Harry Potter: Different Definitions of Good

I have a confession to make:

I am a fan of Harry Potter.

Whew. There; I've said it. Now I'll wait for the axe of the modern evangelical christian community to fall.

That was joke. Well, sort of. See, I grew up thinking the Harry Potter books/movies were bad because they blurred the lines between good and evil, thereby presenting a false Gospel. Naturally, I refused to condone such a pagan story, as did the rest of the Christian subculture.

Ten years later ... my college roommates convinced me to watch the first movie. All around, it was pretty good. What do I mean by good? I mean it was well-done, entertaining, and intriguing. Moreover, the story was good. By that I mean it rang true ... as long as one understood the definition of good being used in the story.

The definition of good is really the crux of the issue.

In the movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry has a poignant discusion with his mentor Sirius Black, concerning his own goodness. He asks if it's possible that he, Harry, is becoming bad. But Black assures Harry that he is a good person. Black then tells Harry that people aren't either good or bad. Instead, Black says, everyone has good and bad in them, and it is their choices which define a person as good or bad.

At the risk of being called a heretic (though a more accurate label might be existentialist), I'd like to say that I think this is true. I know a lot Christians, including the pre-Harry Potter me, would have objected that this is false because no one is good; all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). In other words, no one is righteous before God.

To most evangelicals, "good" means righteous.

However, that's not what Black means when he says Harry Potter is good.

Within the Harry Potter world, "good" means brave, noble, and just, though imperfect.

In other words, Black is utilizing another definition of the word "good." Accordingly, Black can accurately call Harry good, because Harry is indeed brave, noble, and just, though imperfect.

Ok, ok, so his pronouncement of Harry as "good" [aka brave, noble, and just, though imperfect] is accurate. But doesn't that teach that people can be good by acting virtuously? Isn't that heretical? Isn't that denying the reality of the sin nature? Isn't that denying man's need for salvation to achieve eternal goodness?

Actually, I think it is precisely because the story utilizes a different definition of good that it's not heretical. First off, traces of the doctrine of sinful nature can be found in the story. Remember the Harry Potter definition of "good"? Brave, noble, and just, though imperfect.

Note that the Harry Potter definition of "good" does not totally
ignore the concept of sin, but instead acknowledges it.

To be fair, the Harry Potter world has another definition of sin, one which doesn't include offending a holy God. Nevertheless, the story does retain the concept of doing wrong, offending a holy, universal law. Harry Potter dodges Bullet #1!

Moreover, the story simply does not address eternal goodness, or righteousness before God, so it avoids that type of heresy too. Now, if the story had taught that one could be "good" [aka righteous before God] by acting viruously, then it would be heretical. However, it merely teaches that a person can be good [aka brave, noble, and just, though imperfect] by choosing to act virtuously, which is true and God-honoring. Harry Potter dodges Bullet #2!

I'll admit that the Harry Potter story is not perfect. But it is not heretical. Or at least, that's my conclusion as of right now.

Phoenix

I have a new appreciation for the legend of the Phoenix. You see, I recently realized something on the nature of death:

The secret is not to avoid death, but to survive death.

That is key to the Gospel and, consequently, every good story. You don't defeat death by cheating it. You can't cheat it; it has a legitimate claim on you, and if justice is to prevail, it must have its way with you. So instead you must

absorb death, letting it burn itself out within you, and then rise from the ashes.

Of course, to survive such a consuming fire, you must have something greater within, something that cannot be consumed. That's the tricky part:

What can withstand the fatal fires of death?

The Finite Nature of Infinity

Infinity. Some say that it’s a purely mathematical concept, one that it doesn’t apply to reality. I don’t agree; I think infinity has a very finite nature. Allow me to reference an old Greek guy named Zeno to defend my position.

Zeno liked to create paradoxes. One of his most famous paradoxes states that motion is an illusion. To move any amount of distance, be it five feet or five miles, one must cross an infinite distance in a finite amount of time. How can five feet be an infinite distance? According to a geometric postulate, there is an infinite amount of points between any two points on a line. That is, the distance can be broken down into infinitely smaller and smaller units. Therefore, the both five feet and five miles are infinite distances. Old Zeno thought it impossible to cross this infinite expanse in a finite amount of time. However, a finite amount of time can be divided into an infinite amount of units as well.

I’m not sure whether that solves Zeno’s paradox, but that’s beside the point. The point is this: any finite measurement can be broken down into an infinite amount of units.

In our world, the infinite is tied to the finite, a theme which extends far beyond mathematics.

In fact, this concept has ramifications for theology, our perception of God’s nature.

We understand God to be both infinite in character and finite in action.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever; His character is eternal and unchanging. Yet He constantly expresses His identity in new and varied ways; God’s activity in our world is ceaseless. I think God is rather like the sun – the sun cannot help but constantly radiate heat and light from within itself – it’s very nature is to radiate sunbeams! Likewise, God’s nature – His stable, unchanging nature – cannot help but burst out new and fresh behavior. No wonder one of the best prescriptions for a happy life is to live in the overflow of one’s identity; that is our experience with the Source of Life. God’s name - “I AM” - beautifully sums up the principle of the infinite embodied in the finite. The “I” denotes His timeless nature, while the “AM” exudes His activity in the here and now.

Just as the infinite and the finite are woven together in God, so the eternal and the daily are woven together in reality.

When we read literature, we often come away with a sense that we were made for something bigger … some grand adventure, some cosmic battle. And yet we find ourselves living a very ordinary, unromantic, and small-minded existence. We long for a metanarrative, but we find ourselves stuck in monotony. What we forget is that the epic is bound up in the ordinary.

Living with roommates has taught me the truth of this principle. I dearly love my roommates; our friendship is the life-changing kind. Yet I experience it every day, not just when we have intense conversations, but also when we brush our teeth, complain about the weather, or laugh together. But I am usually unaware of the magnitude of our friendship because I don’t hear an orchestral score playing in the background, cluing me in to the grandeur of the situation. I think my dorm life is ordinary, when in fact it is extraordinary. Yes, the eternal is incarnated in the temporal.

Therefore, one shouldn’t just look AT reality, seeing merely the
empirical, self-oriented, day-to-day reality...

That’s the mistake the secularists and atheists often make.

Neither should one try to look BEYOND reality, to some
platonic, higher, spiritual reality.

That’s usually the issue with mystics, philosophers, and some modern Christians.

Instead, one should look THROUGH reality, seeing eternal truths embodied in the gritty experiences of life.

Remember, the infinite is in the finite.