Chapter 18: Where Does God Belong in Harry Potter?

AT LAST! 


I am so sorry for the delay in updating this blog, but I must beg your forgiveness. I was just recently released from one of the most terrifying forms of the Imperius Curse. I must confess the particulars are a bit fuzzy in my memory now, but I have been told that while I was at school this curse forced me to long and secluded hours in the dark with nothing but books to keep me company. After pouring over these books, I was subjected to a series of tests given to my by select professors. Soon after completing these tests, I was released from the Imperius Curse and was sent home to recover. 
Now that I have fully recovered from these final tests, I have set about (using a borrowed time turner) going back in time and writing to you everything we covered in class while I was under the of this curse. A big thanks once again to Alice of Rabbiton for providing me with her parchments from these classes.


-Victor Bennet


The Gospel

• Begins with the Creator God

• Fulfillment of Scripture/Prophecy

• The Incarnation; Jesus is fully human and fully God.

• He died for our sins

• He rose from the dead

• He is exalted to the right hand of God; He has been given a name above every other name

• He gave the Holy Spirit to those who had faith

• His will come again

One of the big themes in the Harry Potter books is challenging the relativism of our own culture: there’s no right or wrong, no good or evil. Harry Potter is not a relativistic work. Rowling works ultimate right and wrong into her work as part of the natural universe.
Cultural relativism is combated with the fact that there is a creator God. He created values, and these values are built into the very creation itself. Value is given because there is a God and is invested in us. The foundation and value of a family is also found in the fact that there is a creator God.


Love
The books have a huge theme of love.
All the points of the Gospel deal with Love because God IS Love. Without God, there is no Love. Love, by definition, is a relational thing and can only exist when there is an alternative, and God's love saves us from that alternative. 

The Hebrew world “hesed” is all throughout the gospels, and it is roughly translated “steadfast love.”

God does what He does because of His "hesed" love of people. The atonement was an expression of His love, and this idea drives the materialists mad. They try to develop some kind of rationality because love has a supernatural quality to it.


Death
After the creation of the world, God created humans. But humans fell short of the glory of God when they sinned. This is when Death is introduced. Death is also a major issue when Christ dies for us and rises again.
The books have a theme of death as well.
After the Creator God, we have the doctrine of Creation and that is where we as humans come into the story. The glory is that we’re made in the image of God, yet the tragedy is that we’ve fallen short of His image. We break the rules because we’ve fallen short of God. Death and Sin comes in, and Rowling explores the different manifestations of Sin through the books. Jesus died for our sins, death being the ultimate wages for our sins. It’s a double substitution: He died for me, and I am crucified with Him; He takes my death, and I take His life.
If we go forward to the last book, we see that Rowling isn’t a Universalist. Dumbledore tells Harry at King’s Cross Station that he can’t help Voldemort, but Harry nonetheless is the evangelist to Voldemort when they’re dueling and Harry tells him "it’s not too late".


Supernaturalism
Rowling’s books are filled with the supernatural.
The Resurrection is an excellent example of the supernatural. People just don’t come back to life every day. It’s just not normal! It's not Natural, thus it is Supernatural! 
God speaking to prophets and the prophecies coming true, the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, this is all spooky. Many people ask the questions, "Is the Creator God involved in the universe, and if so, in what sense is He involved? Is this just cause and effect, or is there an order of nature, created by God in the beginning, the way the Bible tells us?" I myself, Victor Bennet have often asked these questions. Is there an answer? 
Dr. Poe gives us a excellent explanation. "We cannot have God creating the fundamental forces of the universe without the idea that God can be involved in it." That is to say, if we believe that God created the entire universe, how could we believe that He is not equally involved in sustaining it? People have this idea that God lives way, way up high, and He has to come down to earth to be involved. God’s Holy Spirit has never left, hence the term: an omnipresent God. God has never left. He was here in the beginning, and He is still here today.


