I graduated from a fundamentalist Christian high school that saw Harry Potter as the biggest threat to a child’s healthy upbringing since the invention of birth control.

Picking up Harry Potter for the first time gave me a feeling I think a pre-teen might have drinking their father’s beer with a friend behind the backyard fence.

I was betraying my cultural upbringing, but the act did not result in the rejection of my faith. Instead, I found that I identified with many of the book’s values and think most people, especially Christians, should too.

So, hold the torch angry parents and teachers alike, and let’s work out why Harry Potter might be more valuable than bonfire material. Because no college student should have to spend the summer after their junior year trying to get to book six, so they can watch the movie in theaters.

(Just a warning, I am going to tell the ending to the Harry Potter series.)

Christian philosopher Arthur Holmes had this neat phrase:

“All truth is God’s truth.”

It explains why some Christians fight evolution so fiercely, instead of just agreeing to disagree. For many it’s a seed of doubt, and it scares them.

I have to write it again: All truth is God’s truth.

So, when authors like J.K. Rowling tell the story about how this really humble and loving person has to die to destroy the ultimate evil, and then he raises from the dead, I jump from my seat and praise God.

The seventh book read more like the Bible story of Jesus than Satan worship. (Jesus, this really humble and loving god-man, died to defeat Satan’s stronghold on the world by overcoming death and raising from the dead.)

I’m not calling Harry Potter Jesus, or saying it was Rowling’s intention to make Potter like Jesus, but I find it ironic that a writer that is so despised by ultra-conservative Christians actually agrees with them in such a profound way.

So what’s the deal with Christians burning piles of these books?

Cultural changes frighten fundamentalist Christians for two reasons. The first is that many American Christians, like all Americans, have a feeling of entitlement when things don’t go their way.

It’s not that I necessarily oppose their political action; American laws give the right to everyone to fight for what they believe is right. But then they do silly things like burn Harry Potter and preach hellfire and brimstone on popular street corners.

There isn’t any real explanation of this, other than it doesn’t look much like Jesus.

Second, Christianity as a whole is one of the most culturally flexible religions out there. The average Christian isn’t a fat, white preacher in a Mercedes, it’s an African living in a dirt-floor hut.

So when Christians aren’t at the forefront of change, they’re hit in the face with how much they’ve failed to embrace their communities.

Instead of deciding to love their community and work on changing the hearts and minds of individual people, like Jesus did back in the day, they scramble to change their community through laws, petitions and crazy protests.

Needless to say, it backfires on the driving point of the Christian faith, which is love God and love people. It angers the Christians who authentically love people, despite if they read Harry Potter, Playboy or the Anarchist’s Cookbook.

Not all Christians opposed Harry Potter, just like not all Christians are politically active or remotely conservative. I know a couple pastors who’ve read the series a couple times and eagerly wait in line for movie tickets.

The best Bible study I’ve gone to had a couple six packs and a bottle of Riesling.

So why pick on witches?

Most Christians believe witches exist, not the Monty-Python, European, burn-‘em-at-the stake kind of witches but the witches that sacrifice small animals in dark places covered in graffiti.

The media often covers witch groups as either silly or friendly. I am sure there are witch groups that are just as they portray, but I’ve heard from several counselors and therapists that those trying to get out of witchcraft often show distinctive problems.

“I see quite a bit of people involved in a cult community or activity, they seem to struggle with higher rates of depression and those kinds of activities (i.e. cutting and suicidal tendencies),” said Cyndie Bohnett, a Redmond therapist who works with abuse cases.

Cults are so community oriented, people trying to get out of them find it increasingly difficult because it requires a total life change, which often compounds existing issues, she added.

Several churches are reminded of witchcraft cults when random curses, like a twisted nail pounded through a Bible, find their way on church doorsteps.

Regardless of whether or not you believe in the authenticity of witchcraft, it’s not all that counter-cultural to not want your children to dabble in something with that track record.

Still, Harry Potter isn’t any more capable of making witches than C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, and Lewis was a Christian writer.

So, as a Christian, I apologize for assuming a sense of entitlement, instead of gratitude and being judgmental, instead of loving. I guess that’s why I’m among many Christians who would consider themselves Harry Potter converts.

[Reach columnist Celeste Flint at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]