillian.
Fruitcake, (no offense) you might try giving that article by Dr. Jacobs. It might have some answers for you. The article was very insightful and I agree with what he is saying there. Like I said, I haven't read the books so I don't know how the books actually rate on their own. I would say that yes, there is a bit of the true the good and the beautiful in Harry Potter. Mainly because he uses his magic to save. There are good guys and bad guys, and its pretty evident which are which in the films. I haven't actually met anyone who has gotten so caught up in Harry Potter that they joined a cult or began practicing witchcraft. I have known a few who entered those circles, but I don't think that it was because of Harry Potter. But, its totally possible, like I said before. I don't think that Harry Potter is really the childrens book that it was meant to be.
I wonder, ought we to condemn a book if it negatively influnces people? LOTR (from what I have been told) became a 'cult or 'fanclub' during it's height. People wore cloaks, and threw rings into Mt Lassen and learned Elvish and yada yada. It seems to me that the 'problem' with Harry Potter is only the 'problem' with the rest of imaginitive litature: People take the far fetched to far. If we condone Tolkien and Lewis' fantasy and yet condone simular fantasy from non-Christian authors, aren't we missing the point of liturature?
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