Harry Potter’s occultish darkness

Harry Potter is incredibly demonic in its detail, as US author Richard Abanes has written about.  (I am very keen to get a copy of his book Harry Potter and the Bible:  The Menace Behind the Magick.  I read an article recently named ‘Voldemort and Lightening (very, very frightening)’ in an Australian Christian newsletter.  I take it that the title is a play on a line from Queen’s song Bohemian Rhapsody.  The conclusion of the author of the article, Scott Monk, a pre-published author, is that people who consider the Potter series to be demonic are nutcases: he never states it outright, but the title of the article implies it. In the article, when he summarises Abane’s very helpful points on why the Potter series is dangerous he throws at Abanes a rather crudely worded attack, “Many young – and indeed adult- Christian fans may be left a little uneasy by [Abanes' claims].  So should they be worried, considering that witches are also found in Macbeth, Hensel and Gretel, and Roald Dahl’s The Witches?  Are they in danger of running down to a Miss Shop to buy robes or planting whomping willows in front of their yards to keep away the Jehovah’s Witness?”  The first question that he poses is a good one: why are so many books in our world containing witchcraft, especially many of the stories for toddlers?  Yet for a published author like Monk to be grossly caricaturing someone whom he may disagree with is intellectual sloppiness, not to mention over-exaggerating and downright smarmy.  It also displays his own inability to deal with the points that Abanes has raised about Potter:  rather than dealing with Abanes’ points, Monk wants to score cheap points and to tear down a brother in Christ rather than grapple with the issues of occultism.  It seems like Monk is on a moral high-horse to prove how ‘enlightened’ he is compared to someone who is genuinely concerned about the impact of the occult on young minds.

But Monk is also assuming that occultish behaviour is overt.  In many many ways, it isn’t.  Occultish behaviour is often covert and the New Age movement is a proof of it. Witchcraft can manifest itself in very unseen, intangible ways because it is spiritual, and I find it extremely concerning that so many Christians are approving of it and saying it’s innocuous, even Bible college professors like Peter Bolt, who was quoted in this piece.  A further proof of this in the article is the quote that he gave of Rowling purporting to go to church and living an ‘intensely spiritual life … even though I don’t have a terribly clear and structured idea about it”.  So her views are not informed by Scripture and the ‘spiritual’ life seems to be disconnected from anything explicitly Christian.  So the fact that she goes to church and is ‘spiritual’ in the end means precious little: lots of nominal Christians go to church and are unsaved, unredeemed, and just as pagan as everybody else.  Rowling has made it clear and explicit that one doesn’t need Jesus to live an acceptable life.  And yet people are passing off her ideas in Potter as Christian.  Hmm.

Monk’s article shows a shocking inconsistency in one of the authority figures that he quoted, Dr. Andrew Shead.  Monk wrote, “Like many Christian parents, Dr. Andrew Shead has been more vigilant with the [Potter] films, which he likens to a ‘frog in boiling water’ with its increasingly dark scenes“.  In the very next sentence, however, Shead is quoted as saying, “The issues I found in Harry Potter weren’t related to witchcraft or the occult”.  Huh?!  If that’s true, then why on earth is he vigilant with the films and worried about frogs in water?  He’s worried about dark scenes but thinks they’re not occultish?  Am I missing something here?  But the plot thickens later in Monk’s article where Shead admits to reading to his children Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond!  So someone here is clearly concerned about exposing his kids to witchcraft, but then reads to them a book explicitly about a witch.  Perhaps it proves a point that even people with PhDs can miss the point of what’s really going on around them and can even get some basic fundamentals wrong.  But it’s also a very disturbing trend to see, as witchcraft is not only alive and kicking, but being given endoresement by clergy and academics.  Caveat emptor, indeed.