I’m a bit of a Harry Potter fan. Okay, maybe that’s an understatement. I’m a Harry Potter fanatic. I’ve read the books and watched the movies so many times I lost count long ago. So earlier this month, when, on my way home from a mission trip to Nicaragua, I was waylaid in Orlando for a two-night layover due to snow, there was no question as to where I was going to spend my free day: I told the members of my group they could go where they liked, but I was going to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. And for one magical day, I roamed the streets of Hogsmeade. I wandered the aisles of Honeydukes and Zonko’s, I had my first-ever sip of Butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks, and—delight of all delights— I bought my own 13 inch holly wand from Ollivander’s. It was a dream come true for my big, dorky, Muggle heart.

On our way home from the theme park, one of the members of my delegation made the comment that some Christians would find our day at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter an ironic way to end a mission trip where we had shared the love of Christ with so many by word and song and hard physical labor. I cringed when she said it, not just because Harry Potter is my fictional boyfriend, but because the entire series can easily be read as a Christian allegory.

Dumbledore—old, wizened, and white-haired—is the perfect picture of the God of traditional Western Christianity. Not only does he look the part, but throughout the series Dumbledore displays an uncanny omniscience, and his great benevolence is exceeded only by his great power. And if Dumbledore is God, then Harry is clearly Jesus: Harry, whose father is from an old and revered wizarding family, while his mother is a Muggle-born witch of no noteworthy descent; Harry, whose famous lightning shaped scar is merely a physical reminder of the fact that he, like Jesus, was marked, even before his birth, to be a savior.

The similarities between Harry and Jesus are many, but the clincher comes in the final book when Harry chooses to sacrifice himself to save others. Miraculously, though Harry walks knowingly into the arms of death, the encounter fails to kill him. But it does succeed in killing that part of him which was tied to death in the first place. And not only does Harry’s self-sacrifice liberate himself from death, it liberates an entire people from the effects of evil! Where have we heard this story before?

Ending our mission trip at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was not ironic. It was fitting. To the naysayer, I consent: Harry Potter is not the greatest story ever told—that title was secured 2,000 years ago by the Author of all things. But this Hogsmeade-loving, Butterbeer-guzzling, wand-toting Muggle, for one, thinks it comes pretty darn close.