The Art of Mastering Death

Harry Potter, Christianity, and the Quest for Immortality

My friend Tim did a recent post about Harry Potter, and I had been sitting on this one for a while so I decided to post it since I only posted a mini-course this week.

To defeat the last enemy, death, Harry knew he had to willingly die. But there was an even deeper magic in play.

I would certainly forgive you for thinking that the Harry Potter stories are mostly about magic. But something more profound confronts us in these narratives.

Driving the story forward is a question, sometimes on the surface, but often lurking just beneath. This question, simply put, is “How do we properly stand before death?” When Harry discovers his parents’ gravesite, he finds 1 Corinthians 15:26 etched into their tombstone: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Harry struggled to understand why this, of all things, would mark their grave. The sentiment, that death was to be defeated, was too close an echo of his enemies’ agenda. It was even in their name: the Death Eaters. Harry was troubled that his parents could affirm such a notion, having not yet realized his own calling.

Harry was called to be the Master of Death, because no matter how hard he struggles against it, his path is inevitably interwoven with death itself.

Rowling’s narrative, from beginning to end, is about defeating death. Voldemort is obsessed with it. Because of this, Harry must discover that defeating death is not an isolated quest for the Death Eaters, but is something we all have to grapple with. All must stand before death. Death is the great equalizer of humankind. Harry, of course, is constantly confronted with death; his life being marked by its continual presence. Harry’s worry that his parents’ tombstone sounds like the Death Eaters grasps the heart of the Harry Potter narrative. The last enemy to be defeated is death, for both the good and the evil.

A Door to Somewhere More

Consider the Death Eaters. They think they can wield themselves and their power to conquer death. They think they can consume it to dominate and win. But death, like the power the Death Eaters seek, can only warp and defile. As they consume it, it consumes them. Beyond their recognition, when they grasp this power, they become more snake-like – death poisons their soul and makes them less human and more like the animals (a theme almost too obviously biblical to be noticed).

Against this folly, Harry and his friends offer their allegiance to the Order of the Phoenix. The phoenix is a bird that accepts its death because it trusts in resurrection. Both groups must stand before death. The Death Eaters falsely believe that they can wield power to never die. The Order of the Phoenix understands that death is now engrained in reality, even if death itself can be conquered. Death is only defeated by those who come to embrace it as a doorway to something more; to vanquish death, one must walk into its clutches, trusting in resurrection.

If this theme sounds too adult for a children’s book, the greater irony is that it shows up most explicitly in a “bedtime story” that magical parents of the wizarding world would read to their children to teach them about the world. The book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, includes the story called “The Tale of the Three Brothers.” Importantly, this is a children’s story because we all must become like children to embrace the things of the kingdom.

In the tale, the older brother, obsessed with the power to dominate, seeks the most powerful wand ever made, and Death follows wherever it goes. The second brother seeks to cheat Death to bring a loved one back from the dead, and Death offers him the Resurrection Stone. But his love no longer belongs among the living, and so Death deceives this brother as well, conquering the first two brothers with the false belief that they could somehow cheat him.

The third brother asks for something humble and wise, something that would allow him to hide from Death, and so Death offers him the Cloak of Invisibility:

But though Death searched for the third brother for many years, he was never able to find him. It was only when he had attained a great age that the youngest brother finally took off the Cloak of Invisibility and gave it to his son. And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life.1

These brothers depict our own struggles. We are all tempted to seek ways of death to conquer death, and it only warps us further. Life is found through death, and so wisdom will take us down a different road.

The Way of Love

The story about the three brothers is not only a tale for children. The story is true, and the three objects given by Death – the Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility – are called the Deathly Hallows. To unite them would make one a “Master of Death.” Many who learned this, however, misunderstood. Mastering death seems like a way to dominate life and to conquer death – and so those like the oldest brother sought the Hallows for their power. But to truly master death was only available to the one who could walk the path of the youngest brother. Even Dumbledore failed when he discovered the Resurrection Stone, desperate to use it to placate his guilt over the death of his sister. This is why Dumbledore confides to Harry that Harry is the better man, because Dumbledore realized that he couldn’t unite the Hallows in wisdom:

Maybe a man in a million could unite the Hallows, Harry. I was fit only to possess the meanest of them, the least extraordinary. I was fit to own the Elder Wand, and not to boast of it, and not to kill with it. I was permitted to take and to use it, because I took it, not for gain, but to save others from it.

