As we all know, and as this blog writer definitely knows, Pottermania has hit again. I have heard people everywhere talking about the last book. (Which I hope to finish tomorrow sometime) If you go to any public place and mention it nearly, you will most likely hear someone else talking about how much they love it.
I can go and talk to a co-worker and we’ll spend so much time just bouncing theories back and forth. Instant excitement is there and as excited as I was about the series beforehand, I get even more excited when I talk to someone else who is excited. That excitement is contagious!
Compare this though with our faith.
Our preacher this morning used the verse of “I was glad when they said unto me let us go to the House of the Lord.” Let’s be honest. How many of us are glad? How many of us usually just can’t wait to go into the doors of the church and enter into worship? How many of us talk theology within the church?
In fact, once we arrive, we are usually talking about anything else besides biblical topics. Now I don’t have any problem with discussing non-biblical topics. However, I find it sad that we can’t discuss them with as much zeal as we do any other topic that we could discuss?
I ponder if it could be our idea of holiness. We think that to treat the text seriously, we have to be in this somber mode where we are praying perchance and waiting for the heavens to open and just flood us with knowledge in some mystical experience that will open the text to us. Anything else just isn’t treating the text seriously.
I consider discussing though with my friends who have Pottermania as we look at events and lines in the text and try to draw out the meaning in them and how they relate to each other. We do so lightly and joke around as we toss around idea after idea and see what fits, but can there be any denial that we aren’t taking that text seriously?
Why can’t we treat the Scripture with as much excitement? Notice the idea is not to decrease our zeal for other things. I think we should have zeal for all that is good and enjoyable and we shouldn’t punish ourselves for enjoying something. The idea is not to bring other things down. That would be an insult to Scripture really as we have to bring things down to the level of Scripture. We need to raise the Scriptures up in our eyes so that we see them for the treasure troves they are.
Maybe we could even do it without so much silly debate that turns people against each other. I love debate, but a lot of it is ridiculous. It amazes me what people will divide over. When I discuss theories on the Potter books with friends, we never divide into separate groups and go our own way. Each idea is there and open for consideration. We say some we can accept, some are just speculation but have some merit, and some we can see as wrong.
Why don’t we? Why don’t we work on seeing God as exciting? Why don’t we have times where we sit around and discuss the great truths of our faith? Pity us if we can do so with a human literary work, but we can’t do so with the Scriptures.
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