Harry Potter is Jesus - Part 1 (spoiler alert)

Ok, I am one of the ignorant masses that Silas is disappointed in for having not actually read the Harry Potter books. So unfortunately my comment can only extend definitively to the movies, which I have watched. However, it is my assumption that what is true of the movies is only more so and better in the books, for that is the nature of books.

Harry Potter is a phenomenon that has occurred as I have grown up and I have witnessed the back lash and debates regarding witchcraft and wizardry and the appropriate response of a Christian parent to these black magic books, which have bewitched the world... With that being said, I never shared that perspective. A child reading Harry Potter and becoming involved in the occult is as much Harry Potter's fault as someone reading the Bible and becoming a nudist, or attacking animals with a jawbone, trying to walk on water at Niagra Falls, or killing someone because of sexual orientation, or bombing an abortion clinic... damn those last two hit kinda close to home don't they? Maybe we should boycott the Bible? NO! This is the whole point: books and what you read are not responsible for what you do - that's your responsibility. Do they have influence? Yes, but you are in control of that influence as I believe my Bible example highlights. Two people can read the same book and have wildly different reactions and wildly different lives... So what can we conclude? That clearly the book is in no way definitively responsible for a person's actions. Furthermore, of all of the dangers of influence in Harry Potter, my father has concluded that far and away the worst one is that Harry and Ron never really do any homework and don't take school seriously. That's right my dad has read Harry Potter and I haven't.

The reason that I have not read Harry Potter is because I am skeptical of cultural phenomena and don't like getting swept away in hype. The TV series "Lost" is another example of this occurring where I regret not becoming and avid and devoted fan. I was just a touch too old for Harry Potter; it was the book that the kids I was babysitting were reading and dressing up as for Halloween and I wrote it off as a kids book and never really got over that. I knew that people loved the books, including my wife Amy, for whom I bought the sixth or seventh book the day it came out at a 7-11 the summer we started dating. But now having seen the last movie, I get it. Harry Potter is Jesus. The whole series is possibly more Christian than Lord of the Rings. Not only does Harry die a sacrificial death but it is an anticipated and planned sacrificial death. "Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter" Snape says this to Dumbledore in the final film. All one needs to do is change the word pig to lamb and it could be straight out of the Bible. The themes of reconciliation, redemption, self saacrifice and good triumphing over evil are primary themes in the final movie and series as a whole. What we have is not merely a story, and not merely good vs evil but a full blown atonement theory - Christus Victor with a twist...

What do you think? Does Harry Potter offer an alternative perspective on atonement that is compatible with Christianity? What are the key nuances?

Just in case you weren't convinced... Harry Potter - "The boy who lives"... yeah he dies in the last film but he comes back to life too.


Read Harry Potter is Jesus Pt. 2

CYOA - Avoidance - John 20:1-10

John 20 (The Message)
Resurrection!

1-2 Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance. She ran at once to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, breathlessly panting, "They took the Master from the tomb. We don't know where they've put him."

3-10Peter and the other disciple left immediately for the tomb. They ran, neck and neck. The other disciple got to the tomb first, outrunning Peter. Stooping to look in, he saw the pieces of linen cloth lying there, but he didn't go in. Simon Peter arrived after him, entered the tomb, observed the linen cloths lying there, and the kerchief used to cover his head not lying with the linen cloths but separate, neatly folded by itself. Then the other disciple, the one who had gotten there first, went into the tomb, took one look at the evidence, and believed. No one yet knew from the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead. The disciples then went back home.

Last week we all wrote our articles without reading each others'. This week I have read both other articles before writing this. I feel pressure to present a different adventure for you to choose as that is in part the point of this exercise. When I read scripture, I try and ask good or at least useful questions, so I will list my questions:

What is the first day of the week?
Who is the unnamed disciple?
What were the first century rules for moving bodies?
Why does the unnamed disciple not enter immediately but only Simon Peter does?
What did Simon Peter think?
What Scripture is being referred to?
Where is "home"?

Now allow me to leave these questions to you and avoid them entirely. What I want to write about is theology. What happens theologically in the resurrection of Jesus? Obviously this is a huge and defining moment in the Christian faith - perhaps the moment. One thing that occurs is that death is defeated. Where as previously people had been raised from the dead but died later and we have a couple examples of people who didn't die (Enoch and Elijah), Jesus is the only case where death both occurs and is then fully defeated. This is the only story in which death has a say but not the last say; the grave is not the final word; the story doesn't end in the tomb. This is then my understanding of the Christian hope: that the grave is not the end, that God has the last word, and the God's word creates life.

I would now like to draw a connection I was made aware of on our recent trip to Israel. 

Gates of Hell - Caesera Phillipi

Matthew 16:18
I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it 


In this passage Jesus makes this famous declaration. The word for hell is the Greek 'hades' and is the place of the dead, Sheol, or the grave. Therefore, our instructor suggested, a better understanding is to understand Jesus to be declaring victory over death rather than demonic hordes. What is it that the gates of hell do? Well they keep people in of course! Nobody comes back from the dead! Nobody escapes hades! There is no way back after crossing the river Styx! Jesus' church will not be stopped by death but triumph over and beyond it.


It is also interesting to note that the Gates of hell was also a physical place as depicted above and the location of pagan worship including, more specifically, the emperor cult. Therefore, one could also understand this to be a reference to the Roman empire, and the emperor in particular, not prevailing against Jesus building his church (which is certainly true in retrospect). 


