One of the core principles of my religion (and I think most others) is faith. We are to have faith in God, in His mercy, His plan for us, and that everything will work out.
Believing that everything will be okay is one of the biggest leaps of faith that we take. There's no way to rationally come to the same conclusion that faith brings us to, like there is with some other things. We can observe that if we follow the Word of Wisdom, we are healthier. The benefits of kindness, honesty, scripture study and prayer upon our lives are to some extent measurable and trackable. But faith that all will be well in the end doesn't work the same way. There's always another end ahead of us, one that reason cannot guarantee will be okay. The only assurance we have of a happy ending is our faith.
Faith is not easy for many. I'm lucky. For me it is easy. I was reflecting about that this morning, and I realized that one of the things I have to thank for that is Harry Potter.
I'm a big fan of finding the religious symbolism in wholesome entertainment, and since I'm such a Harry Potter nut, I've thought about the religious themes in Harry Potter. But my connection today did not come from the story of Harry Potter, but the story of all the fans who read Harry Potter.
I picked up the first Harry Potter book when I was eight. I quickly fell in love with Hogwarts, with Harry, Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, Dumbledore, McGonagall, and everything about the Harry Potter universe. As I tore through the second and third books, I loved them and the characters more than ever.
And then I read the fourth book. And the fourth book was different. It didn't end happily. Cedric Diggory, the brave, kind, loyal, innocent Hufflepuff was unceremoniously reduced to "spare" and slaughtered. Harry failed to do what all the books so far had been about - preventing the return of the most evil wizard of all time, Lord Voldemort. Lord Voldemort was powerful once more, and intended to take over the world again. The Ministry of Magic was too afraid to face the truth, and buried its head in the sand. Sure, the parting words "What would come would come, and when it did, they would meet it with all of their courage" were nice, but they weren't assuring. They were the words of a fourteen year-old boy trying to be brave in the face of the most terrifying war his kind had ever seen, a war that he would have to lead. One thing that was very clear at the end of the fourth book was that we had absolutely no guarantee that everything would be okay in the end.
Then came the wait. I waited two years for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In the weeks leading up to the book's release, I remember one spoiler that stood out to me, and the rest of the fandom, more than anything else: a major character would be dying. We were assured before we even read the book that no one was safe. We felt Harry's fear for his loved ones, for we had no more assurance of their safety than he did. JK Rowling taught us about the true horror of war that way: she showed us that war does not only kill the bad guys or the extras. War takes the innocent, the charming, the ones we love, along with the ones we've never met and the ones we loathe.
Sirius's death in the Order of the Phoenix was tragic. It was the first time in the series that Harry lost someone who was very close to him. Once again, the only father figure that Harry knew was gone. Readers again closed the book knowing that things had only gotten worse: Voldemort's power had gone, the Ministry was impeding the Order's fight against Voldemort, Sirius was dead, and the prophecy declared that "neither can live while the other survives".
Things didn't look good, and the fandom knew it. Editorials and theories about which characters would die ran rampant, and no character was safe. Each book had grown darker, and the death toll higher. It was after the Order of the Phoenix, while we waited two more years for the Half-Blood Prince, that many of us realized that losing Harry was definitely a possibility for the last book. The hero wasn't safe; the prophecy had made that clear. Harry was as vulnerable to death as anyone else.
It was in Half-Blood Prince that the trio started to scan the newspapers for deaths of people they knew. The book was littered with deaths of characters we knew, or had heard of all through the series. When it seemed the death and destruction couldn't get any more real, it did. Dumbledore was killed. The students of Hogwarts, the Order of the Phoenix and the readers had viewed Dumbledore as untouchable, indispensable, and had thought that he would always be around. But he was gone. The chances of a happy ending for Harry were dwindling - so many he loved had died, and he still had so much to do. On top of that, the "Harry will die" camp took further support from the theory that Harry was a horcrux. Hope seemed ever dimmer.
We waited another two years - perhaps the longest two we'd ever waited - for the final installment of Harry Potter. The Deathly Hallows represented all our hopes for a happy ending and all our fears for a sad one. No one was dissatisfied. The book was heartbreaking, filled with tragic deaths of characters we loved. Harry himself died. All the true horror of war was shown. But with the true horror of war, JK Rowling showed us that she truly had been planning for this series for almost twenty years and seven books. We finally recognized the important things from Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets, the seemingly little things, that were oh so important in the end. The series had a joyful ending, and the ending words, "All was well," could not have been more fitting.
We quickly realized that the Harry Potter series was a work of genius. No one could have written that without a tremendous amount of effort, and planning. We realized that JK Rowling had the entire thing mapped out before we even read the first book, and that she, the omnipotent author of all things Harry Potter, had been carefully guiding the characters along to their happiest ending.
JK Rowling taught a generation that the best authors know what's going to happen in the end, and are carefully guiding their stories to the ending they have planned. She taught us that even when things seem like they can't get better, the author has a plan for how it will all work out in the end.
I'm not saying that JK Rowling is God. Definitely not. She is a mortal, imperfect like the rest of us. But she managed to convey a characteristic of God to a generation, and that's not nothing.
There's a reason that we call God "The Author of All". Like JK Rowling to Harry Potter, God has a plan for us, and carefully guides us to the ending that we can't envision, but he can. Sometimes things seem so awful that we can't see how they could possibly get better. But the Author of All can. Many times it hurts, and it's terrifying, but it's necessary. JK Rowling carefully guided Harry not only to safety, but to joy. God will do the same for His children.
JK Rowling has taught me many things of eternal significance, but I think that the most important thing she taught me was to have faith in the Author.
Thank you, JK Rowling.
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