Finding God in Harry Potter ?

(My apologies in advance for the length of this entry, but you can't really help it when the Spirit moves you, lol)

With the first movie in the Chronicles of Narnia series comming out soon, I'm sure you've all seen countless books on the shelves dealing with the Christian themes that Lewis's chronicles are laced with. For the past few years there were many similar books, only those were about The Lord of the Rings. And of course, there are books about the always controversial Harry Potter series. I read some articles recently by a man named John Granger, a Christian who wrote the book Finding God in Harry Potter. They were interesting, and relentlessly detailed in their analysis of the Christian themes in the Potter books, but in truth, I failed to see the point.

I don't believe there's anything particularly wrong with the Harry Potter series, either the books or the movies, at least not in the way some of the Christian community seems to. But I still don't see the need for all this analysis of themes that may or may not be intentionally placed. I can see the appeal, but at the end of reading one of Mr. Granger's books, what have you really accomplished? If you have an interest in literature, by all means read and enjoy the book, I'm not saying it's a complete waste of time. But what difference does it make if J. K. Rowling hid some Christianesque themes in her books? Does that then make it alright for Christians to read them? After reading Mr. Granger's rather lengthy article about which character in "The Half-Blood Prince" represents Christ, I was left wondering why I read it at all. Obviously I haven't read the book, but for those who have, does understanding who Rowling's Christ figure might be change the meaning of the book, or your perception of it? Or perhaps, simply knowing that there is a Christ figure in the book at all will help you to feel better about letting your children read it.

There's a site called HollywoodJesus.com that literally finds the Christian themes in almost every movie you can think of. I guess after seeing that site (and gorwing tired of seeing the scores of books for LOTR and now Narnia) I became a bit cynical toward the whole idea. People jump in their seats when they hear anything that sounds even remotely Christian-themed, but the truth is you can find christian themes in almost anything you want to find them in (as that site does a good job of illustrating). Take Superman. Jor-El's "only son", sent to Earth to be "the light to show [us] the way." Sound familiar? So, shall we get a head start on writing all those books about the Christian themes in "Superman Returns" (it comes out in only 7 months)? I don't even know the main plot of the movie yet, but I can tell you it will be a struggle of good against evil, and since Superman is obviously a Christ figure, we should have a lot of material for writing a book.

You get my point. Did the original creators of Superman intend for him to be a Christ figure? If they did, is Bryan Singer (the director) also trying to show us Christian themes in "Superman Returns"? If not, what's the point of us looking for them? Granted, J. K. Rowling may be putting Christian themes in her books purposfully, but I still fail to see the point in looking so intently for them. And what about "The Matrix"? There was quite a lot of talk about how that movie had a lot of Christian themes, but I still wouldn't let my kids see it. And of course, as the later two movies showed, the Matrix series was really just full of religious symbolism, not all Christian.

The truth is, every great story has a hero, who often has to sacrifice himself (or herself). Every great story has a villian. Every great story is a struggle of good against evil. Why? Because the REAL story has all of these elements. So yes, in a way these things are Christian themes, but they're also true, and thus they've become universal, so it would be hard to write a good story without them. They're hardly worth writing whole books over. And If all this is an attempt to justify Christians allowing their children to read Harry Potter, it all seems a bit much to me. Like I said, I don't see a problem with the books or the movies, so long as you always stress to your children that spells and wands are meant only for make-believe and that no matter how hard they try they will never be able to fly or turn their friends into frogs. After reading Finding God in Harry Potter, the only thing you can really be left with is, "cool, Harry Potter has Christian themes." But then again, if those themes are really nothing more than universal themes that can be interpreted in many different ways by people of different beleifs, then what was really the point in having them in there at all? Naturally, because you can't write a good story without them. Thus, these themes MUST be present in the story, or it wouldn't be good enough to be so popular in the first place.

And in the end, what good is a Christian theme in a story that ultimately does nothing to glorify God? C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia are obviously allegorical to the Bible and a Christian message, but how many people have come to a true and savaing knowlege of Christ through those books? If those books turned readers on to other Lewis works, such as Mere Christianity, then they served a real, God-glorifying purpose, but not simply by virtue of them containing some Christian themes. I simply think it best that the Christian literary community focus its energies on more noble causes than this. It makes great pop Christian reading, but until Rowling writes her own children's version of Mere Christianity, there just doesn't seem to be anything substantial to talk about.

Superman Returns

It has finally come, and I have provided the link below. Go. Bear witness...

The light to show the way

"And there was war in heaven..."

A strange theme emerged a couple days ago. Thursday afternoons I have a break between classes and I usually take the time to read. In addition to reading The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel, I've been reading a book by John Eldredge, the author of Wild at Heart. The book is called EPIC: The story God is telling and the role that is yours to play. As with Wild at Heart John uses a lot of movies (epic movies like Braveheart, Gladiator, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings) to illustrate how life isn't just about going to church and memorizing a catechism, it's about living the grand adventure God has given us to live; falling in love and fighting against evil, all those things our hearts long for. Despite Mr. Eldrege being a big dispensational armenian (like Dustin and his Biola buddies, lol), you can see why this book appeals to me.