In either case, Jesus' resurrection is  the down payment of power, the deposit of new life, the game changer, the final twist, the surprise ending. God's word brings new life, Jesus defeats Empire, Jesus defeats death, defeat is swallowed up in victory... 

I Deny the Resurrection

John 20:1-10

¹ Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. ² So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

³ So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. ⁴ Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵ He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶ Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷ as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. ⁸ Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. ⁹ (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) ¹⁰ Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

Let us cut to the chase. This Choose Your Own Adventure is a check on our orthodoxy. The resurrection passages in the past fifteen years have been the standard to draw the line between the liberal and the “orthodox”, the difference between the Marcus Borg’s vs. the NT Wright’s. So I picked up my Borg book just to stir the pot a little bit. I am not going to tell you Jesus’ body was eaten by rabid dogs (although some believe this). I am not even going to say that I am fully in the “liberal” camp on this one. But before I begin I want to say some things I really like about this passage John 20:1-10.

1) I like that a woman is the first witness, it makes the egalitarian in me grin uncontrollably. 1.1) I like that it is Mary Magdalene, she is a great character and I always enjoy the events that occur when she is around. 2) I like to think John is writing himself into the story without his name, just like earlier where he lays his head on Jesus’ bosom, during the final meal. 3) I like that Peter has a moment of doubt and hesitancy at the entrance, probably because I would have too. 4) I like the self-justification “we really didn’t know…” I think it adds a lot of humanity to the text.

But the question I assume people want answered is: Did it happen historically? I’ll throw my hat in with Wright and say it did, because I think it shows a continued investment on God’s part into the tangible physical world. But I’ll also throw my hat in with Borg that there are many ways to understand this text. One of which is reading it as a truthful parable; and a really good understanding of this a parable, as he may argue, would bring about the same conclusions about God as a historical, God acting in time, reading and interpretation of this text. (I know I may get flack for saying that but I think our conceptions of truth are often too small). However one perceives this text, specifically the mystery surrounding death and resurrection, possibly the only certainty is that of uncertainty. Therefore, I agree with Borg when he states that epistemological humility and ontological humility are called for.

History or Parable? It is an age old question…well at least I think so. I think back to the time of allegory (which served the church quite well and ought not to be made light of too quickly), therefore parable may be the next in a long line of ever-wrong interpretive methods. As wrong as it might be, there are benefits to parable as it reveals dimensions of a text not comprehended previously, this works for the book of Jonah, the creation accounts, and even the exodus. Thus, if I read all of those as parable/story/truthful myth then an examination of the resurrection as such may be a beneficial perspective I have yet to examine.

So as much as I believe Jesus as a human individual in time and space did rise from the dead, I do not believe this because of a literal reading of the text. I am not a Biblical literalist by any means, I think reading the Bible literally is flat, uninspired and creates mindless “yes men” Christians, something I think God would despair over, having chosen from the beginning to give us free choice and intellect to think through choices. So I am not going to say that you must read a passage, such as this one, as literal history in order to be a Christian. I refuse to be pinned down in literalism because it is in that strain of literalism that one runs into CS Lewis thinking of “EITHER Jesus was who he said he was OR he was a lunatic”. I think once you are here you are stuck, you have laid all your cards on the table, not resting on what the bible says, in full commitment to ones cognitive constructed framework. One is then stuck in a thought framework because “The persuasiveness of this statement depends upon a literal-factual reading of the gospels. Its logic works only within this framework” (Borg’s book “Jesus” p 19). Thus you rest your entire belief on your individual cognitive makeup, which is almost certainly wrong (see “I am wrong” blog). Thus having stated my refusal to be pinned down into a specific mode of thought and regarding literalism as uninspired and highly unimaginative, I refuse to set up camp as a literalist. So where does that then land me if I am not picking either camp to sit in permanently?

I think it lands me in the best possible spot. I end up asking what is the entire point of landing in either camp? To put oneself against another who is in the opposing camp? Hopefully not! It is at this point that part of the pragmatic in me screams that I have reached a point where it is all conjecture (I don’t really believe it is all speculation I think the dialogue over biblical interpretation in valid, but there are other/better questions to be asked). I think one of these better questions is: What does it mean to believe the resurrection? As it relates to “do you truly believe the resurrection”.

For my answer to this question I am going to defer to someone who I think has said it well. Peter Rollins, who may say “I deny the resurrection all the time”.

Belief truly needs to be more than mental assent (to parable or literal interpretations) and I think he captures it. So my final reflection on John 20:1-10 is that recently I find myself denying the resurrection quite often, but I hardly think I am alone in doing so (my own little justification just like verse 9) .

The Immanent Zombie Invasion

Over the past two day, I have had two deadly serious conversations about what to do in the event of zombies. You laugh, but you are wrong. Laughing is not will you do when you are confronted with zombies. If a zombie attack is broadcast on the radio, not on the Fox but on CKNW, you will be tempted to run, you will jump in your car and head for the free way. But where are you going? You don't know anything. you are not prepared and traffic jams are just zombie armies waiting to happen. No, a boat or a bunker is the way to go and you want to avoid crowds.


Do zombies change your theology? How do zombies fit into morality? I think if I experience zombies I will stop believing in God not quote Ezekiel 37 and be jubilant about immanent rapture. How about everyone else? Are you prepared to kill zombies? What if they are rage/vampire zombies like in "I am Legend" i.e. they are just "sick"? Will you still believe in God when zombies walk the earth?


Note: Resurrection is not the equivalent of flesh eating zombies.


Thanks Noah for working through these important issues with me.