Yeah, I can see that. Of course, if you take the same Calvinist, predestination starting point, you can apply it the other way, too. The elect are going to heaven, no matter what, so they have carte blanche to do whatever they want. Obvious corollary: the non-elect are not going to heaven, no matter what, so they may as well do whatever they want. Good idea.
I can see it going with the political causes, too, though then you get into the difficult question of where you draw the line between peaceful civil disobedience to take a stand for equal human rights, and breaking into labs to "save" all the cute little animals (and doing thousands of dollars worth of damage, frequently harming the animals they're saving, etc) or calling death threats on abortion doctors.
I remember reading an HP-fic several books ago where Snape commented on his strict no-exception policy to the rules, and his hatred of exceptions being made for Harry, for exactly this reason. If we say it's okay for one student to break the rules, even for good reasons, then any student can decide that he, too, is above the rules, or knows better than the rules. And then why have rules?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Part I, because I am verbose
Date: 2008-03-12 02:29 pm (UTC)Yeah, I can see that. Of course, if you take the same Calvinist, predestination starting point, you can apply it the other way, too. The elect are going to heaven, no matter what, so they have carte blanche to do whatever they want. Obvious corollary: the non-elect are not going to heaven, no matter what, so they may as well do whatever they want. Good idea.
I can see it going with the political causes, too, though then you get into the difficult question of where you draw the line between peaceful civil disobedience to take a stand for equal human rights, and breaking into labs to "save" all the cute little animals (and doing thousands of dollars worth of damage, frequently harming the animals they're saving, etc) or calling death threats on abortion doctors.
I remember reading an HP-fic several books ago where Snape commented on his strict no-exception policy to the rules, and his hatred of exceptions being made for Harry, for exactly this reason. If we say it's okay for one student to break the rules, even for good reasons, then any student can decide that he, too, is above the rules, or knows better than the rules. And then why have rules?