Identity & Literature: Harry Potter & Why We All Would Love a Sorting Hat

I’m pretty sure I cheated. I took the Harry Potter house sorting quiz that Rowling created. I got spit out as Gryffindor, but come on… I know my Harry Potter too well. I might as well have been Harry, sitting under the hat, thinking Not Slytherin. Not Slytherin. Because I probably should have come out Slytherin or Ravenclaw.

But that’s why we would all love a Sorting Hat. It’s something outside of me that sees into me—sees my inmost thoughts person and tells me who I am. That’s much easier and more fun than me trying to define myself for others, and then hoping they buy it. Self-created identity, as I’ve written before, is exhausting. You’re always aware that your identity is only propped up by your own belief in that identity. So when you start doubting yourself, all you have to fall back on is—you.

The beauty of the Sorting Hat is there’s no test to take. It’s not a team draft where you’re lined up, waiting to be picked last. It’s not something you have to qualify for, and therefore it makes no statement about your relative value. Rather, it affirms that you are a certain sort of person. You have a givenness to your identity that brings value to a certain group of people that you are sorted into.

The Bible and Church Can Be Your Sorting Hat

The Sorting Hat provides two identity solutions we’re all looking for. The church can provide both of these, and do it even better, if it’s working how it ought to.

1. It gives you an external and stable identity attached to a set of values and ideals. Each Harry Potter house is characterized by certain prized virtues. Let’s say you are sorted into Hufflepuff. Hufflepuffs value hard work, patience, loyalty, and fair play. These values are fixed and absolute.
   
   As an individual, you may tend to work hard but be willing to cut corners. Your preferences, however, do not overturn values that are fixed and passed down through centuries. The pressure is on you to change, not the House. Peer pressure will incline you to assimilate further into the values that your House champions. You are given an identity that you will want to grow into further.
   
   This is precisely what happens as a Christian in a church. When you are “sorted” by God into his house, you are given a new identity. You are one of his children, part of his household (Ephesians 2:19). You are counted as righteous, holy, loving, good, strong, and faithful because you receive the identity of Jesus. As you stay and grow in this house of God, you become more of what you are.
   
   In the house of God’s people, you walk into an identity you don’t have to earn—it’s given to you. You’re accepted into the house for no other reason except belief in Jesus. But you also given a clear identity model (hero) to live up to—Jesus himself. You don’t have to go out and discover or create this identity, and it’s never going to change.
   
   
   
2. The Sorting Hat gives you a permanent community. One of the beauties of the House system (a practice still common in many British schools) is that no one gets to leave their house. If there’s anything consumeristic American culture could use, it would be more of this.
   
   If you’re sorted as a Slytherin, that’s it. There’s no year-end evaluation where you and your peers do a round-robin-review of each other to decide whether you’re still a good fit. You can even end up hating all your fellow Slytherins and only hanging out with Gryffindors when you have the choice, but you will still remain a Slytherin. You will dorm with other Slytherins, attend classes with Slytherin, earn and lose points for Slytherin, and be served your meals at the Slytherin table.
   
   This enforced permanence, however, tends to make the above situation (wanting to defect from your house) much more unlikely than if houses worked like clubs or fraternities. Because an external power did the selecting and it’s one and done, you approach your house with a different mentality. There’s less lingering wistfulness about whether, really, you’d be better off in Ravenclaw.
   
   In a Sorting Hat community, you will quickly forge ahead to make the best of it. You will still like some people better than others. You will dislike certain representatives of your community and be embarrassed by others. But you will love and be proud of the community as a whole. You will mentor younger students as they come into the house for no other reason than because they are bonded to you through the sorting process.
   
   Can you imagine what church would feel like it worked this way? If Christians saw themselves placed into the community of God’s people only by his power and grace, and immediately sought to embrace, cooperate with, and befriend the brothers and sisters God had placed around them?
   
   What if Christians committed to staying in a Bible-teaching church through changes in its pastor, music, programming, size, and friends moving away? What kinds of community depth are we missing out on? How many people know the joys of teaching children who one day come to church with their own children?
   
   The beauty of the church is that its community truly is permanent, though it often feel less so. As a Christian, you will be in the same house as every other believer—not for seven years, but for eternity. Enjoy your House.

Enjoy identity & literature? Read here about Huckleberry Finn and Lies of Loyalty.