The following lecture was recorded during Providence’s 2017 Christianity and National Security Conference.

Eric Patterson uses Harry Potter to discuss the just war tradition. He argues that as the Harry Potter series is about love and war, so is just war about love. Love is a motivator for protecting others and is the foundation of the just war tradition.

Yeah, Mark knew that I ran out to find Starbucks when the coffee disappeared. But again, my name is Eric Patterson. I served as Dean of the Senator A. Willis Robertson School of Government at Regent University and as a research fellow here at the Berkeley Center at Georgetown University. I was here full-time for several years after working at the State Department, and it’s just a delight to be in a sense home.

My talk really is about Harry Potter. I’d like to talk a little bit about Harry Potter and Just War. Later on, I’ve asked Mark to intervene after the Q&A, and I’ll make just two or three minutes of comments directed at faculty. My outline is this: I’m going to ask you two questions about Harry Potter and then try to answer three questions about Just War. Fair enough?

So, here’s the question for you: How many of you have read at least one of the Harry Potter books? Raise your hand. Okay, I see that some people have their arms folded. That worries me. Second, how many of you have seen at least one Harry Potter movie? Okay.

So, what are the Harry Potter books really about? Why is it that Harry, Hermione, Ron, and some of their teachers like Dumbledore have to fight in the first place? On the one hand, you could say the Harry Potter books are coming-of-age stories cleverly written with a magical element, but that’s not what they’re really about. They’re about two things: love and war. These two things have a way of going together. The books are about love and war. In fact, J.K. Rowling, who wrote the books, said these books are about love.

Now, we have other words for that type of love: neighbor love, in the Augustinian tradition, loyalty, friendship. The Harry Potter books are really about love, and the Just War tradition is about love. Second, why do these friends have to fight? If you read the books that Jill Lepore has written about the run-up to World War II and how Europe would not pay attention to the Hitler threat, either out of fear or apathy, that’s exactly what happens in the Harry Potter stories.

Most of the adults bury their heads in the sand. The first tier of government authorities won’t act, and most of the parents won’t act. So, it falls on these professors—McGonagall, Dumbledore, and others—and their pupils to stand up. They’re not just standing up for injustice by wearing a t-shirt or a wristband that says “What Would Jesus Do?” They put their lives on the line to fight against evil. Our previous speaker was exactly right. We live in a world where there’s good and there is evil.

What motivates Harry Potter and his friends to fight is the love they have for each other. They’re going to stand up against the dark side. What does the Bible say? “There is no greater love than this: that a man lay down his life for his friend” (John 15:13). As we talk about the Just War tradition, I’d ask you to keep in mind that story. By the way, Harry Potter is not just a fairy tale; it’s really a myth. It’s a civilizational story that seems to resonate. Voldemort says that Harry Potter’s weakness is his friends. What it really means is that loyalty, that love, is a weakness for Harry because it means he’ll always try to protect someone instead of being ruthless.

That’s what the White Witch says about Aslan in “The Chronicles of Narnia.” For those of you who are Percy Jackson fans, that’s what a witch says about Percy Jackson: that his weakness is his love for his friends; it’s his fatal flaw. That’s what the devil said about Jesus—that love as a motivator, protecting the weak, protecting the innocent, intervening to protect a bystander—is a weakness. At the root of the Just War tradition, we know that neighbor love is a strength, not a weakness, and it really is the basis for the Just War tradition.

What was it that motivated Moses, Joshua, David, and Nehemiah? The language Nehemiah uses in his book is so much about love of country, love of neighbor, love of God, love of the Jewish community. He doesn’t talk in terms of wanting to create a state to grind a bunch of other people. He talks in terms of a passionate love for his people. I want to affirm what our speaker spoke about this morning. They set the groundwork for thinking about the Just War tradition.

For instance, when Robert Russell Mead talked about hope and faith as the way that Christians can be involved in thinking about foreign policy, and when Robert Nicholson talked about taking responsibility, I think about responsibility as I call it the Maj. Steve Trevor rule. You guys all saw “Wonder Woman,” right? She says to him, “Why are you doing this? Why are you going back to the fight?” He says, “You know, my dad told me there are two kinds of people: those who sit around and do nothing, and those who get up and do right.”

In other words, the willingness to take responsibility that Nicholson talked about this morning. That’s a great thing about the generation under 35; you’re willing to do something. Part of what we’re hoping here is to inspire you to do some of the hard things, not just talk about it.

