Harry that Heathen and Feeling Moody [Was Re: Wiz-Mug marriage/commentary]

[ladjables]

No: HPFGUIDX 33705

Hello Everyone,
I promised myself I wouldn't respond to Kimball's post but this 
morning my newspaper printed another Anti-Potter letter, and then it 
became patently clear I was surrounded.  At least the excellent 
rebuttal posts have cheered me up.  Just some thoughts: 
 
--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Tabouli..> wrote: 
> > And as for Tolkien, obviously a clear sign that someone fits into 
> the Evil category of humanity is ugliness!  A fine Judeo-Christian 
> education for the children.  Nothing like that unambiguous 
> distinction between Good (where all people are fair and wise) and 
> Evil (where all people are ugly and foolish and come to a bad end 
>on Legolas' arrows), eh?  Moral stuff.

This is what is really worrisome about posts like Kimball's, no 
matter how well thought out.  What bothers him about Harry Potter is 
the book's portrayal of morality as complex; it's precisely because 
it's not black-and-white that Kimball dislikes it.  His need to 
compartmentalize good and evil, to constantly categorize and make 
divisions concerning morality, reflects the kind of logic that is 
very dangerous, that can be (and has been) used to justify anything 
from genocide to slavery.
 
Mahoney: 
> I'm not particularly well-read in terms of the Bible, but I know a 
> little bit.  In early Hebrew prophecies, it was said that a 
> messenger would be sent ahead of the Messiah to prepare the masses 
> for him...and then who appears, but John the Baptist, a mangy, ill-
> clothed, ill-kempt guy who wandered the wilds and was in fact in 
> prison when Christ started public ministry.  Doh.
> 
> Christ himself was an enormous rule-breaker.  One of the biggest 
> reasons that people refused to believe that he was the Messiah sent 
> from God was because (drum roll) he ate dinner with anybody who 
> would sit down with him.  That doesn't sound particularly bad 
> these  days,  but back then the meal was considered by Jews to be a 
>sort of  recreation of the covenant between God and his people, and 
>only the clean, and the believers, were allowed to share a table 
>with God's  chosen people.  And yet Christ *invited* Gentiles, 
>criminals, the poor, the sick, and the hated to eat meals with him.  
>And why did he break that very important rule?  To help people; to 
>right wrongs and undo injustices; to demonstrate that in real life, 
>in God's world,  people have to look beyond the easy, black and 
white choices, and do what is *right* rather than what is easy and 
>superficial.


Exactly.  Something Dumbledore emphasizes in his speech at the end of 
Goblet of Fire.  And I've always liked Paul's words, follow the 
spirit and not the letter of the law.  So what book is more morally 
murky than the Bible?  If I were Kimball, I would keep my kids away 
from the Good Book.

Mahoney continues:  
> At any rate, I also agree with whomever it was that pointed out 
that not everyone believes in nor cares to interpret life, morality, 
and Harry Potter based on Judeo-Christian tenets.  Hi, agnostics? 
> Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, and everyone else in the world?  I 
>truly dislike the idea that just because a child raised in a 
>Christian household *might* (and this that is *highly* debatable, 
>and insulting to the intellectual capabilities of the young) be 
>morally confused by events in Harry Potter, that must mean that 
>every child in every environment and experiencing all manner of 
>differing world views will also.  Pfah.  Balderdash.

Thank you.  I would also love to get Kimball's take on Haiti, where 
the official religion is vodun but most people believe in God-a 
fusion of Christianity and the occult if you like!   Then again that 
might cause a nervous breakdown.  But in all seriousness, Mr. Kimball 
is entitled to his opinion, I just have no intention of spending any 
more time meditating on it.

The second part of my post regards Mad-Eye Moody, would anyone care 
to join me in guessing when this colourful character will meet his 
end?  Okay, that was callous, but I do engage in this morbid pastime 
from time to time.  I know there's been much speculation about who 
Ms. Rowling will kill next, and I've noticed no-one has suggested 
Moody, a really interesting character, even if it WAS Crouch jr as 
Moody.  If you have mentioned Moody I apologise for the oversight.  
Hagrid has been mentioned, Lupin, Sirius, Dumbledore, but it would be 
interesting to see what role she has planned for this ex-Auror (with 
the real Dark Forces fighting experience) in the upcoming denouement, 
or, if it's not to be an unravelling of the plot, more a tying up of 
loose ends, then the upcoming knot.  Any thoughts would be 
appreciated.
Ama