Come Friday, my kids and I will be standing in line at our local bookstore, waiting for the stroke of midnight and the release of the final Harry Potter book.

We reserved copies months ago. In February I put a gizmo on my laptop computer screen that counts down the days, minutes and seconds until "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will be ours.

Before Friday my kids will be taking me to the latest movie (of the fifth book), which they've already seen and pronounced good.

Not everyone in our social circle shares our enthusiasm. Some evangelical Christians reject J.K. Rowling's books because they fear -- pretty unreasonably, I think -- that the books' fictional world of witchcraft will desensitize impressionable young souls to the real, and destructive, thing.

I don't know how many of my fellow evangelicals hold that position. It's something I've learned to ask about tentatively.

Long ago I queried a new college buddy, "So, do Southern Baptists drink?" He quipped, "Not in front of each other." That's how the Potter thing is.

Unlike alcohol, though, the upside to the Potter saga is huge. Of course, it makes reading great fun. Ms. Rowling's imagination is stunningly rich, her way with names Dickensian. Besides characters like Sirius Black, Percy Weasley and Luna Lovegood, there's the Leaky Cauldron (village pub), The Daily Prophet (newspaper) and Diagon Alley (location of wizarding supply shops). There are laugh-out-loud eccentrics, nutty professors and, more slyly, a send-up of officious bureaucrats everywhere.

Missing this once-a-generation treasure, especially over moral objections, is a sad case of missing the forest for the trees -- or the allegory for the abracadabras.

Any child who's read the first book, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," knows what the whole series is about. My 12-year-old daughter put it for me this way: Life is a battle between good and evil, you have to choose a side and either way, it's gonna cost you.

Lord Voldemort, the villain, states his philosophy during the first book's final battle: "There is no good and evil, there is only power." All six books, so far, have offered protagonists who reject this cynical view and give their lives to defeat it.

Beyond this basic moral literacy, however, the Potter story, like "The Chronicles of Narnia," contains a wealth of Christian allusions. Some see in the relationship of Albus Dumbledore and Harry a parallel to that of God the Father and Jesus the Son.

Dumbledore is the fatherly head of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with a special bond to one student, Harry, who was marked from infancy as the Chosen One. Harry's supernatural powers are revealed as he matures, turning some bitterly against him and inspiring others to follow, however falteringly.

Then there's Lord Voldemort as Satan. Like the archangel Lucifer at the throne of God, Voldemort studied with Dumbledore as the handsome Tom Riddle and graduated as one of Hogwarts' most brilliant students ever. After disappearing, he returned as the Dark Lord, was nearly killed in an encounter with Harry but survived.

The Christian analogies are imperfect but fascinating, and there's a crucial one at issue in the much-anticipated ending soon to be revealed.

As part of the build-up, ABC Family Channel recently re-ran the early Potter movies. I caught a snippet -- Dumbledore explaining why Voldemort and his minions couldn't touch Harry: "Evil can't stand up to love."

Harry's mother, Lily, had put herself between Voldemort and her infant son, dying in his place, his body scarred by the battle but now untouchable -- transfigured, if you will -- through her sacrificial love.

News reports say gamblers placing bets on how the story will end are leaning toward a Messianic narrative. They think Harry will die, sacrificing himself to save the world from the Evil One.

Whether Ms. Rowling intended any of these religious references is fiercely debated, but she has made her unsentimental message explicit: Good will triumph, but not without cost.

My daughter, who has read all six books at least 22 times each, hopes Harry Potter survives the final showdown. But the conclusion this intricate tale seems headed for is that whether Harry lives or dies, he has fought the good fight with everything he has, and therefore he has won. So have we, vicariously.