We’re speaking rational truth; we’re rejecting fantasy. Let me tell you something: fantasy doesn’t help your children, whether it’s Twilight or Harry Potter, it’s loaded, first of all, with homosexual innuendos. It’s packed full of the cult of death. Why, that’s so far different from our message of resurrection and life. Mystical movements, charismatic movements, relying on emotion, intuition, personal interpretations, feelings, experiences antithesis to the cultivation of the mind.
— John MacArthur, The Essentials of Handling God’s Word, Part 2, February 15, 2015
No doubt about it. John MacArthur should know all about that stuff. So, if U want to avoid all that stuff he just mentioned ….. DON’T READ THE BIBLE!!!
Exactly what I was thinking!
I sure didn’t see any gay innuendos in the Harry Potter series. I know JK Rowling said after the books were finished that Dumbledore was gay, but that sure was not in the books. Dumbledore was not married, but none of the teachers at Hogwarts were portrayed as being married. (Don’t know about the Twilight books as I never read them.) I didn’t see the cult of death in the books either. Characters do die, but Harry was the boy that lived. And some of the characters that do die, die sacrificially to save Harry and so the forces of darkness don’t win. When Dobby the House Elf is killed defending Harry is Deathly Hallows, many of us readers cried and that includes old women like me. Dobby literally laid down his life to save Harry. Isn’t there a verse about that very thing?
What does that asshat McArthur make of the Christian fantasy of CS Lewis? Does he hate that as well? It’s very clear that Aslan the lion is a Christ figure. Some look at the Tolkien books as a Christian allegory, too. They see Frodo and Sam as Christ figures since they bore the Ring. Tolkien didn’t look at his works that way and despised allegory.
I never can resist the urge to comment when I see Lewis referred to. Lewis is the origin of the form of logic when referring to Jesus ‘lunatic, liar, or lord’, (ignoring several competing possibilities, such as inaccurate reporting, or simply he never said the things attributed to him) and even uses it in his Narnia books, which I loved as a kid, and still sometimes think about. Even at age 8 I recognised the flaws in his argument, though he used to accompany it with ‘don’t they teach logic in schools these days?’. A nine year old girl enters a magical country via a wardrobe and readers are supposed to be surprised when people don’t believe her. Lewis only initially intended to write the one book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but he ended up with a series of seven books, intended to try and smooth out inconsistencies but actually achieving the reverse. The inconsistencies are obvious even to children (I remember serious discussions about the inconsistencies in primary school). In The Magicians Nephew he appears to realise how silly the logic professor appeared in his earlier book, so tries to carve out a story, showing that he (the professor) was, as a little boy, actually present at the creation of Narnia. So why did he preach a logic lesson to the children, and not just tell them about his experience? Not that they’d have been entitled to assume he was anything other than delusional.
Sorry! Nothing to do with homosexuality, other than nobody would bother about it were it not for religion.
Dumbledore being gay did make it easier to understand why he was seduced by Grindelwald’s rather nasty beliefs early in life — he was probably infatuated with the guy.
Who knows what MacArthur was talking about or whether he’s ever even read the books. He’s just interested in demonizing them in the eyes of other people who probably haven’t read them either.
If you were a framing hammer, you would probably see nails everywhere. MacArthur the Clueless is a Culture Warrior, so he sees his self-identified enemies everywhere. Harry Potter, Twilight, the neighbor’s Christmas lights that are the wrong shade, the nephew’s new wife’s black socks… okay, I’m projecting a bit for the last two, but maybe not all that much. Just as some people can pull the Agony of Defeat from the jaws of Victory and tarnish every silver lining into a dark cloud, Haters gotta find the objects of their hate everywhere.
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Love your sarcasm, Karen. ?
My personal experience is that the people who rail against Harry Potter books or anything else like that never even read them to know what’s actually written in them. Harry Potter is a great story about good and evil, about friendship and loyalty, that we make choices about who we are and how those choices affect others. It’s definitely a better story than “humans are all filthy, worthless sinners and needed a God to change itself/its son into a human to be killed to appease the blood lust anger of the God so that the God wouldn’t send the humans who agreed to an eternity of slavery to eternity in hell as punishment for being born.”
“We’re speaking rational truth; we’re rejecting fantasy.” — John MacArthur, The Essentials of Handling God’s Word, Part 2,
Well,now, there’s a handy dandy example of the pot calling the kettle black.
You start by using a black book full of fantasy and crammed with exhortations to drop rational truth and believe in fantastical magic man. Then, when your customers buy-in (we need good fantasies) you cherry-pick: Here’s the real truth, you say. They killed this guy good and dead and he rose from death a few days later. And that is just the beginning of the show! Rational truth, John? Hardly.
And speaking about a cult of death, Christianity is founded on it! Jesus is tortured and laid to rest, a blood sacrifice. And this is founded on the fact that people are born in sin. That’s your religion, John. There ain’t no fair start in that race! We are indeed caught up in fantasy, Mr. MacArthur. Your whole faith builds the foundation for woo-woo through the stained glass and offering plates.
Fantasy, by the way, you miserable man is integral and a normal part of a child’s growth. Who among us was unlucky enough to never have a fantsy friend as a child, a favorite stuffed toy we talked to… MacArthur wants you to prevent your children from just being a child. Rather, he would have us train up our kids to first FEAR God and then to guard their minds (whatever the hell that means to a kid!) Then of course, OBEY! Yep, you betcha, John.
Homosexual innuendos? All those guys waving wands at each other, I suppose….. People who are obsessed with homosexuality can always see references to it everywhere, whether those references actually exist or not. The real question is why they’re so obsessed with the subject.
I think I’m pretty good at detecting homosexual innuendo. Haven’t read Harry Potter, but I’ve seen every movie more than 3 times. The only homosexual innuendo is in the last Fantastic Beasts movie. None in Harry Potter whatsoever.
There’s homosexual innuendo in the Bible. David and Jonathan. And why did that young man flee naked from Gethsemane? And why did Paul keep young men as companions on his missionary journeys? Why did Paul never marry? (No, there’s no evidence or implication that he was a widower, contrary to what fundamentalists would have you believe.) Why was Paul so homophobic? And what exactly was his “thorn in the flesh” and why was his “flesh” so problematic? It’s clear as day to any homosexual who was raised in an evangelical church. It’s only the clueless straight Christians that don’t see it. ( I’m not suggesting Paul was engaged in homosexual relationships. I don’t think he was. I do believe he was gay.)
All I can say is, good grief. I still have a Christian friend who believed that there were demons present when the Harry Potter movies played in our local theater, and wouldn’t go see the movies AND was afraid the demons would enter one of the other theaters while the movie was playing? Yes, really kook-like stuff.
With ignorant comments like MacArthur’s, I am starting to believe these people never read the Bible themselves. The Bible is the biggest collection of fantasy tales there is.
I also wonder whether people like this have even read the Harry Potter books. I would never have opened one except that my manager at the time handed his hardbound copy of the first one to me and said, “You’ll enjoy this.” He was so right! After that, I needed no urging, and enjoyed the rest as well. Now, admittedly, I’m not Christian and neither was Dick (and while we’ve lost touch, I expect he’s still not interested in any religion). But the books struck me as a thoughtful treatment of the kinds of decisions ethical people must make in their lives, and the reality of life that includes both grief for loved ones lost, and the undeserved success of really ordinarily evil people.
OTOH, the undeserved success of really ordinarily evil people is a neverending story in high-demand social groups like Fundagelical churches; that might make the Potter books seem scary indeed to a leader in that kind of community.
As a staunch fundamentalist Christian… people like Macarthur are nuts.