Interesting musings are going on ... "When C.S. Lewis started out to write The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he didn't have Christianity in mind. 'Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something abut Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tales as an instrument, then collect information about child psychology and decided what age group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody them,' Lewis once wrote. 'This is all pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way at all. Everything began with images,' Lewis continued. 'A faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sled, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn't anything Christian about them. That element pushed itself in of its own accord.'
Something similar seems to have happened to J.K. Rowling. She began writing about wizards and quidditch and Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, and somewhere along the way, Christ began to whisper into the story."
I think, myself that it's probably down to the kind of thing Lewis said about the way that Christ is echoed in pagan mythology; that the reality of the Christ event imprints on the whole of creation (okay so that's my take, but I think it's one that corresponds to Lewis'). That said, when someone writes, as Ms Rowling does, about love, good and evil and does so in truthful ways, there's no avoiding the Christ-echoes, they are indeed part of the deep magic of creation and nothing can avoid them that deals with real reality.
That's the big story. Not a metanarrative, I think; but (pace John Drane in 'What is the New Age saying to the Church?') it is a vital fulcrum of understanding that enables us to lever cultural weight for Good and break open forces of ill-ideology ...
The Gospel According to J.K. Rowling | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction:
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