Harry Potter: A Parable of Good and Evil

When I read the end of the final book in the Harry Potter series, I saw right away that Harry was a type of Christ.  I thought I might be seeing something that was never intended by the author, making it even more fantastic, or something that she had intended all along.  If it was something she meant to portray, I reasoned, there must be other things in the series that would fit into the comparison.  After much pondering, I find that I see even more in this grand parable than I did initially.   (It’s more apparent in the books than the movies.)

The community of witches and wizards represents those in the world who are aware of the true God and His powers and His influence in this world, that He created it and continues to watch over it and that He guides us in all we do.  You might say they are the House of Israel, or the kingdom of God on earth, and the Muggles are the Gentiles.  Now among those who know of God and His power there have always been those who have turned away from Him and sought to live according to their own desires, relying on their own strengths and knowledge, not seeking to know or to do the will of the Lord.  They begin to believe they don’t need Him and they move away from the light until they are living in darkness.  Gentiles can find their way to the Lord and accept Him into their lives and rely on His power to get them through life.  They are those in the community who were born to Muggles but find they have special powers.  They are not relying on the arm of flesh but the arm of God to protect, guide and eventually save them, and so they are adopted into the world of special powers.

There you have the premise of the entire series.  The battle for good and evil is not among all who live on the Earth but among those who know that there is something more than what we can see and hear on this plane we exist on, those who have either been born into or who have joined themselves to the kingdom of God, and those who seek to destroy the kingdom of God, knowing that it exists because they were at one time a part of it.  The others on Earth just get pulled into the battle unknowingly, thinking they are fighting for some other reason.

I know there are Christians who believe these books are evil, and I know where they get that from:  the condemnation of witches, wizards and sorcery that you find in the Old Testament.  I submit that the problem here lies with the author choosing to call them witches and wizards, but because of our language and our stories and so on, those were the words that worked to explain their powers.  Really, these powers represent the power of the priesthood, the powers that are used with authority to do God’s will on Earth.  If they had been called priests and priestesses and had attended Hogwarts School of the Priesthood, the confusion might be dimmed but probably not done away with completely.  Children who have the inclination to turn to the Spirit for their guide are sent to this school to learn to make the connection, to learn how the Spirit works and how to use it throughout their lives as a protection and a guide as they face the rest of their lives.  They learn of the power, how it works and how it is to be used.  They also learn that it has been perverted by some who seek not to do God’s will but their own.  They learn of the false prophets, so to speak, who misuse the power, therefore losing their right and authority to use it, and then receive a dark, evil counterfeit of the power that causes misery and destruction, not just in the kingdom but also in the rest of the world among those who are not a part of this inner community.  But the majority of the evil, the worst of the problems do occur in the community of those who know of and recognize power outside themselves. 

As for Harry, he believes he is nothing special at first, just a regular boy growing up in a family that he does not really belong to, one where he does not fit in, is not understood and is not appreciated.  When he is about to reach the age of one who can receive the priesthood, he begins to learn who he is and what he can do.  He learns little by little, you might say line upon line, precept upon precept, that he is different, that he does have special powers, that he has an important role to play in this battle between good and evil and that there are things that he must do, that no one else is capable of doing.  Even at a very young age, he is the one who is doing God’s work, fighting evil, while those in the kingdom who are older and should be wiser seem to be going about oblivious to the great danger of the Evil One trying to get the power over death – which by the way is the power that is reserved only for the Lord, the one that Harry will eventually have in this parable.  Those older and wiser ones actually have put some protections in place but know they will not always be enough.  Harry must provide that extra protection by stepping in and being the final line of defense, just as we need the Lord to be our defense against Satan.  We cannot do it alone, no matter how hard we might try to rely on willpower to resist temptation.  He can get through our defenses but not that of our God.

I skip ahead now to the climax of the whole story, which was the most amazing part of this parable to me.  Harry must face Voldemort alone.  He must willingly die so that those who are fighting on his side will not all be destroyed.  He, however, has the power over death because he is in control of all three of the Deathly Hallows.  He allows himself to be killed, and then he comes back to life.  He is resurrected per se.  He is then invincible.  He has died for those who are on his side.  He has paid the price so that they might all live.  He has given them the power now to overcome evil.  The book tells us that from that point on, Voldemort’s followers could no longer do harm to those they fought.  The dark ones begin to fall quickly.  Harry is able to defeat Voldemort because he has taken all his power from him.  This is what Jesus will do when He comes again.  He will take away all the power that Satan has been allowed to have in this world.  All those who do evil will be destroyed.  Only the good will remain. 

