The Gospel According to Harry Potter

I've now seen the very last Harry Potter movie. I was impressed. As someone who tries to follow Jesus, I saw an interesting parallel. Harry Potter, it turns out, is an unintended horcrux -- a "dark magical object that holds a piece of a soul." In this case, the evil Lord Voldemort has unwittingly placed a piece of his soul in Harry. In order to destroy this piece of Voldemort's soul, Harry must die. And so he does, near the end of the movie. In case you haven't seen the movie or read the book, I won't tell you what happens next.

But here's the parallel with the traditional Christian view: we are all horcruxes. We all have a dark part of us that needs to be destroyed. How did this dark part come to be in us? The traditional answer is that we inherited it from Adam and Eve, when they disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden. (Of course, if there were no Adam and Eve, then we need another explanation for the origin of that dark part. C.S. Lewis suggested that natural evil might best be explained by Satanic influence in nature. If so, and if we evolved from nature, then might the origin of our dark part be Satanic influence?)

Anyway, what Christianity does is offer a way for the dark part in us to be destroyed without also destroying us. The Hero of our story is Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the fullness of God dwells, and who takes on our human nature, and is put to death, and so destroys the horcrux of that nature. Then Jesus rose from the dead, with a new nature that He shares with those who want it. By taking His life into ourselves, we take the death that He experienced and begin to put to death the horcrux in us. And we begin to replace it with His new nature. The process is a slow one, that takes a life time. And it shan't be finished until we see Him face to face. But we might as well get started on the process now. No sense putting it off. Harry wouldn't have waited.