But the Cloak, I took out of vain curiosity, and so it could never have worked for me as it works for you, its true owner. The stone I would have used in an attempt to drag back those who were at peace, rather than to enable my self-sacrifice, as you did. You are the worthy possessor of the Hallows.2

To unite the Hallows one must utilize them in love and for love. Dumbledore could wield the Elder Wand in wisdom because he rejected arrogant boasting and used it to serve and protect. The Cloak could be used to hide others, as Harry so often did, or even hide himself so that he could fight for his friends (as he does in the final battle).3 The Stone was not to be used to bring back the dead from their peace, revealing one’s self-centeredness, but, like Harry, using it to sacrifice oneself for others.

The way of love is marked by sacrifice. This is not simply a nice fairy tale notion but is the deep magic ingrained in the fabric of reality.

Harry is the greater man because he is driven by a deeper wisdom that allows him to walk, willingly, to his death. By giving himself so fully to the way of love, Harry was able to unite the Hallows according to the power of love. He used the Cloak of Invisibility to walk to Voldemort who was waiting to kill him. Like the younger brother, Harry had come to accept that his time had come, so he used the Cloak to greet Death as a friend. He used the Resurrection Stone, not to undo death, but for the courage to walk to his own. Harry realized: “It did not matter about bringing them [Harry’s lost loved ones] back, for he was about to join them. He was not really fetching them: They were fetching him.”4

The power to defeat death was the love that Voldemort could never understand, which is why true power and freedom evaded him.5 Unlike Voldemort, Harry is not a slave to death because love prevails in his heart. The Hallows are united only by the one who embraced self-sacrificial love, which is why the one who tries to save his life with the Hallows would lose it. Only the one who used the Hallows for others would discover that mastering death was a refusal to live under its reign. By the time Harry discovered what must be done, he had finally become the kind of person who could do it.

The Ultimate Master of Death

Jesus confronts the temptation, we might say desperation, to master death when He states, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24). In Jesus we see that one’s posture before death matters, and it matters a great deal. Jesus’ ministry was a confrontation with death in all of its power, and He unraveled it from within. Jesus does not defeat death with domination, interestingly enough, or with a cunning use of worldly power, but through faithfulness. The Word of God declares,

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself [Jesus] likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery (Hebrews 2:14-15).

It was in death that Christ broke the bonds of death, and in death where He defeated the one with the power of death. As the Christ-figure in the narrative, Harry must accept this same path. Death is a power that lurks beneath the brokenness of the world, and death’s presence reveals the truth of the heart. Often, when confronted with death, fear and anxiety pour forth; the fear of death subjects one to its slavery.

We might think of the Malfoys, projecting power and success but owned by fear. They turn to social standing, sophistication, and elitism as a way to avoid the reality that fear dominates their life. Though they seek to dominate others to hide from their fear, it haunts them. They are slavishly driven by fear, and yet project strength as a way to hide the truth.

As with all good stories in this genre, fantasy is meant to unveil reality. We too stand before death, always confronted by its looming inevitability. The fear of death can derail a life, and it can leave one numbed to the life available in this age. But there is a way to see death as a friend, recognizing that “to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). As Paul meditates on death he recognizes, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:23), revealing that, for the Christian, death is not an end but a beginning.

Ultimately, throughout the Harry Potter narratives, we see many biblical truths revealed, but perhaps the most central is the fact that if you try to save your life you will lose it (Matthew 16:25). Voldemort, desperate to save his life, ends up with no life to save. Harry, the chosen one, in meekness, humility, and kindness walks the path to death trusting that it is only through death that it is truly conquered.

In the early Church, an image of a fish hook was often used to describe Jesus’ work to conquer death. Death, that great sea monster, swallowed Jesus whole, not seeing the hook of divinity hidden within His humanity. Death swallowed the author of life, and life unraveled death from within. Jesus walked to His death, seeming weak and helpless, when He was actually the conquering Lord of glory dealing the death blow to death itself.

Jesus is the ultimate master of death; whose resurrection unveils a path beyond the grave and the truth that the last enemy truly has been defeated. This conqueror of death offers three gifts as well – faith, hope, and love – by which we too can become the kinds of people who master death in an age so beholden to it. Like Harry, we need to trust the way of true power, the power of love, putting our hope in the power that prevails to life everlasting.

For a talk I gave on Harry Potter and the Christian view of power, click here (sorry the audio isn’t great).

For Kyle’s personal substack, go to kylestrobel.substack.com

Thank you to the Anselm Society for their willingness to let me republish this here. I wrote this originally for their society, and the audio above is from a special event I did with them. Check out the Anselm Society and their work here.