Danny ChaiWhile on the toilet this morning, I read a couple good articles in, of all things, the Christian Research Journal. I make fun of the magazines John subscribes to but they’re actually OK.
Anyway, one article was on Harry Potter. As you may or may not know, a lot of Christians are riled up about Harry Potter because it deals with witches. The article called for a little bit of restraint. He made some good points, primarily that the books aren’t about witchcraft, it’s about fantasy, and he thinks that’s OK. As did C.S. Lewis, who wrapped up some of his views of Christianity in fantasy with the Chronicles of Narnia. And J.R.R. Tolkien, author of some of the most famous fantasy novels of all time, was Christian.
The article also pointed out how Christians have overreacted to a lot of things in the past. Like, at one point Christians were against “poetry” (which essentially meant creative fiction) because that constituted lying.
Anyway, his point was, you don’t need to overreact. It’s probably good to be cautious about it, and right to talk to kids about what’s good and not good about it, but it’s not absolutely wrong to read it.
The other article was about homosexuality and Christianity. Uh, I probably shouldn’t get into this, but, it was a good article.
There was another interesting article also about some group called The Way International, I think. A cult, I’d say. The founder used to preach that women who gave men of God sex received blessings from God, and condoned (nay, advocated) adultery. He also taught that Jesus was not God. In fact, that was the name of a book he wrote. “Jesus Is Not God”.
I don’t know, I thought that was funny.