Harry Potter and The Mosque at Ground Zero

I read a lot of books but a children's fantasy about an orphan witch would not be a likely choice for me.

When the first book of the Harry Potter series came out it created quite an emotional stir and people at my church were going on and on about how it would lure children into a relationship with Satan himself. It was quite the emotional ruckus.

People kept asking me what I though about it and finally I decided to read the book and form an opinion. Well, long story short it ended up costing me the enough time to read 7 books. The series was quite a compelling read and I'm still feeling my secure in the salvation of my soul.

I could have opened this post with the same discussion about The Da Vinci Code. Another book that had the Christian community all wound up and rattled. Another read that left me wondering why people could get upset over such things.

I am currently engaged in a couple of Facebook discussions about the mosque at ground zero. When the dust settles, Facebook isn't a great forum for such things because the quantity of text has a limit that always seems to distract me.

My participation in the thread started when I threw a simple question into an emotional post about the mosque. I simply asked "Is it a mosque or a community center?". The response was something like "Jim, I hope you are kidding..." or some such thing.

The truly striking thing about Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code was that so many people were upset and angry. During discussions with the angry people I would ask them if they read the books and I would get responses like "I would never read such a horrible thing!" or "I don't have to read it, I've heard plenty already".

Let me tell you something (and here comes the whole point of this post), you can't know what you think about an issue - ESPECIALLY an emotional issue before you do your own research.

As a side note (and for no extra charge) for those who haven't noticed yet, religion and politics are typically emotional.

Most of our political info comes from the press. The press makes their living by getting you interested in engaging to learn more. I'll present two headlines. You decide which you would be more likely to engage in:

Religious group to build cultural center in lower Manhattan.

or

Muslim Extremists to build Mosque at Ground Zero

I'm selling advertising time on a web page or radio and I want to tell my sponsors that people will be plugged in strongly enough to make it past the commercial break, I need the raw emotion. The same is probably true for our religious leaders. It serves them well to have their followers emotionally connected to an issue now and then.

The title that is shocking serves the ultimate goal and if you don't pay attention and find out what is really going on you can find yourself all fired up ready to enter a battle with casualties. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of a guy that is inclined to avoid a battle because there might be casualties. As I age, however, I learn that often the casualties aren't really necessary.

Rather than dilute my point here, which is you need to get all the facts prior to forming an opinion, I will put detail on my current views about the mosque at ground zero into another post. The truth is I still don't know enough about motive and funding to have a definitive view yet but the preliminary checking leads me to believe we're collecting ammunition over a YMCA rather than a temple to worship the acts of Bin Laden.

...and the Harry Potter books? Great story but I might be slow to let younger children read the later volumes. The series got kind of dark as it matured. The good thing about these books is they will help your children learn to love reading. The stories are quite wonderful. If you want to be really safe you could balance it by spending some time with your children in the Bible reviewing scripture around what God says about witches and witchcraft. Do that and you've planted a seed to help them grow into an adult that does what this post is urging. -- Oh, and if they are afraid of the dark, tell them Voldemort is real. That should be a hoot!