I've just started reading the first book in the Harry Potter series to my oldest son. I do so with some trepidation. I made an impassioned Christian defense of the series more than a decade ago on my now defunct Faith Journeys blog (You can still read it here. The post even includes an early meditation on magic that I'm fleshing out in this entry). I knew, even then, that while it would be easy as a childless adult to argue that the Potter stories were not a dangerous slippery slope towards real-life occultism and witchcraft, it would be much harder to put that argument to the test with children of my own. For quite a few years I was able to dodge the challenge. My son knew about Harry Potter but showed no interest, and despite my personal fandom, I didn't encourage him to take an interest. But I knew my son--how similar we are in so many ways--and that it would only be a matter of time before he was drawn to the stories.
Sure enough. Here we are. For a couple of years now, reading together has been a special tradition we've shared. We went through the entire C.S. Lewis Narnia series--he loved it. It's the gold standard for him in Christian themed literature. I read him the halfway decent novelized version of Desire of Ages titled Victory of the Warrior King by the Seventh-day Adventist author Sally Pierson Dillon. And then came the request: Can we read Harry Potter next? I put him off for a bit, explaining the protagonist was older than he was and that he might find it scary. But now he's eleven, the same age as Harry is in the Sorcerers Stone, and it's time to put my money where my mouth is.
We talk a fair amount as we read. I know there is an interesting, arguably Christian theme that becomes quite clear by the final book of the series, but I haven't mentioned it, not wanting to give it away. But we talk about other things that pop up.
Interestingly, I'm noting some things that I don't like so much, that I didn't really pay much attention to the first time around. I should clarify that I began reading the series with the third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, read through to the end, and then never went back to read the first two books. So we will be discovering The Socerer's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets together. So maybe I didn't notice these things because they are less prominent in the later books? I don't know.
First, I found I was turned off by the description of the Dursleys, Harry's horrible aunt, uncle and cousin who he is living with under absurdly abusive circumstances at the start of the story. I find it kind of lazy and offensive that the Durselys' horribleness is not defined only by their character or behavior but also by their appearance. Cousin Dudley is overweight in the extreme,and Aunt and Uncle are each also physically ugly. To me this is kind of boring in addition to hurtful to overweight readers or anyone who doesn't measure up to societies standards of attractiveness. To me equating ugly appearance with ugly personality is cheap. I also found the story gets off to a slow start. The first few chapters really focus on Harry's life with the Dursleys. I'm not sure they get this much attention the rest of the series.
But I digress. I'm here to talk about magic and miracles, the last thing my son and I discussed during a recent read. I've always maintained that the difference between magic and miracles is that magic is something that can be learned and then used to bend the natural world to your will through supernatural means. The lie of magic is that the power is within yourself and you can make things happen according to your will whenever you like. Miracles on the other hand are granted at the discretion of God. The teachings of some television preachers notwithstanding, they cannot be summoned up on demand by the faithful to get whatever we want. There is no formula to follow that will give you a guaranteed outcome with miracles. The truth of miracles is that the power is within God and He can, when he chooses, make things happen according to His will.
But neither miracles nor miracles accomplish what we think they will. They do not solve the most pressing problems of the human condition. We've come to believe that convenience, which is often the province of both magic and miracles--an invisibility cloak, water into wine, flying on a broomstick or walking on water--will make us happy. One of the things I like about Harry Potter is that it makes abundantly clear that there are things magic cannot fix. Purpose in life, peace of mind, happy relationships, finding and keeping love cannot bye produced with the wave of a wand (or I would argue, a miraculous intervention). The magical folk that populate the series are no more problem free than the Muggles (non-magical, "regular" people). Indeed they deal with additional problems that are a direct result of the magical world they inhabit. I'm reminded of Jesus who had the miraculous powers of divinity at His command, but also had temptations we will never face precisely because of His divine access to miracles.
My son and I observed that if we were to bring people from the Biblical times to our modern age much of what we consider ordinary from our self-powered vehicles to microwave ovens to television to telephones (not to mention the smart variety) would appear either dangerously magical or astonishingly miraculous to them. We had a lot of fun picturing their reactions to all the modern technological advances that we take for granted. We live in a world where we are pretty close to the equivalent of waving a wand and almost instantaneously receiving what we want. Of course there's always more that we can't get instantly and thus remains part of the appeal of the magical or miraculous. I just think maybe we've failed to realize that no matter how much more magic we bring into our lives, it will never be the answer to the most important questions.
Of course the ultimate wish is one that can't be conquered by magic, only by miracle: the defeat of death. Yet even this victory, which we all yearn for, would only have meaning in a world where the other problems--finding purpose, peace of mind, and happy, loving relationships were resolved. Our hope as Christians, is not just in resurrection. It's life restored in a world returned to it's sinless state where selfishness, pride, hate, illness and all the rest no longer have a place. That's the only miracle worth pursuing and no magic trick will get us there.
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