What Is the Mystery in The Department of Mysteries?
In the fifth book we really get up close and personal with the Department of Mysteries. We come to find out that it contains the prophecies. This brings us to the idea of prophecy in the Bible. Prophecies make the Bible different from any other book in the world. It’s easy for a holy book to claim itself true. The one thing unique to the Bible is that it contains prophecy, which is absent in all others "holy writings". The Bible is an intriguing collection of prophecies so that you’ll know the character of God as one who makes promises, keeps those promises, and thus is trustworthy.
These successions of prophecies strive to show the character of God as one who keep His promises. God is different than all the other manmade gods. Prophecies only work if there is an all-knowing being who can see the future and then can reveal it to humans. The deities of other cultures don’t speak to us, don’t know us, don’t love us, and, in Eastern religions, aren’t really even conscious of themselves existing. 
When Rowling introduces the idea of prophecy in the books, she opens up an obvious question: "Where do these prophecies come from, how do they happen?" Prophecy is very different from divination. Divination tries to wrench knowledge from the universe, while prophecies are abrupt and are granted to seers, but the people are not the start of it. Prophecies come when you aren't expecting them and when you may not want them.This is how the Spirit of the Lord came upon the Biblical prophets. Amos didn’t like being a prophet, Isaiah didn’t want to be prophet, but God was able to use them nonetheless. When Trelawny actually does prophesy, she is not the source of it and cannot control it.
Talking about prophecy brings up the problem of how it works. Rowling doesn’t deal with the source of power that fuels magic. She’s already slammed Divination, and she makes sure it’s discredited. Then, she subtly raises the question of where these prophecies come from and the only sensible answer would be that there has to be something more to the universe than simply the natural world that we see and understand. 
So why don't Rowling explain where prophecies come from or at least hint a bit more at what she believes? It boils down to the fact that these books are not theology or Scripture; they’re fairytales that have been influenced by Christian faith. You get a unique set of answers with her stories, and we get a whole different answer with other stories. They all point towards the ultimate answers which are contained within the Bible. 


Substatutionary Deaths
Rowling’s books feature many characters’ deaths for other people. Which is the right one: did Jesus die as a substitution for us, did his death defeat death/Satan, did his death clense and heal us, did his death set us free, etc. The problem with our culture is that we’re trying to narrow it down to the one, essential “it”. In fact, Christ did it all. The modern way of thinking, by getting it down to the one thing, eliminates the one thing itself.
 In the book, Harry doesn’t die for sins. He’s representing the reasonableness of a substitutionary death. In Scripture, there is typology. Harry is a “type” of Christ. He is not an allegory or even a reflection of Jesus, he is a character that has been influenced by, and shares similar characteristics with Christ. Harry is not Jesus, Dumbledore is not God, and this is just a glimmer of the real story. The big, real story, the full story, is Jesus.

Chapter 16: Harry Potter and Sex (or the lack thereof)

Now that the title got your attention... 
I'd like to give a big thanks to Alice of Rabbiton for taking the notes that make this post possible. I will also point out that all phrases in quotation marks are quotes from Dr. Poe unless otherwise noted. I will also take this opportunity to remind you that all information found on this blog is a faithful representation of what is discussed in class and may not necessarily reflect the views held by me, my classmates, or Union University as a whole. 


That being said, I approve of (although I may not always agree with) everything that I allow to be placed on this blog. I hope that you enjoy today's post on Love, Prejudices, and the Morality of the Unforgivable Curses.


-V. B.


A Continued Discussion of Eros

•    As Rowling follows these children as they go through adolescence, she is faced with the question of when to introduce certain experiences. In the midst of all that’s going on, when do you introduce eros?
•    The body is changing during this time period, so how do you introduce these new emotions? Hormones start exploding, acne kicks in, your body begins to change shape, and life just seems awkward all of the sudden. 
•    Sexual experimentation, in today’s society, is being pushed on much younger age groups. Since the counter-culture of the 1960's, sexual norms have basically been eradicated in American culture. Our society sees no sexual norms or boundaries; no right or wrong, there’s just what you do. "Intercourse, in our culture, is just as normal as a handshake between strangers," according to Dr. Poe. The media also gives us continuous exposure about sex.

