Recently, a Christian website equated
THE LORD OF THE RINGS, both the book and the movie versions, with HARRY
POTTER. The website was full of misinformation, however, that will
confuse visitors.Although THE LORD OF THE RINGS
is not about witchcraft, it does have a character in it, named Gandalf,
who is called a wizard and a sorcerer by other characters. Also, in the
movie version of the first book, THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, he wields a
wooden staff which has special powers.
Having a wizard in a story is a moral problem, because
the Bible condemns sorcery. Of course, Christians can treat the Bible
verses against sorcery in their grammatical-historical context, where
such things are condemned in real life, as real human beings do them,
not as fictional characters doing them in a story that is meant to be a
fantasy. However, if we take that approach, then that might make
Christians think that HARRY POTTER is perfectly okay. This is exactly
what some Christians have actually done.
In THE LORD OF THE RINGS fantasy, however, Tolkien
treats Gandalf as a special created being. Unlike Harry Potter and his
friends, Gandalf is not a mortal human being, and neither are the
magical immortal elves in the story, who have magical powers, use
magical incantations and such. Thus, Gandalf and the elves have magical
power given to them by a creator, although in the Tolkien background
stories, there is no reference to the Bible. Furthermore, the staff that
Gandalf uses seems similar to the staff that God gives Moses to use in
the Bible.
Also, in THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the power of the evil
magical ring is not something to be sought, but to be shunned and
destroyed. The human characters in the first movie, Boromir and Aragorn,
are encouraged to avoid the power of the ring. Boromir fails, and he
dies. Even Gandalf and the magical elves shun the power of the evil
ring. This is much, much different than the magical power in the HARRY
POTTER series, where the use of magic and witchcraft is accepted and
encouraged by the human characters.
Most importantly of all, perhaps, THE LORD OF THE
RINGS and HARRY POTTER have a different ontology, a different view of
the nature of reality. In THE LORD OF THE RINGS, reality is real, and
actions have real consequences. In HARRY POTTER, however, the characters
can manipulate reality through witchcraft, and are encouraged to do so.
As a result of HARRY POTTER’s viewpoint, Harry Potter and his friends
get away with telling lies and disobeying rules. In fact, at the end of
the second HARRY POTTER movie, the school officials cancel exams for all
the students in the witchcraft school!
I never met a metaphor that walked on all fours. Works
of art should be treated in a figurative, symbolic manner, not just a
literal way. Christians have the same problem that the Marxist and
feminist film scholars I encountered at Northwestern University had.
They are tempted to use their theology/worldview to attack every single
thing in a work of art that smacks of evil. The problem is, however,
although every artist and filmmaker has a theology and a worldview,
every artist and filmmaker is not as polemical about it as the Marxist,
feminist or Christian would like them to be. In fact, many popular
artists just use the cultural and sociological milieu in which they
live, whether that be a capitalist one or a pagan one, as the canvas on
which they paint. Thus, an artist might have a capitalist or a pagan
hero, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the artist is trying to
push some kind of capitalist or pagan worldview on the viewers,
especially in the polemical way that a Marxist or Christian artist might
wish to do.
Thus, J.K. Rowling is probably not a member of some
coven, though she could be (she probably reflects, however, the
politically-correct moral relativism of her pagan environment), and
Tolkien is not just some Christian theologian trying to re-create a
world where one-to-one Christian symbols occur, as C.S. Lewis often did
in his books of THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA. Thus, LORD OF THE RINGS is
full of neo-Norse mythology and even perhaps fantasy references to
occult mythology in his description of wizards. (It is also true that
his use of the English term for tobacco, "weed," has been picked up by
the pot smokers, but that doesn’t make Tolkien an advocate for the
legalization of marijuana.)
Therefore, there is a certain sense in which
Christians should take these kinds of fantasy works as just that,
fantasy, and give the artist a little benefit of the doubt. This is
something that many Marxists and feminists do not do, because they have
no golden rule and no relationship with a merciful God on which to base
their lives. The Marxists and feminists looked foolish when they
condemned a movie like John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS for still being racist,
even though, at the time, the movie presented a very anti-racist
message. Christians who misrepresent THE LORD OF THE RINGS and use an
emotion-based, inaccurate hermeneutic will also look foolish in the end
if they persist. Our goal should always be to inform other Christians
about media-wisdom, using a biblical approach that is intellectually
sound.
