Harry Potter and the
Hunger for God
2 May 2003
For years, my
daughter resisted Harry Potter. She read other books, but she was not
interested in those. So I have maintained a respectful distance from the
controversy over Harry Potter among Christian parents. Until now, that is. Last
weekend
From watching
two films, which my teenage critics assure me are very close to the books, I
judge that Harry Potter is not harmful, although it is not as healthful fare as
Tolkien or Lewis. I would put it on a par with Star Wars, which I know
something about, as that is another passion of
Harry Potter
operates in a world without God, but not without moral content. The Gnostic
dualism of Harry Potter or Star Wars is inadequate, but preferable to
the amoral monism of much so-called serious literature or popular culture. Young
people are drawn to stories about good and evil, indeed can become deeply
involved in them, because of the natural inclination of conscience implanted in
the human heart by God, though obscured and corrupted by sin. You have to be
carefully taught by years of secularist education to learn the cynical lesson
that good and evil are illusions and free will a fantasy. Surely it would be
better to build on this natural conscience by adding to it the revealed truths
of God, but to do that we need more really good Christian writers.
Unfortunately, since Tolkien, there really has been no one who can write so
well and so lift the soul and the imagination. Most of the attempts in this
direction that I have read are both transparently didactic and poorly written.
It may be
that, since a literature cannot exist outside of a culture, the poison of our
age has made it impossible to grow any knd of decent literature. Certainly it
is difficult, if not outright impossible, to frame prose of true eloquence and
beauty in the language of political correctness. Neutering does to language
what it does to cats and cattle: makes it safe, uninteresting, and completely
infertile.
It may be
that Harry Potter is the best we can do in this debased age; and it is worth
noting that the magical world in which Harry moves is characterized by
deliberate archaism, even to the use of quill pens and inkwells. The Star
Wars universe contains a technology very much like magic, and much of the
dress and even social structure is more typical of traditional than of
technological society. To be modern is to be ambiguous and ironic; to find
clarity and glory, "trouth and honour, fredome and courtesye," we
must look to some version of an idealized past. As Christians we know that it
is a past in need of conversion, but it is fertile, even pregnant, creation
that "groans with eager longing" for revelation, not the sterilized
post-Christian world that crushes not only the divine but also the human
spirit. Harry Potter's swinish "muggle" relatives live in a
post-Christian world; Harry escapes to a pre-Christian world of opposed powers
where personal choices still have meaning.
Similarly the
world of Star Wars lacks revelation, but, perhaps in spite of its
creators, longs for it. In the original film (A New Hope) Obi-Wan calls
the Force "an energy field," that is, an impersonal medium, but in The
Phantom Menace, his colleagues speak of "the will of the Force"
as if the Force were some sort of personal being. Even the mighty machine of
George Lucas can't hide the desire of the human heart for God that stirs along
with the desire for good, for truth, for meaning. The child who reads Harry
Potter and escapes into the dualistic world of magic may yet be educated back
into monism; but if it is not the end of the road, it may be a step in the
right direction, that is, backwards.