Fourth, you heard Keith critique pacifism just a little bit earlier today as irresponsible. The Just War tradition really does provide a counter-narrative to what’s a small aberrant view in Christianity. In terms of raw numbers, less than 1% of Christendom is actually pacifist in terms of denominational affiliation. The Just War tradition, which is Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and all their progeny for the past 2,000 years, with a tiny exception of Anabaptism, is just war.

The Just War tradition asks two questions in practice. The first one is: When is it just to go to war? A better way to say that is: When is it moral or just to employ force? So, it’s not just soldiers but also police. The second question is: Once that decision is made, how can force be used in a moral fashion?

Let me just note that there are some presuppositions hidden in here. One is the Maj. Steve Trevor rule about someone having to take responsibility. A second one is the difference between force and violence. Force is restrained; force is lawful. It’s in the hands of legitimate political authorities or authorized by them. Violence is unrestrained; violence is unlawful. It’s perpetrated often by those who are not sanctioned by the government or beyond the pale. There’s a reason we often affirm what the police do, and when they step over that line, we call it police brutality.

I often call this the Jedi rule because it’s the difference between the good side of the force and the bad side of the force: force versus violence. A second one is the difference between order and lawlessness. The Bible talks a lot about order. Romans 13 emphasizes the role that political authorities have. We know that the enemy comes to kill, steal, and destroy. The enemy is a spirit of lawlessness embodied in Satan, and Just War theory privileges order. It recognizes that that’s a godly vision for society in the imperfect world we live in, as contrasted with lawlessness.

By the way, what is the ultimate put-down in the Bible? There are some good ones, right? “Ye brood of vipers,” stuff like that. But I think the most damning moment in the entire Bible is at the end of the book of Judges when, with terrible moral resignation, the writer says, “Every man did what was right in his own eyes.” That statement is a declaration of ultimate degradation, the ultimate wallowing in the mire of this world, when every person just lives a lawless life and decides what’s right and wrong for themselves.

There’s a presupposition in Just War thinking about vocation or calling. We often talk about people in the health profession or full-time clergy as having a calling, but that’s not just true for those offices. It applies to public service as well. Sometimes in our churches, we make a distinction between full-time ministry and everyone else. The Just War tradition emphasizes that an honorable vocation can be the civil magistrate, the warrior, the policeman. These people in public service, if they’re acting on behalf of the commonweal, have an honorable vocation. They don’t have dirty hands; they’re working as unto the Lord.

As we talk through these justice or principles, another presupposition is that it’s about neighbor love and stewardship. As we go through these principles, think about how they relate to neighbor love or stewardship or both, which are both Christian principles.

Again, two questions: When is it just to go to war or to employ force? Second, how can that be employed in a moral fashion? The ancients wrote that there are really three criteria, three basic moral criteria: a legitimate political authority can employ force on behalf of a Just Cause with right intention.

Legitimate Authority, Just Cause, Right Intention. Authority is important; it’s the principle of political order—a president, a king, a constituted legislature. They delegate that responsibility often to someone who looks like a policeman, soldier, airman, marine, or sailor.

Second, Just Cause. Augustine gave us a sense of what a Just Cause might look like: a just war would right a past wrong, prevent a future wrong, or punish a wrongdoer. Those are the types of things that are just causes, or it’s self-defense or imposing justice.

The third is Right Intention. This is the Christian nub, what Christianity brings to any social endeavor. Remember, Jesus often emphasized not just the action, but the intention behind it. He said it’s not just the action, but what you wanted to do in your hearts. Speaking about adultery, He kept poking us on our

hat was in our heart, what was in our mind, not just what we did but what we wish we had done or wish we could if no one was watching. God looks on the heart, met the outer appearance is what the Lord told Samuel and that’s exactly right. It can often look like something’s being done with noble intentions but you get down in there and you find no, no, there’s something else there. Augustine, quoted by Aquinas, said something about wars are unjust when they’re for bitterness, revenge, greed, lust, hatred. They can be just when done out of neighbor love. I’ve kind of messed up the quote but that’s the distinction when it comes to right intention.

Now, over the years, we’ve added some Prudential or some, in other words, practical wisdom criteria to that. Things like is this the last resort? In other words, have we used other means like diplomacy and things before we get to this point? Have we counted the cost? We call likelihood of success. Have we focused in on a goal of peace? You know, what do we mean at the end of this? What is our goal? And those are the kinds of things that keep you from making unwise decisions that break the bank that result in heavy losses of life and the like.