So How Does Rowling Combat This Horrible Eradication of Morals?

•    One of the subtle things she does is to wait until around age fifteen to talk about dating. She’s reestablishing what is normal, and she’s allowing them to grow up at the pace that is normal and acceptable; your emotions, your intellect, and your body is all in sequence. "They’re not talking about bedding girls; they’re talking about the horror of asking a girl on a date." This is a very subtle to establish what is normal.
•    When you talk about a worldview, one of the core beliefs is sexual morals. This is what Rowling is touching on by reaffirming a healthier understanding of growing up and getting things in the proper sequence. She doesn’t make a big deal out of it. It’s just part of the story and how the characters mature in all those different dimensions.
•    Hermione criticizes Ron’s “emotional range of a teaspoon” when he can’t empathize with Cho. Rowling is talking about the disparity between males and females for about a ten year period; they’re maturing at different speeds. She’s tracing that, and we see how Hermione, being more mature than Ron, has to wait for his affections and emotions to catch up with hers.
•    She’s doing all this to create a new set of norms, but she’s only one voice out of many. There are millions of stories that have changed the behavior patterns of society in terms of what was acceptable, what is normal, and what is expected. If you don’t behave the way culture expects, you are "abnormal." You are like Dobby, the social deviant who doesn’t think or behave the way a house elf should.
•    Christians in all cultures, at all times, are at some level social deviants. We are different from the mainstream of the culture (or at least one would hope so) and we had a profound effect on the broad culture for decades. But the West is losing its Christian foundation. Life, liberty, and happiness are products of a Christian worldview.
•    Rowling doesn’t discuss it in terms of human behavior or lecture about what nice people do, but in terms of normal, everyday behavior. The narrative itself has an influence on the reader, leading them to agree with what she likes and disagree with what she dislikes. Rowling doesn’t lecture about what is right and wrong, she just builds her view of norms right into the story! By just presenting things as the normal way of doing things, the reader is just brought along with the idea that this is just the way things are.

Dr. Poe stated that he would be interested to see if these books have changed the way the world views things as acceptable. The pulpit of the ‘60s was the movie theater, they pushed all the envelope and created norms. So how have these books and films made any cultural change in the generation of "Millennials" that have been so observed in the series.  


Pride & Prejudices 

•    This book really highlights the idea of prejudice in a way that we haven’t seen quite as much. It comes to a head with attitudes towards things like half-breeds. Rowling touches on the acceptance of who you are and your own identity, and a lot of people deny their true selves. There are prejudices against half-giants, but she writes the story to where we dislike the ones who dislike the half-giants.
•    Hermione talks about those who are prejudice about werewolves. She’s not giving out simple answers to things, and there are just some behaviors that you just don’t accept. More obvious with Fenrir than Lupin, there are extreme behaviors that won’t be tolerated (killing children).
•    She also touches on the attitudes towards house elves and centaurs, even against muggles. The strangeness of the prejudices is further explored with goblins, wand carriers, and those who are not pure-bloods.
•    This can become a methodology, working when Ron and Harry are discussing the dates for the Yule Bale. They’re now evaluating the appearance of girls. These evaluations that are going back and forth are very strange. Things like that are part of finding your place in Harry Potter and putting prejudice in its place.
•    Jesus was always multicultural, but most cultures work at reinforcing the prejudices rather than tearing them down. In Galatians 3:28, Jesus tells us, "There are neither Jews nor Greeks, slaves nor free people, males nor females. You are all the same in Christ Jesus."            

