I can't believe the fires raging in Southern California. I've been watching the news coverage since last Sunday, hoping (and praying) the winds would die down. My family and friends are scattered around Orange and Riverside Counties, so it's been hard not to worry about them. My brother, Bryan, sent me some pictures taken from the roof of his building, so I'll be posting those tomorrow. To everyone with family and/or friends involved in this right now, you are in our prayers.
I'm taking some heat (no pun intended) for my stand on Harry Potter--I guess some people don't like to be told that Witchcraft isn't biblical. Hard to believe, but there you have it. Some people commented that I shouldn't quote one Bible verse as doctrine, but I beg to differ. When that verse is supported by every other verse on that topic, you're safe quoting one verse. By the way, there is one particular verse I would gladly quote as doctrine every day for the rest of my life: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).
I didn't write my article on Harry Potter to make people angry, but it doesn't bother me one bit that it did; it's funny how anger seems to spark the thought process, and people start putting two and two together instead of letting others add it up for them.
One more criticism leveled against me is that I slam Harry Potter and give Narnia and the Wizard of Oz a free pass. This kind of response comes from someone who isn't thinking (as my father always used to say). First, C. S. Lewis characterized the White Witch as evil. Second, the Narnia tales are not centered around Witchcraft, raising the dead, reading tea leaves, talking to the dead, spells, wands and other assorted paraphernalia of the occult. Sorry, they're not. Lewis uses mythological creatures to a certain extent, but it would be a stretch to link them to the occult; the best you could do would be to say they are pagan.
As to the Wizard of Oz, Frank Baum's portrayal of Witchcraft is mixed: both bad and good. Spells are used once or twice, and the Wicked Witch of the West rides a broomstick. But the great Wizard of Oz himself turns out to be nothing more than a stranded actor--and in the end, the entire story is a dream. The plot does not center on Witchcraft or promote the teaching of Witchcraft . . . unlike Harry Potter whose sole theme is learning and practicing sorcery as a way of life.
No comparison.
Incidentally, since when is it against biblical doctrine to use our imaginations? Why can't we use fantasy literature to emphasize the awesome power of God and its triumph over everything dark and occultic? I tried to do this in my youth book, Jack Star and the Secret Door (we're releasing it once again in the next few months). I loved using my imagination to further the Kingdom of God, and I hope most people will see it that way.
Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Fantasy can be a powerful tool if used correctly. Unfortunately, Jo Rowling used it to further Witchcraft and Gay Rights . . . sad and infuriating, but true. It's time for the Church to hop off the fence and acknowledge Harry Potter for what it is: a tool of the occult.
(If you're interested in reading my complete article on Harry Potter it's available on Christian Worldview Network:
http://www.christianworldviewnetwork.com/article.php/2619/Jill_Martin_Rische My blog entry a few days ago was a shortened version of it.)
3 Comments:
Well said.
One of the benefits of obeying God and not going down the paths he warned against is not having to face gray area debates and no-win choices.
Even if man were not as spiritually inept at discernment as he is, he is easily desensitized. The over used but well depicted frog in a kettle of boiling water analogy is the epitome of man in spiritual warfare.
God calls man sheep in the Bible because we are easily led astray. And we often run from the shepherd dispatched to rescue us. In this case that would be you trying to warn people about Harry Potter or at least say that it is what it is).
And if we all would have just left alone the things which now ensnare us, the anti-God mindset would not be so prevalent a thing in the world today (which the Church has had to bow to for years now or throw it a bone).
I think of the 401 C. 3 tax-exempt status which is nothing less than a muzzle on the Church of Jesus Christ. Congregations (or more accurately church boards) in fear of losing that tax exempt status have refrained from moral teaching and pointing out which political candidates are anti-God by even their past voting records.
In Canada, pastors who defame homosexuality in anyway go to prison and this is coming to a neighborhood church near you in America. Then it will be the Mormons, then the JWs and the fanatics of Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek (which I myself am rethinking my dedication to).
All a great amalgam of needless no-win situations and believers being forced to face the reality that they must chose ye this day whom ye will serve...
Joshua 24:15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.
In later times the children of Israel took foreign wives and had children by them. And it became necessary to mandate they be put away in order to serve the Lord...
the point being it is better not to have sinned than to have sinned and to have put the Lord and ourselves through hell (to deal with or absolve the situation we place ourselves and him {as his people} in).
I guess I do not understand the great connection between the Harry Potter books and Satan. Maybe I've missed something. The world of Harry Potter uses wands and reading tea leaves and potions. But what do these devices of the imagination have to do with the demonic?
I mean, really, a magic wand. It's a piece of wood. In the fantasy realm of books or movies, does this piece of wood, or the tea leaves, or a mixture of made up chemicals even begin to scratch the surface of who Satan is, how he exists, what he truly, and how he interacts with man? Harry Potter is nothing compared with the reality of evil that is Satan. Satan, who is the embodiment, if you will, of such hatred, malice, wickedness, and everything anti-God, that the human mind cannot even begin to fully understand it.
Maybe I don't have a good understanding of the occult. But I liken this to the reaction of The Davinci Code movie. That I also did not understand. It was a fictional movie based on a fictional book. Fiction: having nothing to do with reality. Why the big fuss?
Also, in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Aslan Himself was resurrected by "magic". The "magic" that existed even before that world was created. The children got into Narnia by a "magic" wardrobe. Where do we draw the line? Is all reference to "magic" evil, or not?
You haven't mentioned Tolkien's Lord of the Ring's epics. Here there were "wizards", both good and evil. What made them good or bad was not their "magic", but choices and the decisions they made, their character, what they did with their magic.
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