7 Heavenly Virtues: Charity (Long)

[Peg Kerr]

No: HPFGUIDX 4371

The third of the 7 Heavenly Virtues is called "Charity."  When I'm
speaking of charity in this discussion, I am referring to "love," in the
sense of the Greek word "agape."  If I remember correctly the scraps I
picked up in high school, college and graduate school during courses on
Greek tragedy and biblical translation--and that's a big IF--agape is
"pure" love, as between God and man, or selfless love between man and
and his fellow man (yeah, yeah, I mean both male and female when I say
"man" here--although the Greeks might not agree--but that's another
topic).   Agape love is distinguished from Philos, love between friends,
and eros, erotic love.  I'm not going to go into an extensive discussion
of definitions and the difficulty of translating Greek into English.
Classics majors may feel free, however, to chime in with helpful nuances
I'm missing if they'd like.

Anyway, generosity, helpfulness, benevolence, mercy are related to this
concept of charity/agape love.  Note that they all have the common
component of selflessness.

Now let's look at this idea, which we'll call "charity" throughout the
Harry Potter books.  Several points to consider:

First of all, a little background: you'll remember if you went to the
website I referred to earlier

www.deadlysins.com/virtues.html

that the first three of the 7 Heavenly Virtues are derived from
Christian writings, and St. Paul described charity as the most important
one ("so faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of
these is love.")  [Again, a clarification: for purposes of these
discussions, yes, I'm trying to view these Virtues in a secular, more
general sense.  I know that we have pagan, Jewish, agnostic, etc., as
well as Christian members on this list, and I think the issue of moral
development, as I'm trying to trace it in these book, is of interest to
all of these groups, not just Christians.  I'm simply acknowledging that
the first three Virtues, at least, are derived from Christian writings.]

Charity, besides being the greatest of the virtues, it is perhaps the
hardest, the most difficult to achieve, as it is the most antithetical
to natural human instinct. (I re-read this sentence and realize I'm
probably revealing a Christian bias.  I believe that human beings, if
unredeemed, are basically selfish.  Oh, well.  We'll accept that as my
bias and move on.)  As such, achieving the virtue of Charity is a
particular challenge to Harry in his moral development.  I hope that
what I mean shall become clear in the following discussion.

We'll begin, as always, with the Dursleys.

Now, the Dursleys are not very reflective people.  I suppose if you were
to ask Vernon and Petunia, they would say that they love Dudley very
much.  And they would probably characterize themselves as
generous--after all, haven't they taken Harry in and given him a home?

Neither of these statements hold up very well.  The fact is, the Dudleys
don't have a scrap of agape love/charity.

Their cruelties against Harry I've enumerated before.  Toward Dudley, on
the other hand, Vernon and Petunia would say and probably even believe
that they feel love, but one must doubt a kind of "love" that manifests
itself as blind indulgence that has turned their son into a selfish,
sadistic, greedy monster.

The sad truth is that the only experience Harry had with love before he
came to Hogwarts was the fifteen months he spent with his parents.  And
he lost that love, ironically, because they gave their lives to save
him.  A paradoxical mystery: their love (esp. Lily's, Voldemort implies)
led to the sacrifice which saved Harry's life, yet left him bereft of
that one thing that would have let him enjoy the life they saved for
him: their love.  And, as it was self-sacrificing, it can be
characterized as charity, agape love.

And so for the majority of his life, Harry has been without love.  A
psychologist would say that without it, Harry might be in danger of
having great difficulty in building the moral framework he needs to live
ethically with others.  If you are bonded to no one, why should you care
about other people?  Why not hurt them, use them, discard them--who
cares? a neglected abandoned child might decide, reasoning from his/her
innate human selfishness.

That's what fundamentally causes psychopaths.

That's what, in fact, probably caused Voldemort.

Yet, whatever James and Lily gave him, it seems to have been enough to
start him down the right road, despite what he suffered with the
Dursleys.

