What do Dumbledore, Mrs. Malfoy, and Harry Potter have in common with the gospel?
Nothing!
But, according to a distinguished SBTS Seminary professor, Harry Potter can be likened to the one who was “pierced for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.”
After starting out the sermon with the offer of a door prize to the one who’s read Harry Potter the most times (one kid announced he’d read the series seven times), he went on to equate the entire series to the narrative of Scripture, pointing out all of the similarities between events to conclude that a homosexual character in the story has a biblical lesson to teach us about “desiring the forbidden.”
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…people have talked about rightly ordered desires. And you can even see this I think in the mirror of Erised. So maybe you’ve noticed that if you read Erised backward it’s the “mirror of desire.” And Dumbledore tells Harry the happiest man in the world would look into this mirror and he would see himself as he is. In other words, this is a man who is content with who God made him to be. Content with what he has. Content with how he looks. And he looks into the mirror and he sees himself how he is and he has everything that he wants. And I think that’s essentially what Dumbledore is saying of himself, that if you’re content with your life, then death is just the next great adventure. You don’t desire forbidden things. You don’t desire things that are off limits.
Of course, this kind of stuff goes on in churches all the time. I’ve always stated that entertainment is the true opiate of the masses–that if you put some kind of entertainment in front of the worst of the worst enemies, you’ll instantly see them become best friends.
But what makes this particularly discommoding is isn’t just “some guy,” he is a professor at the most prestigious Southern Baptist seminary in the US. Jim Hamilton, who co-pastors with the notable Denny Burk at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, KY, preached an entire sermon making the connections between this pagan production and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Whatever happened to just preaching the word? This level of entertainment idolatry would have been completely unacceptable even a few decades ago, yet Charles Spurgeon nailed it on the head when he said, “The devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people, with a view to winning them.”
See the video below:
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