Harry Potter is Jesus - Part 2

OK, the other part of the movie that was amazing to me was Harry's conversation with Dumbledore, while dead or "dead" or whatever. Dumbledore, in an allegorical interpretation of Harry Potter, is clearly God. Brilliantly, Dumbledore also dies a sacrificial death a movie back or so at the hand of the ever enigmatic Judas character of Snape. Snape, who ultimately ends as a sympathetic character, begs us again to ask the age old question of Judas' motives and destiny. When read this way Rowling makes a similar suggestion as weber in the Rock Opera Jesus Christ Superstar, that perhaps if we are going to claim the cross as God's victory that we should consider Judas, who "helped" Jesus get there, as a hero or pawn rather than demonic, traitorous villain. Whether heretical or not, it is not the first time the question has been raised, which means that it has not been satisfactorily answered and should remain on the table. I believe at the root of this question, as with so many others, lies the question of God's sovereignty and human free will and to what degree each extends.


However, I digress, what I want to talk about is the white train station scene in which Dumbledore says:


"Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it."


This is a fascinating quote on a number of levels. First because Harry Potter unlike almost any other fantasy novel, and at the great complaint of my father, depicts magic as the challenge of the correct pronunciation of some rather bad Latin. Now while this is not exclusively true - there is the matter of in-born ability, and apparently the wand lends a hand and at some point, one doesn't necessarily have to use words - however, particularly in the in the beginning of the series there is an emphasis on words. It would seem to me that this final quote then brings to completion a thought that developed early on and is that much better coming from Dumbledore's lips. Words in both the Christian tradition and for better or for worse many others are considered very powerful. In Genesis, God creates the world in a series of magnificent speech acts. Jesus is declared by John's gospel to be the very word of God. The understanding of blessing or cursing occuring in a speech act in either the Old or New Testament world as powerfully affecting reality is lost on us. Nursery rhymes such as "sticks and stone may break my bones but words can never hurt me" have provided an intellectual anaesthetic for our society to the power of words which is only recently wearing off.


Therefore I present that Harry Potter's lesson on the power and significance of words is not only good and of value but reasonably compatible with Christian theology.

Read Harry Potter is Jesus Pt. 1