Harry Potter and the Evangelical Christian
As you know, I've been a big fan of the Harry Potter books for about a year now. Now, I'm sure this has been thought of before - I know there are books out there on looking for Christian messages in Harry Potter - but because I haven't read those books, and probably won't, you're going to get my take on this.
This is not to say that one is in any ( Read more... )
I also think it's ridiculous to consider Harry Potter un-Christian-like and evil. If there's any one novel out there that is working to destroy Christianity, it's the Da Vinci Code.
But the magical side of Christianity... It's hard, especially now, to get a grip on what's part of our faith and what isn't. Vatican II uncanonized something like 200 saints, because in the Dark Ages following the fall of the Roman Empire, if you could do any kind of illusionary trick or miracle, you were given sainthood. This was part of the pogrom to convert the pagan masses of Europe. "Hey, your guy can calm storms? Well guess what, that's God doing it, not magic."
Evangelical Christianity continues this tradition, to an extent. They rigorously study angelogy and demonology, they rely on supernatural powers, elicit bizarre behavior out of spectators and so on and so forth.
It's bad because it's misleading. You see a lot of this kind of thing in the lost Gospels, Jesus using teleportation and all other kinds of weird stuff. It distracts from the message that we consider Jesus to be the Son of God not because he can do magic tricks but because he was a great man who preached a message beneficial for mankind, and let himself perish in the hopes that his sacrifice would spread the Word.
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People just don't know when to take fiction as fiction. Even The Da Vinci Code - I haven't read it yet, but I know the basic premise. I can see how it may be causing people to question what the Church has been telling them all these years, but again, people, it's just a story. Just because the conspiracy theories may be historical (I haven't read much about it) doesn't mean that they're true. My question is, if Christ had been married, why would that have been such a big deal? Why would the Church have wanted to cover it up? Sure, the celibacy of Christ is now a staple of the faith - sure, yeah, the Church is supposed to be the Bride of Christ - but if he'd wanted to, he could've just as easily set himself up as an example of pure and virtuous earthly marriage. The idea that sex = sin is an image the Church could stand to lose anyway.
Yeah, I totally agree with you about mysticism. I grew up in a Charismatic (Assemblies of God) church. They did the speaking in tongues, and healing, and casting out demons - the whole caboodle - and I just got tired of it. By the technical definition, having more to do with basic belief than anything else, I'm still an evangelical, but politically and culturally, I don't identify with the movement of that name. I'm still in it on all sides of my family, but outside it, which is probably why I made the observation I did.
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