“I feel like I’m born again.” 
Listener to Podcast of “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text”

Have you ever read a Harry Potter book? Are you a Quidditch fan — ever vigilant watching for wizards on broomsticks chasing snitches?

For years I resisted reading about Harry and his lightning bolt scar because I hate jumping on bandwagons. I must admit, when the books first came out I detested Potter mania. Everybody had to buy the book, and everybody who bought the book became an expert in the world of Harry Potter. To rile the experts up I liked to shout the name “Voldemort!” out loud in crowds just to make Potter fans nervous.

To stage my resistance I used my Pastor’s card, throwing out the excuse that I didn’t want to read J. K. Rowling’s books because she wrote about some awfully sketchy-evil stuff: spells, ghosts, magic wands, potions, dragons and muggles. “What’s a muggle?” I asked one rather nerdy Potter fan while snickering at the seriousness of their reply. “Don’t you know? A muggle is a non-magical person. One who rejects the world of the wizards. Someone like you, Pastor Chris!”

Well, it was a year ago when one of my very good friends brought to me some Potter contraband – “Here, read this, you’ll love it.” It was his very own copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone. I took the rather heavy book in my hand scrutinizing the unique artwork and Potterish fonts on the front cover. As I looked up to give the book back, my friend was gone. He disappeared and there I was, all alone, holding the dreaded book I once rejected.

So I read it, and I must admit, I couldn’t put it down…and the next book…and the next book…and the next book. I found the Harry Potter series very enjoyable, not dark at all, and the plot lines were very imaginative. I will confess, I like Harry, I really do.

But let’s get something straight: Harry Potter is not real, he is the work of Joanne Kathleen Rowling’s mind. Fiction, made up out of the brain synapses of a finite being’s imagination. But for some Potter fans, there is more to be read between the lines.

In an article in the Washington Post, “Harry Potter and the Sacred Text Podcast”, it describes people who have turned to the Harry Potter books to find deeper meaning in life. The article says, “In their podcast, they use the rigorous methods they learned in divinity school, like the Benedictine monks’ practice of Lectio Divina and the medieval florilegium, to parse the lines of Harry Potter, which they typically refer to as ‘the text’.”

One person explains how it has inspired him to better living, “To me, the goal of treating the text as sacred is that we can learn to treat each other as sacred. If you can learn to love these characters, to love Draco Malfoy, then you can learn to love the cousin you haven’t spoken to for 30 years.” Some have even turned to a weekly church-like service for the secular focused on a Potter text’s meaning.

I wonder, is this what J. K. Rowling intended to happen? Have people turned the beloved character of Harry Potter into someone he was never meant to be: Saint Harry?

Humans beings are desperate for something outside of themselves to turn to for help and inspiration. Something or someone to be their guiding light and North Star. Someone like Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen, Edward Cullen, Gandalf the Gray, Pinky Pie Pony or even Yoda.

Why not turn to God? The infinite being who actually exists?

The answer is very simple: God is dangerous and scary, he will not be controlled. Harry Potter and the other heroes are not dangerous at all, they conform to our wishes and demands. God will not.

This is what lies at the core of idolatry, we get to design and control the god we want. We become the creators, we are the ones worshipped. The god we design performs for us. The god we want to worship bows to us.

Jesus Christ, on the other hand, will never bow. He wants us to bend our knee toward him. This is what people don’t like.

Over the years atheists and agnostics have often argued that Christians only believe in God because they are weak and they need some make-believe fantasy to keep them happy. As Marx once said, “Christianity is an opium for the people.” But the truth is the exact opposite. A person is usually an agnostic or atheist out of fear of a dangerous God. They would rather worship something as ridiculous as “Harry Potter” than they would the living God who rose from the dead.

I like Harry Potter, but he is a fantasy, real make-believe. Quidditch is a game that only works on a movie screen (Have you seen people running around with broomsticks between their legs? Looks rather painful). It just strikes me as odd that those who often turn from faith in God out of a desire to sound intelligent will turn to silly things to devote their lives too.

Romans 1:21-23 is right yet again, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles…” and Harry Potter!