He learns to care about Ron and Hermione.  And make no mistake, his
caring for both of them is tested--for Hermione in Book 3 (over the
incident with Scabbers and Crookshanks) and for Ron in Book 4 (over the
Goblet of Fire).  Both tests of friendship are tests of Harry's charity,
and he nearly gets both wrong.  "I gotta tell yeh," Hagrid says,
reproving Harry and Ron for the quarrel with Hermione, "I thought you
two'd value yer friend more'n brooksticks or rats."  Again, with Ron in
Book 4, Harry behaves badly--for example, the scene in the common room,
where Harry loses his temper and throws the button at Ron.  But all
comes out in the end--Harry chooses to set those friendships aright,
partly because events clarify the things that led to misunderstandings,
but partly because he misses the caring and friendship he had with both
Ron and Hermione when he was on the outs with them.  And that is good;
it shows Harry's development.  He has gone from someone who lived
without either giving or receiving charity, who reacted as coldly toward
the Dursleys as they acted toward him, to someone who realizes that
something is missing when relationships go awry.  He is coming to
genuinely care for other people, and not just Ron, Hermione and Hagrid.

As I discussed in the last essay, on hope, Harry sees in Book 3 the
playing out of the drama from the previous generation's struggle with
Voldemort, which foreshadows what he himself will go through, in Book 4
(and presumably beyond).  Specifically, he witnesses Sirius' and Lupin's
confrontation of Peter Pettigrew, which brings this theme of charity
right to the foreground.  Let's look at that pivotal scene again:

"He [Voldemort] was taking over everywhere!" gasped Pettigrew.
"Wh--what was there to be gained by refusing him?"

"What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard who has
ever existed?" said Black, with a terrible fury in his face.  "Only
innocent lives, Peter!"

"You don't understand!" whined Pettigrew.  "He would have killed me,
Sirius!"

"THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black.  "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY
YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!"

<snip>

"NO!" Harry yelled.  He ran forward, placing himself in front of
Pettigrew, facing the wands.  "You can't kill him," he said
breathlessly.  "You can't. . . We'll take him up to the castle.  We'll
hand him over to dementors.  He can go to Azkaban. . . but don't kill
him."

Note Peter's question.  "What was there to be gained by resisting him
[Voldemort]?"  That is pure selfishness speaking.  For those of you
familiar with Lawrene Kohlberg's theory of the stages of moral
development, Peter is stuck at the very first stage, the need to avoid
punishment.  For further reading on Kohlberg's theory, see:
http://moon.pepperdine.edu/gsep/class/ethics/kohlberg/Stages_Moral-Development.html

That is pure HUMANNESS speaking, the natural urge for
self-preservation.  Sirius' answer is profound: the only thing to be
gained when you lose yourself is the knowledge that your gain is for
others, the ones that you love.  Which you can care about ONLY because
you love.  Because Peter did not truly love, he did not truly understand
the enormity of his crime.

But this points up a very hard thing about charity--if you do it right,
you may get nothing for it (if you look at it from the human selfish
point of view).  Just as Lily gave up her life for her son, the true
virtue of charity may mean giving up everything for the one you love.
The comfort you have is knowing that the ones you love would be willing
to do the same for you.  It is like faith, in that having faith may not
mean that you get what you want.  Having charity may gain you nothing
but death at the end of Voldemort's wand . . . and the knowledge that
the lives you have saved have gained a few more seconds, which they will
hopefully use to fight on.

Sirius and Lupin, although they understand the nature of
self-sacrificing love, do not embody charity perfectly.  They would have
died for Peter--but since Peter refused the deal, as far as Sirius and
Lupin are concerned, the deal is off.  "You should have realized," Lupin
said quietly, "that if Voldemort didn't kill you, we would."  This is a
higher level of morality than Peter showed--which was pure selfishness
and wish to avoid punishment--but it is not yet pure charity, as it is
still based somewhat on a tit for tat reasoning.

But Harry intervenes and demonstrates something related to charity: he
shows mercy, something that Peter doesn't deserve.  Harry is profoundly
insightful at this moment, because when Peter admits as much, Harry
tells Peter that he isn't doing it as much for him but for Sirius and
Lupin: "I don't reckon my dad would have wanted them[Sirius and Lupin]
to become killers -- just for you."

I'm not quite sure what exactly has brought Harry to this point in his
moral development.  Bonds with friends, the bitter experience of the
Dursleys to teach him what it was like to live WITHOUT charity, or
perhaps the lingering effects of his mother's sacrifice . . . or
something else, who knows?  Whatever it is, Harry shows here that he
understand charity, and although he wavers and wobbles sometimes, he has
chosen his side.

A few other points, which I am not quite sure how to work into a
coherently flowing essay, so I'll just attack them gracelessly one by
one.