Well, the Just War tradition is a second question, of course, and that is so if you’re going to employ force then what? And it provides two primary criteria. One is proportionality and the second is called discrimination. Proportionality is the basic idea that the tactics you use on the battlefield should be proportionate to the risk or the threat. So for instance, if a sniper is shooting at you, you don’t drop a nuclear bomb on them, right? It’s a ridiculous example but battlefield objectives being met using proportionate means. And then the second one is called discrimination or distinction.

We want to distinguish between what’s a legitimate target. In other words, a combatant, someone who’s fighting against us, tanks, airplanes, soldiers versus things that are off-limits: houses of worship, non-combatants, a hospital, those types of things. And in our military doctrine, the good news is that these things have become part of international law and they’ve become part of the way that we train our military on an annual basis on those in the notion of military necessity. How do you balance this in the real world on the battlefield? Well, there’s a lot more to be said, but why don’t we just go back to Harry Potter for a second and then take some Q&A?

I started with, here’s this kid Harry Potter story, fighting a battle against his evil enemy, right? But that’s not really what those stories are about. The stories are about good standing up to evil. They’re about the mobilization of people as a group, not as an individual. We’re not talking about kind of a playground fight. We’re talking about groups of people battling for what a civilization is going to look like. That’s what World War I was, that’s what World War II was, that’s the struggle that we face today against violent Islamic terrorism as the president calls it. And that’s the struggle that was in the Harry Potter books.

And at the end of the day, what kept the heroes in those books saying was that they stayed focused on the goal. They knew what they were fighting for, they knew what they were fighting against. They’re fighting against evil, and they were fighting motivated by the love of their family and their friends. So with that, let me open it up for questions about the Just War tradition and then we’ll take a break in a few and then right at the end, I’ll say a few words to faculty. Yes, and would you like stewardship?

We did in the first half. Stand, identify yourself in the Naska quick question. Thank you. Yeah, Miranda again. I missed what you said about you said whether they love or nay really love and then you said stewardship. Could you just brief me on that really quick ’cause I missed it in your point? Sure, stewardship is about counting the cost, right? We have finite resources. Think about what we often call the three M’s or what least we used to: men, material, money. So, any country, whether it’s Botswana or the United States, only has so much of those things. And it’s really a Christian principle to say we’re gonna count the cost before we engage in this endeavor.

Now think about how different that view is from at the one end, kind of extreme pacifism that says we’re never even going to get to that point, or extreme holy war which says the cost doesn’t matter because what we’re going to do is we’re going to throw everything at it and we’re going to burn it all to the ground and we’re justified in doing that. Neither of those two extremes takes a stewardship approach to how people in groups, people in groups in society under a government, how they deal with threats to their security.

You can just say it loud. Oh, here it comes, here comes. Thank you for your talk. I appreciate it. I believe in a Just War theory but I had a couple questions that I think you could help clarify. One is on the question of legitimate authority. I mean, you’ve got instances where the American Revolution, for example, or you mean the American War of Independence, correct? Oh, correct. And the right and the the Jewish resistance against the Nazis. Those are two examples where there wasn’t a political authority and you can’t always have the same political authority all the time.

So how does Just War theory answer that? And then secondly, does Just War theory help us understand not just moral obligations in war but possibly the moral obligation to go to war, right? Because it generally seems to be able to justify versus like telling people yes, we should now go to war morally. Sure, so I’m gonna emphasize that first one. If I forget the second, hey, back. Let me distinguish on the one hand between something that happens within society, which is civil disobedience and which has kind of been in the news lately, from rebellion and revolution, okay?

And civil disobedience, I would just say, please read Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from a Birmingham jail. No one has said it better and, by the way, you’ll just be kind of embarrassed with American behavior right now when you read Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which is deeply rooted in Christian theology. Okay, no, but you asked about actually going to fight, not just marching or something. So, the reason I say the American War for Independence is this. We call it the American Revolution, but it wasn’t a revolution in the normal sense.

The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, etc. A real revolution burns everything to the ground. That’s what a revolution is. A revolution burns it all off the ground, has an idealistic view of the future, and it usually does that through things like the Cultural Revolution or the genocide that we saw that the Khmer Rouge perpetrated on its own people. In contrast, the American War for Independence, it didn’t want to burn anything down. It actually reinforced the colonial charters and the rights of the colonists in a very British way.