In any case, I was reading the chapter titled "Act Two: The Entrance of Evil." The focus of this chapter was betrayal; Commodus's betrayal of his father in Gladiator, Saruman's betrayal of all Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings and Anakin's betrayal of the Jedi in Revenge of the Sith. All these are merely analogies to the ultimate betrayal; Lucifer's betrayal of God. "And there was war in heaven..." (Rev. 12:7)

After I got home from work that night I sat down to watch Smallville, which I had taped, and the entire episode was about betrayal. I didn't really think about it at the time, but later I thought it was rather coincidental.

Then I went on MySpace and a bulliten posted by Josh and Jess caught my eye titled "F**k Love." The first sentance of this bulliten read, "As we grow up, we learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let you down probably will." After some elaboration on that statement it tells you to be happy and enjoy every minute of the good times in life, and so on. But again we see the subject of betrayal pop up in a seemingly random place for me.

Finally, Friday morning, Dustin has written a new blog entry on his MySpace. It's some long analogy between mustard and life, but at one point he says, "...However, betrayal isn't born of enemies, but of friends, of that which you 'know' best." At this point I sat back in my chair and wondered if someone was trying to tell me something.

Well, I don't have an answer to that. Sorry if you were hoping I would pull it all together in the end and explain what it all meant, but I don't really know yet. I do know this, however: With regards to the MySpace bulliten with the colorful name, I simply don't hold to that. I don't beleive that it's impossible to trust anyone, to put your faith in anyone. I don't beleive that absolutely everyone will betray you at some point, that it's only a matter of time. Sure, if you never trust anyone you'll never have your heart broken, but then what sort of life are you living anyway?

A galaxy a lot closer than you think

So, as I'm sure everyone already knows, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith came out on DVD this past Tuesday, and of course I bought it (but I'm sure you already knew that too).

Now, there was a lot of talk going around when the movie first hit theatres back in May that it was an allegory for today. The movie wasn't just a warning about loosing democracy and ending up with a dictator (which applies more to Nazi Germany than to America today), no to these wackos (whose liberal party affiliation shall remain anonymous) Emperor Palpatine was in fact representative of Vice President Cheney (because, remember, Cheney is really the one with all the power in the White House) and Anakin Skywalker was President Bush. At first I didn't get how that worked, but now I do. You see, Bush is like a dumb kid whose heart might be in the right place, but his ideals are all screwed up (hence, Anakin). Since Cheney could never win the Presidency himself, he settles for Vice President and then uses Bush to slowly bring about his conservative totalitarian regime. All I can say is that they'd better hurry up. Bush only has a couple years left in office and they haven't even started sending any outspoken liberals to the secret gas chambers under the White House yet.

In any case, as I was watching the movie the other day, I too found a striking moral to the story. This movie is an allegory for today. As I watched the two climactic battles, one between Anakin and Obi-Wan and one between Yoda and Palpatine, I sat there thinking, "man, the fate of the whole galaxy really depends on just these two fights." Then I started thinking about all the things that might have happened if the fights had turned out differently, but that wasn't as much fun because I didn't have any of my fellow geeks around to have the conversation with, haha. What I did realize as I was watching thses spectacular fight scenes was the desperation with which they were being fought. Then I asked, "WHY does the fate of the whole galaxy depend on just these two fights?" Simple, because the Jedi, either in their complacency or in their arrogance, had allowed such a terrible evil to grow behind the scenes until that evil had become so powerful that it was too late to stop it.

Liberals want to talk about political corruption, in fact they're desperate to find it (as we've seen recently with all the indictments). Well I tell you it's moral corruption we should be worried about. That's the moral they should be finding in this movie. The liberals in this country cry out about tolerance open-mindedness, immediately framing any argument in such a way that to dissagree with them makes you a closed-minded biggot. No one wants to be a biggot. And so, one by one, the average conservative American "lets it slide." They buy into the perverted rationalization that "what does it matter if it doesn't affect me personally?" Well it does affect you personally. Anything that chips away at the moral fabric of this country affects us all.

But we want to be open-minded, right? Can't we be Christians without our beliefs conflicting with a woman's right to choose, or with everyone's right to marry? Fine. Twist the meaning of whatever Bible verses you want to that lets you fit in better with the secular world. Live with the complacent (or perhaps even arrogant) notion that none of it will affect you. And then one day, when it's too late to finally do anything, the real Palpatine's of this world will have taken over completely. Our closed-mindedness won't just be frowned upon by the secular media, it will be outright illegal. The liberals have always been champions of free speech, until they don't like what's being said.

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of actively looking for morals in movies (since most of them don't actually have any worth finding), but I felt the need to share this little epiphany. Moral of this blog entry: Let's start becomming the outspoken majority, before it's too late.

I'm a genius!

Ok, I'm not really a genius, but I did really well on an IQ test. It was a legitimate test (and I had to sign up for all sorts of junk and give out the social security numbers of six family members just to get my results), but I don't honestly put all that much stock into the results. Still, they were favorable to me (and rather prophetic sounding with regards to my current educational goals), so I'm posting them here for all to see and admire. Of course, Donald would probably score something ridiculous like 150, but he's destined to be the future dictator of the world, so I can let it slide.

Congratulations, David!
Your IQ score is 138



This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Visionary Philosopher. This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns.