Harsh Morality

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 121050


> 
> Tonks here:
> 
> JKR is a Christian writer telling us a story with deep moral 
> meaning. Whenever I say this, no one believes me.<

Pippin:
I do!

Tonks:

But now I see that  some of you are coming around to the fact. 
SO at the risk of being  blown out of the waters again let me say 
this:
> 
> The black and white ending.. is the ending that we are told God 
will  judge each of us by at the end of our life.  Only one.. the one 
that  JKR has mentioned over and over... LOVE.  <

Pippin:
Exactly. At the end of the books we are still going to be arguing 
over who was good and who was evil, IMO, because that has to 
do with our personal values, which may or may not coincide with 
JKR's. But I think she has made it very clear that it is important to 
have values and  that the people you should trust most are the 
ones who share  them. This is what Dumbledore advises us that 
our choices show. Not whether we are good or evil, because 
ultimately that choice does not rest with any human. But what our 
values are. No more. No less.

Hermione should not have trusted the centaurs, because  their 
choices, not their laws, should have shown her what they were.

But people can only be judged by their choices if you let them 
choose freely. The reason Hermione should not have trusted 
Marietta was because she'd been forced to come to the 
meetings. Marietta's choices could not show what she was, 
because she hadn't been allowed to make them herself. 
 

Good and evil may be absolute, but they are not determinative 
for  a Christian, are they? The harshness is obviated by the 
surety of salvation.  Believe in the redemptive power, and your 
darkest sins will be washed away, even  cruely to 
innocents--reject it and your noblest deeds will not save you. 
Right? (I am not Christian and this is just my general 
understanding of Christian beliefs,  so please forgive me if I am 
misrepresenting them, and understand I am not trying to 
preach.) 

>From JKR's god's eye view of the story, then, Dumbledore is 
goodness, not because he always makes the right choices,  but 
because he always recognizes the redemptive power, Love, as 
the highest one. 

In the Potterverse, Love isn't just the tip of the metaphysical 
pyramid, as Nora put it. It's the whole enchilada.

Pippin