Hermione and the house elves:  I think Hermione thinks she is showing
benevolence and mercy in her dealings with the house elves, but somehow,
her efforts don't seem to be appreciated by anybody.  I'll try to deal
with this in more depth when I do the upcoming essay on the Virtue of
Justice.

Also: Harry, I think, will have to face moral decisions about charity in
the upcoming books which I think will come closer and closer to
resembling his mother and Peter Pettigrew's dilemma.  He will need to
decide, am I willing to stick my neck out for someone I care about?  In
a way he has faced this before to a lesser degree: he did it for Ginny
in the second book, and for Ron during the Second Task in the Fourth
book.  But I think that the upcoming decision(s) will be more stark,
more hope-less.  He took a risk for Ginny, but when he went down into
that tunnel, he still hoped that he would come out alive.  Similarly,
when he went down for Ron, he knew that there was a theoretical risk of
death, but he really didn't think that he would die there at the bottom
of the lake (although he was afraid that Ron, Hermione, Cho and
Gabrielle might).

In the past books, when Harry has been truly cornered and really looking
death in the eye, he has been in situations where he is simply trying to
save himself.  He was alone at the climax of the first and fourth books,
and he wasn't facing Voldemort directly in the third.  In the second, he
thought that Ginny might already be dead.  But I think that in a future
book we might see something different.  We will see him be put in a
situation where he must decide whether he would willingly sacrifice
himself for someone else, or perhaps for many other people.

In a way, I think it is rather unfair that I'm trying to do this post in
the middle of the series, because we haven't had a chance to see whether
Harry will truly fall in love.  Perhaps, if he had a relationship with
someone he loved in a special way (with Hermione? Ginny? Cho? Down, all
you 'shippers!  Down!), he would gladly sacrifice himself.

But perhaps it won't be someone he loves that way, with eros-love.
Perhaps he will face Peter Pettigrew's dilemma defending Ron
(philos-love), or Hagrid, or Dumbledore, or Hogwarts as a whole.    But
I think he will have to face it.  Someday.  And to do it successfully,
he will have to demonstrate agape-love, as his mother did for him.

One final note: I don't think anyone has ever mentioned the special
poignancy of the fact that in the scene Harry has with Cedric's parents,
he is seeing a mirror of his own tragedy.  Here he sees a pair of
bereaved parents whose world has fallen apart because they have lost a
brave, beloved son, just as his own world fell apart because he lost a
pair of brave, beloved parents.  In seeing their grief, he experiences
his own grief all over again, from a different, almost opposite, angle.

The final sign of charity I want to mention that Harry demonstrates is
his benevolence in giving the money from the Tri-Wizard Tournament to
Fred and George.  In part, it is not even a sacrifice for him, because
he truly doesn't want the money.  But he doesn't throw it away, as he
threatens to George and Fred to do.  He uses it to light a candle to
drive back the darkness--to give Fred and George the opportunity to
start the joke shop, so that they can create the laughs they will all so
badly need.  And he tells Fred and George to buy dress robes for Ron--in
a manner that will not hurt Ron's pride.

Harry stands at the end of GoF, weary and wounded, but among friends.
He does not have to live apart and alone, as Peter Pettigrew did, who
chose to become a rat, literally, rather than accept the hard demands of
living by the precepts of charity.

Yet the greatest test of Harry's charity is probably still to come.  "As
Hagrid said, what would come, would come . . . and he would have to meet
it when it did."



I'm not very satisfied with this essay.  I don't think it's one of my
best.  I can't remember who it was who remarked at the end of a letter
to a friend that he didn't have time to write a four-page letter, so he
had written an eight-page one (Chesterton, maybe?) This essay has rather
that feel.  Long and sprawley because I haven't had time to tighten it,
and I'm too fried now anyway to try and so will send it on its way.  I
hope you will all forgive me.  Comments?

For those of you who would like to review the earlier essays I have
written about the 7 Deadly Sins and the 7 Heavenly Virtues up until this
one, following are the message numbers:

7 Deadly Sins:
Pride: 1553
Envy: 1699
Gluttony: 1878
Lust: 2118
Anger: 2545
Covetousness: 2877
Sloth: 2998

7 Heavenly Virtues:
Faith: 3468
Hope: 3660

Related essays, possibly also of interest:

Loyalty: 788
Secrets: 957
Courtesy and Ambition: 1209

Peg