Harry Potter Hermeneutics

I have been thinking about Harry Potter and the Bible, the intersection, and their likeness (there is a full blown Christian atonement theory presented in the last book and movie, and I am really hoping Duncan jumps on that and blogs it, because he was all excited at the end of the movie Friday night). I also would like to throw a few thoughts at the conversation happening between these books/movies, our culture, and the Bible. My generation, in particular, has been defined by this series (although I continue to find people who have never actually read the books). But no matter how ignorant people are, the culture around them has been shaped by the series and the collective memory/identity/self-understanding of the global west has been changed forever. One can no longer go through life without some working knowledge of Harry Potter. Everyone knows, at least, that he is a wizard in some books or movies. We as a society have been marked by this phenomenon and there is not really a way to detach from it, so we might as well engage it to find out what can be learn, glean, and perceive from this epic narrative.

Friday marked the end of an era for me. It all began when I first read Prisoner of Azkaban on a plane to England in early August 2000... It was my first Harry Potter book, bought by my mother for the plane ride - at this point in my life I had given up reading and this was one of my mother's attempts to get me to read something worthwhile... or really anything. It worked. I remember being confused by the book, and it was only a short while later that I acquired books one and two and then things began to make sense. Soon after book four came out, I was also in possession of it. The year I lived in England I read and re-read those books. It came to be that these were the only books I read from the age of 12, when I started, until 18, when I entered university. Harry was an absolute obsession, such that, for the final three books of the series, I would read them as soon as they came out. I didn't just read them, I locked myself in my house and read the newly released book between Friday at midnight, when they were released, and church on Sunday morning. This way, no one could ruin them for me by telling me a spoiler (it was a system I was forced into after a most unfortunate incident involving a little asian boy telling me Sirius dies at the end of book five before I had reached that part). But beyond my own obsession, these books shaped how I think, and I do not doubt that they did the same for others.

After seeing the movie on Friday, I stood around with friends. We hashed over the best parts and the differences from the book. As I stood there silently listening, I realized that some major part of my life was finally done. There was a feeling of loss as well as a feeling of completion, an altogether unique sensation, despite having just graduated from college. I had poured into my obsession over the past six weeks since finishing school. I read all of Harry Potter again, finishing with a full day of book 7 on Friday as preparation for the movie. It was with this final surge of enjoyment in reading Harry Potter that I realized how much of myself I had put into this series. So when my friend Caitlin said that Harry, Ron, and Hermione were Patron Saints of our generation, I found myself in full agreement. Those three have taught me a lot about friendship, struggling to do right in a world where all options appear to be tainted with evil, and learning to journey together (lessons that in Christianeese we might call 'discipleship'). Given the ambiguity of history, personhood, existence, and identity, one often falls back on relationship as the common denominator used to define ones existence. This being so, if time spent giving and being given into determines a relationship I would definitely say I have a relationship with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. That being said, they are as much saints to me as any saint I know. They have taught me ways to think and perceive my existence.

Re-reading the series after graduating from Bible College I realized how many of the skills that were useful for me in Biblical studies... I learned from Harry Potter. One of these was the needing to know the beginning to understand the end; I think back to being confused about book three until I read books one and two. In my more recent reading, this became evident in the many conversations with Albus in the books, as they require a keen memory of earlier material for comprehension. Or things such as the Findelius Charm, which once explained ought to be retained in ones memory for a successful reading of the rest of the series. I find this the same skills needed to read texts like Revelation, which utilize the morning star out of the Pentatuch, lamps and oil from Zachariah, and seven spirits out of Isaiah.

But that is, perhaps, simple to see: remember the past to understand the future. However, I think there are more complex concepts articulated in Harry Potter that have also served me well as I ponder my existence. For example: the discussion between Albus and Harry at the end of book 6, where they discuss prophecy and how to understand it as being foretold, but not negating error, and also existing within the realm of the predetermined yet not negating free choice. Or things such as: the existence of evil, which caused me to posses an openess to broader perspectives of evil than Sunday school answers of humanity born into original sin, such as evil also being choice in congruency with its ever-present reality.

Finally, Harry Potter helped me become a sceptic, in the best sense of the word. I can no longer read a narrative and assume that the perspective of the protagonist is always correct or even that the narrator is always truthful (much to one of my Bible professors dismay during a conversation about narrative criticism. Harry is sometimes mistaken (although usually right) and his actions, therefore, cannot be taken as prescriptive. Thus, one reads sceptically, knowing that the way presented is not always the correct or right way. The narrator lies, as Snape is ever an enigma, good? bad? good again? resulting in ambiguity around the "correctness" of the narrator. It is these skeptical tendencies that have brought me to find some of my most significant insights into the Biblical text. Therefore, for me, I read Harry Potter as if the Bible depends on it. I make no excuses for my methods or the approaches that Saint Harry, Saint Ron, and the Holy Hermione Granger have taught me.