Jesus has already defeated Satan.  He has already overcome death and sin and stands ready to extend blessings to each of us as we choose His side.  As I said earlier, the real fight between good and evil is going on among those who recognize there is something other than just what we can see and hear on this plane.  We are sometimes distracted by what unbelievers are doing and think that is where the battle lies.  The real battle is among those who are spiritually led by the light and those who are spiritually led by the dark.  There is crossover all the time.  Light can be dimmed and diminished.  Dark can be dispelled.  Never think you have it made because of where you are right now.  We must make sure that we endure to the end. 

Anyone feeling evil when reading any book or watching any movie or doing any activity, should stop and remove themselves from the situation.  There is evil in these books, the dark wizards.  Here is what Isaiah says about them. 

Isaiah 8:19-22

19¶And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have ^afamiliar spirits, and unto ^bwizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? ^cfor the living to the dead?

20 To the ^alaw and to the testimony: if ^bthey speak not according to this word, it is because there is no ^clight in them.

21And ^athey shall pass through it, hardly bestead and hungry: and it shall come to pass, that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and ^bcurse their king and their God, and look upward.

22And they shall look unto the earth; and behold trouble and ^adarkness, ^bdimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness.

The dark wizards have no light in them because they think they are better than everyone else because they are “pure blood” wizards.  They place themselves higher than God, thinking their powers make them special.  They are the ones looking to themselves and those like them to give them all they need, cursing their king and their God, looking to the earth instead of to heaven and all they see is darkness and dimness of anguish.

There is also great good in these books.  There are those who have powers, who are called witches and wizards, who do not rely on themselves as they should rely on God.

Isaiah 47:12-14

12 Stand now with thine enchantments, and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to profit, if so be thou mayest prevail.

13 Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the ^aastrologers, the stargazers, the ^bmonthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.

14 Behold, they shall be as ^astubble; the fire shall burn them; they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame: there shall not be a coal to warm at, nor fire to sit before it.

Those fighting against Voldemort are doing what they can, but they realize enchantments and sorceries cannot prevail.  They know they cannot deliver themselves.  They are relying on Harry to save them.  They have been told he is their best hope.  They are fighting to give him time to do what he has to do.  Harry, as Christ in this parable, is the one who can and will deliver.

 This is all I will cover because of length.  I will also say that all this is my opinion, what I have seen in reading and re-reading these books and watching the movies.  I love the books.  I abhor evil.  I try to live always in the light.  

What is food in God's plan?

What we focus on becomes our reality.  Our thoughts and attitudes shape our days, and our desires determine the direction of our lives.  Some might think this is just the positive thinking that has been stressed by self-help gurus, but there is scriptural support for this method of seeking change. 

“…I know that he granteth unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or unto life; yea I know that he allotteth unto men, yea decreeth unto them decrees which are unalterable according to their wills…” (Alma 29:4)
“Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.  Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.” (Psalm 37:4-5)

I suggest that if this is true, if our thoughts determine our reality, and I believe they do, then it is our attitude about the food we eat that makes us fat.  This is popularly termed emotional eating.  As I’ve studied how this applies to me, I have come to some conclusions that go beyond, “I eat too much because I’m eating for emotional reasons instead of only eating when I’m hungry.”  I can’t possibly put everything I’ve learned in one essay, so this is the first of many, and where I need to start is with examining what is food anyway.

I have felt that food was my enemy.  It hounds me, controls me, makes me miserable, even while promising to make me happy.  So it betrays me, lies to me, misleads me.  It’s been a long time since it actually made me happy or lived in the positive part of my thoughts.  No wonder it’s a problem. 

Food is one of the few things we absolutely must have to stay alive.  Our bodies were made to depend upon food as a source of energy and nourishment.  To have optimum health and function properly, our bodies need quite an array of vitamins and nutrients.  God made our food sources such that we have to eat a variety of foods to get what we require. 

In Genesis 1:29, God said, “I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” 

In Genesis 2:16-17, he said, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest there of thou shalt surely die.” 

But that didn’t stop us.  Satan came with his lies, contradicting God’s warning, and he made the tree look good.  He got Eve to desire it.  And she ate and got her husband to eat, and the first confession of sin or transgression was “I did eat.” (Genesis 3:13)  And so it began.  Eating something that was not to be eaten was the first temptation Satan used against us.  It was very successful.  Is it any wonder he has continued to employ such a useful tool?

