Well, it is Christmas at Hogwarts and Harry is spending his vacation with the Weasleys. Or at least that is where I left them last night.

Unless you have been in a coma or under a rock, you now know that the sixth book in the Harry Potter series was released over the weekend. I am a little over halfway into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and I am enjoying every page.

The controversy that surrounds this little boy is at times laughable. That was why I was a little unnerved when I saw an email entitled Worried About Buying the New Harry Potter Book? in my inbox. I was thankful that the article wasn’t some fundamentalist whack-job on how Harry Potter drinks blood and dances in the nude before the full moon. The article was an intelligent call for Christians to engage with this cultural phenomenom not to thow stones at it. The article, Harry Potter and His Critics, was written by Jerram Barrs and can be found at The Discerning Reader.

If you have time check it out. If not, here is a highlight:

I see the books as valuable because they consistently include the three fundamental themes that can be found as a subtext in almost all good literature: the beauty of creation, the appalling reality of evil, and the universal human longing for redemption — for a better world. These themes touch the way the world truly is, the way God has made it. J.K. Rowling does not profess to be a Christian, as far as I am aware, but she has insight into the themes that are at the very heart of what Christians understand to be true about the nature of the universe in which we live.

Self-sacrifice in these books is the primary means by which evil is defeated. Now that of course is the very heart of what Christianity says about the nature of the world. We come from God’s hand as those who have been made glorious. Life is beautiful as God has given it to us, yet it is appallingly twisted and broken by the reality of evil in our lives, and God Himself has made the ultimate selfsacrifice in the person of Jesus Christ to bring about the destruction of evil in the supreme act of love. He gave Himself to death to save the lives of others — to bring protection, renewal, transformation, strengthening, and redemption to us. Recognizing that this theme of self-sacrifice is running all through the series, it is extraordinary to me that there has been such a violent and negative response by Christians. One has to hope that it is the minority response rather than the response of large numbers of believers. I think this negative response is a tragedy for all sorts of reasons.

It is a tragedy in that there are many people who have failed to read the books with an open mind. The Word of God challenges us to be prepared to celebrate anything that is good and true, wherever it is found. Sadly, I think there are many people who are unable to see the good qualities that there are, either in the Harry Potter books, or in much else in popular Culture. Many of those who have criticized the books to me personally have not even read them.

Additionally, when these sorts of criticisms are made about books without a proper basis it causes an appalled and dismissive reaction to Christians in general and the Christian faith itself. That is a tragedy. Often Christians are indeed guilty of responding in fear to our Culture — criticizing, condemning, and cutting themselves off from it as much as possible. Anything that is popular becomes suspicious. And this is a very serious problem in the life of the Church. It is not that we should accept everything our Culture presents. But Christians should be prepared to celebrate what is good and cultivate Biblical discernment in the midst of our Culture. This is what any Christian should do in regard to the Harry Potter books or anything else. You will have to decide for yourself if the Harry Potter books are good for you or your children, but please do so in a way that is thoughtful and discerning according to the Biblical picture of truth, beauty, and goodness, not in a way that is suspicious of anything popular in our culture, or that is untruthful and unkind.

Some 450 years ago John Calvin encouraged people to read books by the ancient writers from Greece and Rome. He wrote instructions for the teachers in the school system he designed in Geneva, Switzerland, asking that they have the students read the great classics of Greece and Rome that were pagan and non-Christian. And he asked that they not criticize them, but rather encourage the students to celebrate what is good in them, and to learn from the truth that they could find in them. Calvin said on another occasion that it is a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit to deny that pagan writers like Plato wrote many things that are true and helpful. We must be prepared to act similarly in our day when it comes to the Harry Potter series or any other product of our culture.