 New Types of Magic In The Goblet of Fire

•    The Aging Line around the goblet itself is very similar to getting an I.D. card and the right of passage that it gives you (going to certain movies, buying beer, etc).
•     Apparating and the desire to do so all the time when you have your license is like driving.
•     Veritaserum, the strongest truth potion, would be like sodium pentathol.
• Rowling is often dancing between magic and science, giving it a clever twist to make it make-believe when, in actuality, it does exist in reality.
• Harry lies a lot but has some very valuable secrets, so he’s incredibly worried Snape would give him the truth serum.
•    Rita Skeeter and the paparazzi are being terribly worrisome.
•    The Goblet of Fire is the Sorting Hat carried to the next level. It is sorting the occupants into the worthiest individuals from each school. It’s like a computer, and it does get "hacked" by Barty Crouch Jr.
•    Professor Moody (aka Barty Jr.) transfigures Malfoy into a ferret, and he transforms Barty Sr. into a bone and buried him.

The Unforgivable Curses

Barty Jr. demonstrates the three unforgiveable curses to us for the first time.

• Imperius Curse
•    You can control somebody.
•      Learn to manipulate people so that they do what you want them to do.
•    We’ve had it used on us numerous times, and we pick up the skill if we’re not careful. You may have relatives that are really good at the Imperius Curse, only we typically call it a "Guilt-trip." It gives you total control over someone based on what you say. You've heard them before,  “You do want you want.” or “Don’t mind me, I’m used to being alone.”

• Cruciatus Curse
•    "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me" is the countercurse that we were all taught as kids, but it never seemed to work...
•    You can torture someone with unbearable pain.
•    James, brother of Jesus, wrote on this subject of the power of words to cause unbearable pain. The tongue is an incredibly powerful instrument for good and for evil. "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be." James 3:9-10

• Killing Curse
•    Jesus warned us of this in the Sermon on the Mount. Thou shall not kill.
•    You don’t have to use your hands; it starts with the intentions of the heart. Murder starts with the intentions of the heart.
•    Harry couldn’t use the Cruciatus Curse because he didn’t mean it in his heart.
•    Umbridge regularly uses the unforgiveable curses for “the greater good”.
•    Kingsley Shacklebolt uses the Imperius Curse on Cho’s friend when Dumbledore’s Army has been caught by Umbridge’s interrogations.
•    McGonagall uses one against Bellatrix in the Deathly Hallows.
•    Harry never uses the killing curse, and he even warns Voldemort not to use it.
•    Molly Weasley never utters the curse out loud, but we know she’s used it against Bellatrix.

What Are the Ethics Behind The Unforgivable Curses?

•    Our heroes later use the unforgiveable curses. “Unforgivable” isn’t a legal term, it’s invocative of the something like the Last Judgment. Is it right for the heroes to use them? Some things are forbidden by the state, culture, authority figures, or God. 
•    Is it the curse that’s the problem or is it the killing of people that’s the problem?
•    Dr. Poe hopes to continue this discussion at a later time and will perhaps to have one of our professors of ethics discuss this with us!

Parting Thoughts...

•    The idea of celebrity is introduced with Victor Krum. To what extent is Rowling’s celebrity featured in to the way she writes those passages? Does she put herself into the book? She does have insight into the experience of fame that other authors don’t know about. Rowling was surprised at her fame, and in that sense, she’s musch like Harry. She’s clearly making the case for what’s important, and in the end, friendship is more important than fame.
•    A death eater (Crouch as Moody) tells Harry that he and Hermione would make good aurors, which is very ironic.
•    Voldemort is already planning to kill Snape, and Harry overhears this in the graveyard. With the whole resurrection/murder/graveyard sequence, she’s now making it a horror story. It also goes back to the druid type of ritual with blood and ghastly magic; this ceremony and the resurrection of Voldemort, is the essence of evil.

Chapter 15: Harry Potter and Hunger Games

We've done it! We've topped 1,000 views! Big thanks to everyone for continuing to read the blog and please continue sharing it with your friends like Miss "Zestee" Everman did.

So what do we do when we top 1,000 page views? We celebrate by talking about what Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and The Hunger Games have in common! The "girl on fire" and "the boy that lived". 

Happy reading! And may the odds be ever in your favor!

- V. B.

The Goblet of Fire

After the first two books, Rowling (ironically) takes a much harsher view of the press in her books.