Heavenly Father, however, never meant for food or eating to be bad for us.  It was always His plan that we would have to eat consistently to live.  In fact, he said, “Thou mayest freely eat.” (Genesis 2:17)  In Moses, we learn a little more about the restriction he placed on that one tree.  “…nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself…” (Moses 3:17) and the warning was given that there would be consequences for making that choice. 

God’s lesson on food continues when he chastises Adam and Eve for eating of the forbidden tree.  “…in sorrow shalt thou eat of [the cursed ground] all the days of thy life…in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.”  (Genesis 3:17, 19)  So we went from, “Here’s a great and beautiful variety from which you can eat freely,” to “You’re going to have to work hard so you can eat to stay alive.”  We have to do it, but it’s going to be a chore and really our life’s work to get the bread we need to stay alive. 

Food is not only a necessity; it’s a powerful tool for good as well as evil.  It does keep us alive, and God has given us a huge variety of food to choose from.  He provides for us and uses food to remind us of our blessings.  Food is good.  It’s wonderful.  We should enjoy it, and we should be grateful for it.  We should be grateful for the part it plays in God’s plan for us — making sure we always have to do something to stay alive, something that can be pleasurable or not, something that can demonstrate blessings or not.  

When the Israelites left Egypt and went off in search of the Promised Land, they were told it was a land of milk and honey, “a land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of oil olive and honey…” (Deuteronomy 8:8), where they could eat without scarceness and lack nothing, and “when thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.”  (Deuteronomy 8:10).

Before the Israelites reached the Promised Land, however, they spent 40 years wandering in the desert, and they ate manna (meaning what is it).  It was miraculously provided for them for 40 years.  They did have to work for it.  They had to gather it — it was tiny — and they had to prepare it.  But they never lacked, and it tasted like wafers made with honey — not bad.  Manna was a representation of Jesus Christ (bread from heaven).  It was something given to sustain when taken internally.  It was freely given by the Father.  There was always enough, and they were warned not to take more than they needed.  They needed to use it correctly and be grateful for it. 

Food was never meant to be bad or a burden, even though we have to work for it.  Satan has taken a great gift from God and turned it against us.  He uses it to keep us away from Heavenly Father.   He makes of it a distraction, a weapon, a false god even.  It’s all in our attitude — how we think of food.  It is either something Satan uses against us, or it is something Heavenly Father blesses us with.  The decision is ours.

Why do we bless our food?  Is it to make it safe?  If that were the case, we wouldn’t be careful to not eat food that has spoiled or for some other reason would make us sick.  Is it to make it taste good?  We choose to eat what we already believe tastes good.  We should in the blessing give thanks for the food we are about to eat, but what is the blessing?  What we have a habit of saying is that it nourish and strengthen our bodies.  Some mock saying that kind of a prayer over something known to not be nutritious, such as donuts or cake and ice cream.  Maybe we should not mock that.  Maybe we should have the attitude that God is all-powerful and can do whatever he wants to do, include bless any food to nourish and strengthen our bodies.  If we truly believe what we are about to eat is not good for our bodies, maybe we shouldn’t eat it.  Remember, our attitude about food is what makes us fat.  That doesn’t mean that we should eat all kinds of junk and expect that our prayer will make it healthy for us and there will be no consequences. 

In future writings, I will address how the right attitude about food will actually change what we want to eat and therefore lead us to make healthier choices, but for now, I think we should adopt the attitude that what we eat is going to be good for us, because we want to create that positive relationship with food.  We want to create that reality for ourselves.  God blessed the tiny flakes the Israelites referred to as manna so that it nourished and strengthened their bodies every day for 40 years.  He did not have to give them a variety of fruits and vegetables and whole grains.  He blessed what he gave them. 

We need to realize that the diets based on today’s scientific facts, which will most likely change again at some point in our lifetime, just as they already have many times in mine, are not necessarily what we need to have a good, healthy, happy, blessed relationship with food.  The desire for that kind of relationship with food can make it so.  We have to follow God’s laws and act in faith, and he will bless us according to our desires and his will.  We must truly come to believe that food is not our enemy.  We can enjoy it.  We can be free from obsessive thoughts about food.  We can eat and be healthy.  We can eat and be a healthy size and shape.  We can let go of the need to eat too much and be happy with just enough.  Eating can and should be a spiritual experience.  Desire it, pray for it, have faith, and it will be so.