It seems that the world has gone wild about Harry again ... because the one-two combination of the movie/book release has put the spell of Potter-mania on the muggle world - driving the multitudes to the multiplexes and boatloads to the bookstores.
No matter how you feel about the "rightness" or "wrongness" of reading/watching the adventures from JK Rowling, it is pretty much impossible to miss the gi-hugous part of culture it's become over the last several years. It seems like everywhere you turn there's a Harry here, Harry there, Harry Potter everywhere.
Almost like magic!
The latest film instalment is The Order of the Phoenix, which evidently is considered one of the weakest in the series - but I personally see it as the critical turning point where the mostly-innocent-whimsical-magical world of the Sorcerer's Stone has disappeared in the rear view mirror as a much darker and troublesome landscape enters our horizon. From the opening scene to the climactic ending battle, quidditch matches are replaced with heavy duty fighting, and the seemingly inseparable trio of Harry, Ron, and Hermoine hit the rough seas of adolescence and many a storm breaks out.
Yet one thing definitely remains the same - which is the overarching "good vs evil" theme that keeps boiling down to deeper levels of eeeeee-vil and raising up higher and higher stakes each time. Obviously Voldemort is back (once again mostly missing a nose .... Is there just not enough cash in the budget to give the poor guy at least a CGI schnozzola???).
Without giving too much away, I noticed a key element in The Order of the Phoenix fantasy world that instantly connected with the calling of the Christian in the real world. In the film, Harry forms a group called Dumbledore's Army, basically because the new Defence Against Dark Arts teacher is completely worthless and is actually hurting the students' chances of successfully fighting Voldemort and his army. In a nutshell, Harry is running his own "Defence" class so he and his friends are prepared for the imminent attacks that are sure to come.
Again, this is fantasy. Dumbledore is fantasy. Hogwarts is fantasy. Voldemort's nose is fantasy (ok, I'll let it go).
What is NOT fantasy is the battle against real evil and the real attacks that are coming your way in a real world near you. So you need your own defence against not dark arts but Satanic attacks. These assaults have plagued the human race since the-man-without-a-bellybutton and his (literal) better half named Eve ate from the WAY wrong tree (i.e. Genesis 3). For thousands of years the children of God have been in the crosshairs of Satan, and it is only going to get worse.