It did not try to disestablish what it meant and in terms of their civil or the criminal law. Okay, so that’s a distinction I want to make. But nonetheless, you asked a powerful question, and I wrote a great article with a grad student named Nathan Gill about this in the Journal of Military Ethics, and the it’s become fashionable lately to say, “Oh, the American War for I

ndependence wasn’t legitimate because it was Christians rebelling against Authority. If you really look at the history of what happens in that 20 year period in the run-up to the war, you see over and over again the colonists are saying we have these real grievances. You took over my house, you put soldiers in my house. I have young daughters; I don’t want soldiers quartered in my house. So the violations of individual rights, liberty, and property were very, very significant.

The argument that colonial preachers, most importantly Daniel Mayhew made at the time, was that the senior authority (and by the way, this goes back to John Calvin if Keith is still here, he’ll tell us) was terrorizing the people. So it was the role of intermediate authorities to make a decision. Do we, are we complicit? Do we do it, the state tells us, and repress the people? Or do we stand in, as the intermediate authority, protect the people and can fight upwards against tyranny? John Calvin gives us an important example of how average citizens, not leaders, might do that.

The argument the colonists made was that the provincial legislatures had the authority to make the decision to fight back against London. So that’s the legitimate Authority. Does that make sense? The colonists argued that their elected local leaders, you know, in Virginia, in Boston, etc., that they, acting on behalf of their constituents, could push back against tyranny. Okay, by the way, if you don’t believe me on this point, in other words, if you don’t think it’s legit, let me say this: one was the shot fired around the world.

It was at Lexington Concord. When was it? It was around April of what year, 1775. When was the Declaration of Independence? 1776, more than a year later. In fact, in July of 1775, the colonists sent two more petitions, out of dozens, kind of demanding their rights. One is called the Declaration Rights and Grievances, one was called the Olive Branch Petition, trying one last time, even though six weeks before, blood had been shed at Concord in Lexington, they tried one last time, last resort, and still London cracked down on them.

Let me make a point though, you’re asking about individuals as well. Augustine all the way through Martin Luther King Jr. said, “You know, an unjust law is no law at all.” And in the American military, since at least Vietnam, we have an injunction: if you’re given an unjust order by law, you are not supposed to fulfill that. Now, I raise this because of the two women who lied, our previous speakers talked specifically about deceit and lying, right? The two midwives were singled out by John Calvin for standing up to Pharaoh and saving human life.

The question is, and you know the story, it’s the story of Moses that the two Hebrew midwives were ordered by Pharaoh, “Take the boy babies and throw them in the Nile,” and they lied to him. John Calvin writes that that was the right thing to do, that they were not in a position of any power. All they could do was either obey the king or save human life. That there wasn’t some other way they could have, in there, because they were so low on the totem pole, they could either save human life or lie or die, and someone else would then kill all the babies.

That’s a sophisticated level of Christian thinking. You asked about the Holocaust yesterday. I mean, that’s an example that’s a real-world example of people being deceitful to save human life because they recognized it was an unjust order from Pharaoh. So they were acting as unto the Lord.

Good afternoon. My name is Claudia; I’m a recent grad from the University Sanford School. So, you addressed how Just War addresses the reasons to go out to war, and Just at War. Do you feel like there’s any guidance with Just War theory for counterinsurgencies where there’s a lot of the just military operations, but also a need to maybe rebuild states, to provide services for the military, to be doing functions that are not specifically related to force or violence?

Yeah, and if there is, in work, and we probably look for that. Sure, two separate things. One is, I’ll say something about insurgencies, but first, let me say something about what’s called use postbellum. In the Just War tradition, actually historically, scholars didn’t say a lot about what happens at war’s end because they just assumed that that would just kind of fold into the larger thing about law and civilization.

It’s been in the last 15 years that a group of us have written in this area about justice at war’s end for a variety of reasons, but to really kind of identify both an international law and moral practice, what that might look like. For instance, at the end of the Balkan Wars, what do you do in a post-genocide? Not just to bring the perpetrators to justice, which is incredibly important, but also to set the ground for a long-term order and for reconciliation or conciliation, as I call it in my writing.

