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.