For years I’ve wrestled with what to do about Harry Potter. Almost everyone was raving about the HP series when I was a young mom with three little children. Yet, the books talk about witches and wizards. Not just talk about them, but glorify them. Does this make the books bad? After all, the Bible says that sorcery (which I put witchcraft under) is evil. I felt like I couldn’t make a final decision about the series until I read them and saw for myself what the books say, but I had so many other books I wanted to read. To this day, I haven’t read them. My sisters told me the books are great and totally worth reading. Until I read them, I didn’t want my kids reading them. So I forbade them from my home. At the risk of being viewed as a horrible mom who left my children out of the loop of popular culture, I didn’t let them watch the movies based on the books in my home. At least one of them (maybe more, who knows?) sneaked them into my home from the public library and read them secretively in a bedroom. My older kids watched the movies and read the books after leaving my nest.

Yet, I realized that C.S. Lewis uses a witch in his Narnia book. That doesn’t make the book evil. Shakespeare uses witches in Macbeth. I heard this BYU speech about the gospel truths found in Harry Potter and put the issue on a shelf in my brain, to percolate until the right time when I could understand it.

I finally found a source to give me a Christian perspective on the series. Yes! I am so grateful for the people over at the Literary Lives podcast for talking about this!

You can listen to it too. Because of this podcast, I realize I have been wrong this whole time. I’d love to hear your comments.