In this book, Easter is celebrated, and at Christmas, one of the suits of armor is singing “O Come All Ye Faithful”.

More Eros

In this book, the characters are in middle adolescence. Hormones are running high and so is eros. Harry likes Cho, and Cedric does too. He’s cooler than Harry and can tell Cho how he feels. Ron is also dealing with it; he’s upset that Hermione’s gone to the ball with his former hero, Victor Krum. He’s very jealous, which means that he likes Hermione, but he doesn’t do anything about it. Hermione is frustrated with Ron because she’s waiting on Ron to grow up. Passion is a very powerful force, and it can deceive and confuse you.

On this subject Dr. Poe said something along the lines of, “Being kissed by a dementor is not half as bad as not being kissed at all!”

Resurrection and Death

Voldemort’s resurrection is nothing like the resurrection of Harry and especially the resurrection Christ. The power of love is much more powerful than any dark power.  A clear contrast is made between the good news of grace, the gift of life, and the sacrifice of Christ compared to the ghastly, self-centeredness of Voldermort’s perpetuation. The United States has an overwhelming fear of death. Rowling wants this contrast to have an impression on the reader, so that their opinion is developed. But rather than lecturing about the fact that death need not be feared, she weaves it right into the story. When you have to have a lecture to explain it, that’s not much of a story.

When Cedric Diggory, Harry’s parents, and Voldemort’s victims appear as the wands connect, this reflects the cloud of witnesses and communion of saints in Scripture.

Harry Potter and the Hunger Games?

Rowling is attacking some of the fundamental, materialistic assumptions running rampant through our culture. The theory of natural selection and materialistic evolution that says that my genes are competing with your genes, and my genes want the advantage; I’m competing against you. I want the odds in my favor. The very idea of sacrifice and sharing has no place in the kind of universe that is materialistic. It goes against the theory. The materialistic understanding of what’s going on is that people will gang up on others, get rid of them, and then turn on each other. That’s not what’s going on with Harry, and that’s not what’s going on with Cedric. Rowling is supporting a supernatural value system in which people have worth and value and that human life is worth more than personal achievement. 

The gospel in Goblet of Fire is very evident in the Triwizard Tournament. It is a environment of natural selection. A competition between people, against each other. This is the same sort of theme that Suzanne Collins uses in the Hunger Games. People are fighting each other. There is no room for love in this competition. But just like Katniss refuses to kill Peeta, Harry supersedes the system and tells Cedric about the dragons, saves Fleur’s sister, and takes the Wizard Cup WITH Cedric rather than blasting him out of the way.

"Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:5-11) This also comes into play when Sirius tells Ron to treat his inferiors with the same respect as he treats his equals. This is all packed into the idea of what should my attitude be to other people? Our value system, as Christians, is based off of our actions toward other people.

It also plays into the fact that everyone is afraid to say Voldemort's name. Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself. But God has a name that is above all others, therefore, we need not fear anything. 

Multi-Cultural Wizards

or

Voldemort and Hitler

It never occurred to Harry that there are wizards throughout the rest of the world and that there might be other schools in other places. We see Harry’s coming of age throughout the series because he’s incredibly naïve. God’s kingdom is incredibly diverse and includes all sorts of people with different tongues and cultures. Christianity is very multicultural, which you don’t find in any other culture in the world. There isn’t very much mixing of ethnicities in other places. You don’t find mixing (religions, tribes, etc) in the Middle East. The genocide in Central Africa was an incredibly unnerving example of this. 

Multiculturalism is not natural to human nature. Multiculturalism and the acceptance of people who are different is not natural; naturally, we are suspicious of those who are different from us, and to accept them we have to have some sort of basis to connect with those different people. Our connection is the Creator God, but without God, we have no basis to sustain it. In Europe right now, they’re going to outlaw different kinds of behavior of Muslim people. This has to do with fear of the outsider in a country that is no longer Christian. So many of the values that Western liberalism, such as the tradition of the free spirit, takes for granted has to be rooted in something. If it’s just a material world, then Hitler can kill as many Jews as he wants to by playing on human fear of those who are different. If there’s no higher authority or value he’s violating, there is no right or wrong. "There’s only power and those too weak to use it." Later in the books, she fights the “higher/greater good” mentality of Umbridge. She’s not writing theology, but she is creating a context in which values don’t work unless they come from something greater than ourselves.

