i happen to think witches are pretty cool.

"better late than never."
or so the saying goes.

i've been working my way through harry potter.

it took me 10 years, but i decided it's time to suck it up and give it a try. truthfully, i have always believed harry potter to be merely a fad. i expected that its popularity would eventually die out, as i generally have a great deal of skepticism in terms of pop literature. but it's been about 3 weeks since i began my venture, and i'm already on book 5. i confess: i just can't put the books down. with each installment, they get a little bit darker, a little bit more mature, a little bit more complex, and a little more compelling. quite frankly, i'm impressed.

over the past few years, i've heard a great deal of dissent regarding the harry potter books from the christian community. as they're about witches and wizards and other subjects of that nature, the great conundrum arises: to allow or not to allow? should it find a place among shelves with narnia or frodo, or should it be discouraged and indeed, banished? i've read a few reviews over the years, all of them saying to stick with lotr and that the themes within harry potter are spiritually destructive.

now that i've read for myself, i couldn't disagree more. for one thing, simply based on literary merit, i think rowling has achieved an enormous imaginative feat. it is rare to find such compelling writing on a fantasy world such as this. in narnia and the world of tolkien, they invent complete alter-universes. they exist outside of time and space as we know it. their worlds have different histories, different physical and metaphysical boundaries, different races and species - all of it outside of what we know and understand. rowling's world is similar. she invents a reality that exists both separately and parallel to the supposed real world. it too has its own histories, its own boundaries of possible/impossible/physical/metaphysical, and its own species. she indulges our fantasies: what if magic really existed? what if there was a world where we could disappear, change forms, move things around, read minds, see/walk through walls, or fly without technology? a world where people could do this at will? don't pretend like you don't think it, because - seriously - how cool would that be? rowling invents a world where all these exist, and so much more. where people not only have the ability to do these things, but must learn to use them. that exists along with the regular human race, and it intimately entwined with it. a place among the genetic code where some have the powers and some don't. some know about the alter-universe and others don't. some rely on technology and others don't. two worlds existing together, one in time and space as we know it, with all the histories and all the happenings of our own world, and another one right beside it, with its very own history and its very own struggles.

but all this is superfluous, right? that's not the threat. the threat is the existence of magic, the employment of witchcraft, and, probably most importantly, the absence of God. after all, what about all the underlying themes - is rowling championing witchcraft? is she encouraging a generation of children to become fascinated with satanism, deception, and magic? upon my own examination, i believe that christians that get hung up on this have simply not looked past all the innocuous, superficial aspects of these texts. they truly haven't thought critically about it at all.

true, there's witchcraft and magic, but the stories have much more universal and, i would suggest, nobler themes than these. these simply serve to indulge the imagination - to feed into all the things we've thought about as children.

and true, there is no question of God or spirituality in her books. but i see this as no different than any other addition to the fantasy genre. it's an alternate universe. think about all the great fantasy adventures of our day. even in a God-less piece of art, we cannot discount them, because they open up our imagination to what something might be like if the world didn't have the same boundaries and existential quandaries we have now. in star wars. or narnia. or middle earth. or any of the comic books with batman or superman or the x-men. and we do not dismiss these things based on the God principle. we see them as literary or artistic achievements. if we are to be consistent, we cannot dismiss rowling based on this characteristic.

more important than God or witchcraft, i think, is the existence of a moral and spiritual duality in rowling's books. it's not simple floundering, not remotely about idle dabble in magic and imagination. there is a war being waged. and not just any war, but a clear battle between good and evil. a championing of hope, compassion, generosity, sacrifice, and love, and disdain for cruelty, selfishness, and the heartlessness. there is a duality: between voldemort and dumbledore and everything they stand for. voldemort is cruel and power-hungry. he's an elitist, a murderer, a wager of chaos and mass genocide. dumbledore stands for all the things that we need even in our own world: acceptance of other people, kindness to all, reason, compassion, and a firm stance on what is right. i'm on book 5, and talk of war is stirring. most of the wizarding world believes that the dark side is not rising - that their troubles were over years ago, but dumbledore knows better. and though the world strips him, one by one, of titles. though people call him crazy, pelt him with insults, and his credibility slowly slips away, he stands firm in his beliefs. he knows that the good will have to stand against the evil sooner or later, and wisely chooses not to ignore it, despite protest. and even in the face of his enemies, he is polite, kind, reasonable, and steady. never behaving out of emotional preference, but out of what is good and what is right. and i can't help but find it to be encouraging in our spiritually non-committal world. if children of our own generation need an example in the books they read, i'm glad dumbledore serves as one. it's not good enough to simply deny that bad things are happening. it's not good enough to pretend. it's not good enough to remain neutral. one must stand up for what is right, simply because it is so. because it's an insult to principle not to. not all things are just okay. some truly are bad and such things must be fought, but never at the breech of justice. and never in a way that even remotely compromises the sanctity of human life.

in such a lifeless world, a world that so disinterested in picking sides, i'm glad to see such a fierce dichotomy. such a decided understanding of good and evil, and that, in the face of adversary, the good is always upheld.

i've also read articles that these stories undermine family values, championing only the wizard families and encouraging children to fight against their parents. harry's family treats him horribly and in return, he fiercely hates them. first of all, has this person ever read british literature? this is the classic situation in story after story. it's very dickens-esque. if you disallow harry potter for this reason, you should also disallow every book that has a child rebelling against his or her parents or family's expectations. even the girls in jane austen are resistant to what their parents want. it is too simple to say that rowling devalues human families and encourages wizard families. while harry is treated poorly by his aunt and uncle, families like the blacks or the malfoys, both wizard families, are worse. they go so far as to ostracize family members for being to benevolent to the human race (the "inferior" race). according to such families, if you don't hate the humans ("muggles"), you're a disgrace. in the face of racism, sirius chose not to partake, and as a result, his family pretended he never even existed. the malfoys, though a strong family unit, are plain horrible. the best example of a functional family is the weasleys, a very large, but very poor wizard family. rowling makes it clear, however, that compassion and acceptances of others is far more important than money. it doesn't matter what you have - what matters is how you treat others. and not all human families are dysfunctional. hermione, for example, comes from a human family, and has a very good relationship with her parents. they treat her well and she loves them dearly.

aside from this, i find it interesting that many christians aren't moved simply by the first almost-annihilation of voldemort. he was relieved of physical form by hubris. attempting to murder harry, his own spell rebounded onto himself. harry only survived because of his mother's sacrifice. she died holding him in his arms, protecting harry - she died sacrificing her life for his - and it was the only thing that could deflect the curse. in the books there are three unforgivable curses... curses that send wizards to azkaban - a veritable hell. imposing your will onto another's. the torture curse. and the death curse. because they take away inalienable human rights - the right to free will, to bodily preservation, and to life. which christians, exactly, would disagree that these should be, indeed, unforgivable? it was using the third that voldemort was destroyed. by sacrifice. sacrifice conquers even death.

sacrifice conquers death.
sacrifice conquers death.
now that's funny, because i vaguely remember a bible story about that...