And there’s really three principles of use postbellum, at least according to Eric Patterson. One is order; you have to stop the bullets. That’s actually really, really hard in places like Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan. And then in some cases, you can take steps towards justice, and what you’re hoping for, in, and it’s actually pretty, it takes a lot of time, is steps towards ultimate conciliation of some sort.

And I’m not talking about Kumbaya; I’m talking about being able to, what Jean Bethke Elshtain called, knowing, forgetting this happened. It was terrible, and I’m choosing not to define the future, rather, of myself or the guy I was fighting. I’m choosing not to define the future based on the past. That’s not easy to do; we could talk more about how that happens, but it’s a very Christian notion to be able to transcend, for there to be some sort of political forgiveness.

You know, forgiveness is one thing between two people, it’s another thing between two collectives, two groups. It’s very, very hard. Now, separately, you asked about, does Just War have anything to say about rebel counter-revolutionaries, insurgencies, and stuff like that, right? Or not really? Okay, I would say that that’s one of those prudential judgments.

And just as an aside, I bet I know that the conference having to focus on Christian national security, I’m assuming that many people here are people of faith. And let me just say that I think in particular, in evangelical churches, we don’t do nearly enough just raw praying for the wisdom of leaders, for the safety of the troops, that cooler heads will prevail on both sides of a conflict. And I could give you a long list, but more energetic prayer is very, very important to meet the kinds of things that you’re talking about, right?

And by the way, if you didn’t vote for whoever’s in office at that time, then you should pray twice as much, right? You should pray twice as much if you didn’t vote for Donald Trump, you should have prayed twice as much if you didn’t vote for Obama because you want the good of the country, right?

Thank you for the talk. Joshua Hasty; I’m a doctoral candidate at Old Dominion University. So, two-part question. One, part of your talk dealt with the probability of success, and I wonder how, and the particularly the limitation of resources, right? Limited resources, focus, how does plain, plain and simple wisdom, right, interact with the normative requirements of Just War theory when there are a variety of important strategic threats to contend with?

And the second question, so we talked about the measures and standards of discrimination, and this links a little bit with David’s talk that we just finished. How do we innovate, or do we need to innovate our discussions about discrimination as we move into cyber warfare, cyber espionage, as you want to call it?

Sure, let me just repeat it back to you, and then maybe we’ll give it to Dan Strand, and Dan, let’s hear your question real quick, and maybe I’m watching that, I’m watching the time.

I had a Daniel Strand at ASU; thanks for your talk; it’s fantastic. When I hear students and people engaging in Just War, oftentimes the tendency is to see Just War as a theory, which it’s not. Sorry if you thought it was a theory; it’s a practical doctrine, at least as the way it’s developed in history. But too often, we get caught in the retrospective, which wars are just, in which aren’t, and the Just War tradition originally, or for most of its existence, was about giving people practical guidance in statecraft, particularly Kings.

So I guess my question to you is, just where you sit at Regent and working with students, how do you think it’s best to communicate that, and how do we get that message out in a more effective manner so that question leads to the next topic, and are we at that point, Mark?

Something, so there’s actually about five questions there. So, Josh, the first one you asked about kind of prudence in a dangerous world. So there’s a lot of threats on the horizon. I think that what I would say is that the classical Just War tradition, which has been about providing advice to statesmen and a framework for restraint in action, would suggest that at all times, you’d be

onitoring the international environment, our generals, our diplomats, and our elected leaders— that’s you—must act with restraint. You need to keep it limited and maintain that stewardship principle at all times. This approach would, at least in theory, prevent you from engaging in behaviors that would be self-destructive in the long run. In other words, if you can’t pay for it, you would make decisions starting with self-defense. That’s where we begin with the U.S. regarding cyber.

The Just War tradition links very much to cyber issues. Another speaker is going to address that, so I’ll avoid it for now. However, I will say that I’m sending Mark Tule, the head of this event, a bibliography that he can email to all the students and participants. This bibliography will include the top 20 books in this area. Currently, there isn’t a good book on cyber ethics, but Merriman G. Keen, who teaches at our university, is publishing the first book on cyber security policy and ethics next month.

She elucidates three different ethical traditions, the trade-offs involved in each, and how they apply to the real world today. I recommend that to you. Dan Strand asked the million-dollar question: there’s no such thing as Just War theory, although we often call it that. In my books, I refer to it as Just War thinking because it’s a school of thought, not a definitive theory. It’s rooted in an Augustinian realist tradition, among others.

