New post on Warhorn Media by Nathan Alberson:
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I read The Greatest Gift short story for the first time this year, and in that version Mary did marry George’s rival. It makes more sense to me that way, I wonder why they changed it in the movie?
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I really just think they were being sexist and lame
From the episode…
[0:59–1:05]
Nathan: …the biblical reality is that sorcery is evil; and yet here we have a fantasy world where sorcery’s portrayed as neutral; how do you live with that tension, do you choose to live with that tension…can you approach something like this as just a bit of mythmaking that alludes to a larger point without actually expressing real realities?
Ben: It’s a pretty big question. Cause if you watched and enjoyed a movie where murder was not a sin, that would just be evil, right?
N: Mmm-hmm. And yet we’re all pretty much ok with watching a movie where sorcery’s not a sin.
B: Yup. Why?
N: Or are we?
B: Or are we. That’s the question.
…
B: As we’re talking I realize I don’t see how to disentangle the question of whether or not fantasy is ok, even the supernatural elements, from the question of whether fiction, period, is ok, because you’re creating a place with its own rules when you tell a parable. You have weird stuff in the Old Testament, like the parable of the thorns–how the bramble becomes king over the trees. You’ve got talking trees and brambles. Well that doesn’t happen in the real world…
I think there’s an important difference between fiction where characters can do things they simply aren’t able to in the real world and fiction where characters can do things that are wrong in the real world but in the fiction world they’re not wrong, but good. I think that the latter kind are corrupting by their nature; they teach and wheedle and suggest that God’s Word is bad, that there’s something better. And while there are many stories and parables told in the Bible, I can’t think of any in the latter category, can you?
One application: If you love Gandalf Stormcrow, it had better not be to the softening of your hatred for sorcery and witchcraft as condemned by God. And if your heart is whoring after sorcery through Gandalf, turn away from Gandalf and never look back. You won’t miss him.
Love,
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… then you have become Saruman.
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Agreed 100195109588905% Daniel.
Me as a kid (and older), too.
Love,
But just remember, Gandalf isn’t really a sorcerer. He’s not a man who uses magic, he is an “angel” of sorts, a creature whose natural powers are above those of men. In other words, when a man misuses the powers of the elements or spirits to accomplish his own purposes, this is sorcery. But when an angel appears and disappears, strikes men blind, opens locked prison gates with a word, etc., he is just doing what that kind of creature does.
In my mind, this is the fundamental difference between Harry Potter and Gandalf, and why I think one is poison and the other is not.
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