“It is the unknown we fear when we look on death and darkness, nothing more.”
Those are the wise words of one Albus Dumbledore; or, more accurately, of one J.K. Rowling in her sixth Harry Potter book. I have discovered, after spending last month reading all six books for the first time, that Professor Dumbledore has more great quotable lines than almost any other fictional character I can think of.
The Harry Potter series is a good-versus-evil, life-and-death battle story, not unlike ultimate reality. We all have our archenemies. I know what mine is. The unknown scares the heck out of me. It scares me even without my looking on death or darkness.
Right now on my MSN Messenger I have another Dumbledore quote, this one from the end of book five. Dumbledore is explaining to Harry that he has “power that the Dark Lord knows not,” a force that is “at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature.” He says that the Dark Lord—who had made an attempt to take over Harry’s mind—could not bear to possess someone so filled by that power.
If you haven’t caught on yet, that power is love—which the Bible, in 1st John 4:18, defines as the antidote to fear.
Dumbledore finally tells Harry “In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you.”
This is good stuff!
Most likely coming soon: Thoughts from "Ender's Game."
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