When I was a young girl, my Christian mother decided it would be in her children’s best interest if she checked out a new and famous book that her son desperately wanted to read but was controversial to the church she had been attending. That book has now become one of my, her daughter’s, favorite books and an inspiration to me. "Harry Potter" written by J.K. Rowling is not a devilish novel that teaches children from Christian homes that magic, not only exists, but rules the world with a maniacal iron fist. Instead, it teaches children that good always triumphs over evil, that we can believe in ourselves to accomplish great feats of bravery, and that life is always much more complicated than what we see on the surface.
As a young woman that has grown up in the church, I have developed a habit of finding Christian inspiration in novels, movies, and people that are not considered Christian in order to further my own faith. It is also important to note that I did not have free reign in what I did and read in my younger years, but was able to make most of my own decisions, with my parent’s guidance, in order to become a free thinker. Since I was young, I have been a choosey person and a choosey reader. While I may not have been able to read every horror novel that I desired until I was old enough to understand that they weren’t real, I did have much more freedom than many of my friends with conservative Christian parents.
My friends grew up with the ideas about my favorite books that their parents had placed in their heads. Their parents never gave reading these particular novels a chance when their children desired to read them because the church deemed them as bad or sinful. They were often told that any book that had magic in it was bad or “of the devil” because it was not biblically sound. The thing I would like to point out is that most children’s books are not biblically based and therefore should be banned by these same parents, but are not.
As an example, when I was a child, one of my favorite non-Christian books that instilled in me Christian beliefs was “Five Little Monkeys” written by Eileen Christelow. It presents a tale of monkeys clearly disobeying their monkey mother by jumping on their bed which causes them to fall off of it and become injured. Ideally, this book teaches children that disobeying or not “honoring thy father and mother,” (Ephesians 6:2), will result in negative consequences. These monkeys which represented their own child readers were intended to teach children that disobeying their parents is bad, which is often true, and not at all a harsh or threatening ideal. Still however, these same parents stopped their children from reading books they did not research themselves because the church told them they were not “Christian” enough. This Book, however, was cherished because it taught their children something they could biblically agree upon and the church had no negative comments about it.
With that being said, there are many debated books that still teach children biblical morals, but are definitely not allowed by many conservative Christian parents. Using my example above, Harry Potter presents a world where some characters have succumbed to the temptation that evil brings, but ultimately shows these character’s downfalls because of their bad choices. Good triumphing over those who choose evil is most definitely a biblical principle. God gave David the power to fall Goliath in order to save God’s own treasured people (1 Samuel 17). Good triumphed over evil. There is a major parallel, though it cannot compared to bible tales, written in the Harry Potter series. Harry Potter, the main character who is known as good, triumphs over his enemies in order to save the lives of many of his friends and the wizarding world. This story was not meant to teach children about evil witches and wizards that were able to succeed and conquer the world like many parents had believed. It is meant to show children that being a good person, and fulfilling your abilities, as David did with Goliath, will bring goodness to the world.
Though Harry Potter will never be a book built to frame the bible, it does teach things that Bible believing parents can value and, therefore, should be given a chance by conservative parents. This is true with most children’s books. First, a parent should consider their child’s maturity level. Parents should then read the child’s requested book, assess it for its positive and negative lessons or values, and then make an informed decision about the book in question. This will allow a parent direct access to the values their young children are learning through books without denying children the joy in finding a lifelong favorite novel.
