Harry Potter and the Scriptures: Questions worth pondering

The Harry Potter craze is in full gear, for sure.
Never read a Potter book and don't plan to.
But I find the Pottermania phenomenon to be interesting and telling.

Personally, I don't understand how thousands of people could be waiting outside bookstores at midnight to purchase and then read this book. (I'm not judging - we have a few friends who locked themselves away for two days to read the book - I'm just having a hard time understanding it, that's all). And I'm not going to get into a theological debate here over whether Christians should read Harry Potter or not.

My point is this: I find it fascinating that someone can write seven books - big, thick, verbose books - that kids will not only read, but count down the days until it arrives on the shelves. Regardless of what you think about the books you have to admit: that's some literary skill right there, Ms. Rowling.

Here's the first part of an article I read this week in Entertainment Weekly, written by Tina Jordan called 'Potter Gold' about the whole shebang:

"Last Saturday dawned cool and gold in New York, a perfect summer day. Since my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows hadn't come, I swiped my daughter's - but I couldn't seem to open it. After waiting so many years, I held it in my hands with trepidation, knowing that though I might go back to it countless times, nothing would match this first reading. And so I settled into a cozy chair, cup of coffee steaming beside me, and turned to the first page. As the hours passed, the coffee sat untouched..."

It seems that everywhere I look people are talking about it or reading about it quietly.
It seems that more people are reading Harry Potter these days than the Bible.

What I have been wondering this week is if the narrative of Scripture could ever be as mesmerizing and breathtaking and captivating for the entire world as Potter is right now. What if the Bible could be embraced with such passion, such commitment, such devotion as this journalist - and the millions of people around the world?

Unrealistic or crazy?
I don't know...but just imagine if we had that passion for the Story, the narrative of God and Man.  What would it take for us to be gripped by the Old Testament rather than bored by its laws or riveted by Paul's passion rather than pick it apart and treat it like a textbook? How different would our lives be if we had that consuming passion and preoccupation for the very words of God?

Comments

[Stan]

Before I finished reading the post to the end, I was reminded of a story a girl from our C Group told us about smuggling Bibles into a country where they were forbidden. She told us about her fear while waiting in line at a security point and how the people in this country were yearning for the Word.
At C group this week we discussed persecution and the persecuted church and wrote letters of encouragement to those imprisoned for their faith. While I was writing with a friend, we commented about how sad it was that the woman in the Chinese prison we were writing to surely did not have a Bible. We included in our letter encouraging and comforting Words of scripture so that in condensed form she could have God’s Word with her.
Maybe we are just too spoiled. It makes me wonder if we really should suffer more persecution so that we would not take our salvation so much for granted. Yes, wouldn’t it be great if we could have the passion for the Bible and for Christ that these people have for Harry Potter.

[Woody]

interesting blog, i am a fiction reader, i love it, i eat it up, i have yet to read the Harry Potter books but will in due time. I do think Modern criticism has taken the majesty and the excitement out of the Bible, to me it seems to have lost it's Wow factor. instead of embracing the story we try to narrow it down to 3 points we can live apply to our lives, we call it exegesis. I think if the bible were presented in a fresh way as a story in chronological order maybe rewritten from a new perspective (now i know some of you are calling me a heretic, but hear me out) with an emphasis on literary readability. It would be a difficult and daunting task and i dont know that you could call it the Bible, but maybe the story of the bible. No coss referncing, no footnotes, not study notes, just a story you read from start to finish that shows how God created the earth, set apart a people, redeemed His people and sent His message to the world, and how He is going to finally redeem the whole world, and how the story continues with us.

[Lesley Johnson]

hmmm, I guess I am a nerd, but I can honestly say that I get excited and look forward to reading the Bible. Some days it does feel like a task and some things are hard for me to read because I don't understand it, but there is nothing in my short walk as a Christian that has brought me closer to God then reading the letters He wrote for me. I think it does have a lot to do with how we look at the Bible "it's a bunch of stuff that happened years ago full of things that aren't relevant for this day, and tells me all the things I can't do, it doesn't really apply to me." But, thats not it at all. God wrote it for us not because He wants to make mega bucks, but because He does love us and He wants us to know He is real. There could be thousands of different Harry Potter books written, but they will never compete with the Bible in that it is the only book that lives and speaks truth and whose author truly loves and cares about the people He wrote it for.

[Ashley]

Lesley, you keep taking the thoughts right out of my head and writing them down:) I love it!

[bobtflyer]

Woody,
Check out Books of the Bible, International Bible Society. Aug 2007. Just what you described.