You’re right; it’s a doctrine or practical wisdom. There’s a great body of literature and an agreed-upon set of principles, although there is some debate about their order. The larger question is, when it comes to Just War, where do we go from here? Why isn’t there more teaching on this when discussing issues of life and death? It never ceases to amaze me how many universities offer classes on the theory of basket weaving and other esoteric topics, yet not on fundamental issues of life and death in our society today.

I’m not going to answer that directly, but I will discuss what faculty can do to raise a sub-discipline in the social sciences, humanities, and law of Just War thinking. Faculty, think for a second: was there a discipline of human rights in academia fifty years ago? No. Was there, more than twenty years ago, a sub-discipline of what we now call human security? No. Yet, they have their own journals and conferences and meet on the margins of larger, established academic conferences.

You can’t teach a course on international security today without including some sessions on human security, which developed in the mid-1980s. There are four major journals in that field, and they publish widely in all the security journals. So, why is it that when it comes to Just War thinking, we haven’t established the same presence? Scholars in the room, the next generation of academics and thinkers, we need to permeate our field.

We must retake this area of Western civilization in the academy with moral thinking on the ethics of war. There are a couple of ways to do this. First, we need a name. We’ve debated whether to identify as Christian realists or something else. If you have a better name, feel free to suggest it, but “Christian realists” seems to be the best umbrella for those of us who are Augustinians.

The problem with professors is that we often define ourselves by our disciplines: political scientists, anthropologists, lawyers. What we really need is a larger school that transcends those disciplines. By the way, in the UK, there’s something called the English School. You scholars know what I’m talking about; it’s transdisciplinary, and everyone understands what it means. It operates from a set of assumptions in the social sciences, much like what’s called critical theory.

We need a similar approach. Our best bet is to call ourselves Christian realists, while the fallback could be “new Augustinians,” although I don’t think that’s very effective. Second, we need scholars to develop disciples in this area. This needs to be taken seriously; we must infuse our churches with this thinking. Every scholar who cares about these issues should gift their pastor books like Demi and Charles’ work on Just War or Nigel Biggar’s work on defensive war.

You should volunteer in your churches and offer seminars or Sunday School classes on these topics. Additionally, you need to make disciples in the academy by establishing a robust research agenda on the ethics of security, peace, and post-conflict issues. This means establishing labs, seeking grants, writing books, publishing journal articles, and transmitting knowledge to the next generation.

We need this in the military, at the State Department, and across society. Evangelicals, in particular, are willfully underprepared in this area. Christianity Today, in the past 12 years, has published two articles, both of which were book reviews. Yet, they have cover stories about topics like wearing a nose ring or whether Christians can drink, which are not serious discussions.

Charisma, a secondary evangelical publication, had one major article and a throwaway piece over the past seven years on these topics. We have a lot of work to do, but there is a point of light: Providence. My thanks go to the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Providence is a journal providing nuanced writing in a sophisticated yet accessible manner. The articles are short and available to laypeople, not just professionals.

Moreover, Providence is bringing together people who may know each other but aren’t collaborating or having meaningful conversations. In that way, it can sponsor a discipline. Scholars, I’m throwing the ball to you to take the next step so we don’t continue down the path of irresponsible views on critical national security issues. Thank you, Mark.

I was hoping you would ask me about James Bond. So, how do we raise Just War children? I’m so glad you asked this. People will be discussing this in other areas, but I bet they will point this out as well. My guess is that Tom Farr has talked about religious freedom in the context of the family, and Jennifer Marshall usually emphasizes the family too. I think she’ll probably have something to say about how we raise the next generation.

The biggest issue is that our culture, including our churches, has become overly nice. We’ve tried to protect our children from the graphic images of what’s happening in the world, shielding them from the news. It amazes me that we won’t let them know what’s happening in reality but allow them to play violent video games. This is a strange form of hypocrisy.

One of the ways to address this is from an early age by not avoiding difficult subjects found in the Old Testament. We shouldn’t shy away from these topics but provide a Christian worldview. We need to discuss good and evil and use every opportunity in the culture to highlight points of light and responsibility.

I tell my kids all the time that, although Harry Potter isn’t a Christian book, it reflects the battle of good versus evil. Luke Skywalker represents that same struggle, and the redemption of Darth Vader is incredible. This narrative reflects what God wants to do in humanity. So, that’s the approach we should take, although I don’t read James Bond to my children.