But Harry Potter is not the real thing. Which is why many Christian parents are concerned about it. Nor is it the best way to satisfy our kids' desire. But you can use the Potter craze to get kids and grandkids into something that leads them to the real thing.
These parents aren't against stories of imagination and adventure. But as one critic asked, would public schools allow teachers to assign the Narnia tales by C.S. Lewis and discuss the Christian symbolism with the class?(Narnia, you may recall, is also a fantasy world where magical and miraculous things happen to children. But Christian convictions about good and evil, salvation and redemption inform the meaning and significance of the stories.)
Anglican authorities last week said they would not allow Warner Brothers to portray the medieval London church as the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in a movie the company is making of J.K. Rowlings' children's book series about the boy wizard.
God shows us that witchcraft, sorcery, spells, divination and magic are evil. He hates those practices because they blind us to His loving ways, then turn our hearts to a deceptive quest for self-empowerment and deadly thrills. Harry Potter's world may be fictional, but the timeless pagan practices it promotes are real and deadly. Well aware that the final result is spiritual bondage and oppression, He warns us:"There shall not be found among you anyone who... practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord..." Deuteronomy 18:9-12
Harry Potter and the Power of Suggestion
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Aldous Huxley understood this power over seventy years ago. Brave New World summarized his plan for mental manipulation and behavioral control:
"The love of servitude cannot be established except as the result of a deep, personal revolution in human minds and bodies. To bring about that revolution we require, among others... a greatly improved technique of suggestion through infant conditioning...."Ms Rowling's message fits Huxley's vision and today's global agenda. It mocks traditional values and idealizes paganism. No wonder Scholastic, a major publisher of classroom fiction promoting pagan empowerment, won the right to publish the series in America. Nor is it any wonder Warner owns the movie rights. Rowling's storytelling fuels their race toward a post-Christian, neo-pagan world. To order Harry Potter and the BIBLE, click here."...Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too--all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides--made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!"
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