House Elves

Rowling raises difficult questions and points out flaws, but doesn’t give any easy answers. Hermione defends the house elves, and yet Dumbledore keeps more of them than any other person in the world. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he talks about the Holy Spirit and freedom because Christ has set you free. You don’t find the subject of freedom in any other document in any other religion.The Bible is one of the only books of the time to talk about “freedom,” because "freedom" was a foreign concept at the time.

Dobby is no longer a slave, and much like Harry lays down his life for his friends. It takes a long time to become the norm, permeate the culture, and go through the dough. Dobby is a revolutionary. What Dobby does to rescue those in captivity are the same things Harry does to save people. 

House elves aren’t human, but they are a different form of life. So what ethical issues does that raise?·      Dobby is not a human, but house elves are not animals, and there’s this debate going on in the wizarding community of where they fall. When Ron wants to go save the house elves from Voldemort, this is when the love between Ron and Hermione blooms fully. Dumbledore also said that Sirius never appreciated that house elves had feelings like people. Rowling is relying on a kind of fiction that Tolkien and Lewis brought forward. C. S. Lewis and Tolkien have non-human races in their works as well. It’s a convenient way to ponder about how you think about other people. 
Angels and demons aren’t human, but they are still a life form. Humans are LOWER than angels even! Satan’s problem with the human race is that we’re made lower than the angels, yet Christ has crowned us with glory and stepped into the world and become one of us! That’s why he tries to knock Jesus off while He’s in that form. Satan figures that when God turns himself into a person, he can take over because Jesus is at his weakest. Jesus defeats him easily.

Cornelius Fudge and Self-Awareness

Fudge doesn’t want to acknowledge that Voldemort has come back (or even could come back). Self-awareness is one of our biggest problems in today’s society. Many parables are about people who don’t want to deal with their own problems and situations. When the prodigal son was finally down and out and eating with the pigs, he came face to face with himself and saw himself as he really was. Fudge, like a lot of politicians, believed his own propaganda, which is deadly. You must know yourself; otherwise you can’t have a confession. Though we have Harry, constantly getting into trouble, he’s also constantly confessing and coming face to face with himself. When Harry and Ron weren’t speaking, both of them needed to grow up, see themselves, find out what the problem was, confess it, and get rid of it so that they can move on. Fudge will never confess his shortcomings, but Harry is coming face to face with his failures.

Harry and Sin

Rowling slips the word “sin” when Harry looks in the pensive. When Harry stumbles upon the pensieve, Dumbledore tells him "it’s not a sin to be curious." The very idea of sin is a powerful idea that you don’t find in every culture. In post-WWII Japan, you find no other culture dealing with their god resigning. The emperor of Japan was god, the same way pharaoh was god, and it’s the same kind of religion that Moses faced in Egypt. Japan’s emperor was the son of the moon goddess, and it was in his name the Japanese did everything that was done. McArthur said the emperor could remain on his throne, but he must resign as god. If the emperor is not god, who is? It was a huge cultural crisis, and the Western world sent missionaries to Japan. From a very young age, we’ve always heard the basic story of the gospel and have all this background. If you don’t know the story and someone tells you “God died for your sins and you can go to Heaven when you die,” yet your culture has no concept of sin or heaven because they teach that you don’t die but are reincarnated until you become enlightened and cease to exist. That’s hard to take in. If you don’t know the gospel story, it doesn’t make any sense. Our culture is becoming like the Japanese culture, in which people no longer know the story, who Jesus is, or how it makes sense. It’s almost lost. Western culture had a firm background built on the ideas of sin, God, and heaven, but we are losing that foundation.