Prothero's 'God Is Not One'.

Stephen Prothero is my favorite scholar of religions. I have read his American Jesus: How to Son of God Became a National Icon many years ago and Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know–And Doesn’t.  These books and his popular articles convinced me that he is one of the clearest thinkers on the subject of comparative religion and the sociology of religion. While I appreciate Huston Smith’s writings (and others like him) who seek to find connecting points between religions (e.g. the Golden Rule) I have long felt that many religious scholars oversimplify to a fault. In his most recent work God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World–and Why Their Differences Matter Prothero shakes the reader awake from his stupor with these words (p. 1):

At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed acrosss Europe and United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true. This claim, which reaches back to All Religions Are One (1795) by the English poet, printmaker, and prophet William Blake, is as odd as it is intriguing. No one argues that different economic systems or political regimes are one and the same. Capitalism and socialism are so obviously at odds that their differences hardly bear mentioning. The same goes for democracy and monarchy. Yet scholars continue to claim that religious rivals such as Hinduism and Islam, Judaism and Christianity are, by some miracle of the imagination, essentially the same, and this view resounds in the echo chamber of popular culture, not least in Dan Brown’s multi-million-dollar Da Vinci Code franchise.

He mentions Smith’s metaphor that all religions are the same path up the same mountain and then challenges it. Most religions have some basics in common, but they do not climb the same mountain. A Christian waits for a personal God to enact delivery for humanity and the cosmos from the impact of sin through his Son, Jesus. Some Buddhist are atheistic and they don’t have a category for “sin”, per se.

To those who follow Smith’s paradigm he writes (pp. 2-3):

This is a lovely sentiment but it is dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue. For more than a generation we have followed scholars and sages down the rabbit hole into a fantasy world in which all gods are one. This wishful thinking is motivated in part by an understandable rejection of the exclusivist missionary view that only you and your kind will make it to heaven or Paradise. For most of world history, human beings have seen religious rivals as inferior to themselves–practitioners of empty rituals, perpetrators of bogus miracles, purveyors of fanciful myths. The Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century popularized the ideal of religious tolerance, and we are doubtless better for it. But the idea of religious unity is wishful thinking nonetheless, and it has not made the world a safer place. In fact, this naive theological groupthink–call it Godthink–has made the world more dangerous by blinding us to the clashes of religions that threaten us worldwide. It is time we climb out of the rabbit hole and back to reality.

Prothero states, “The ideal of religious tolerance has morphed into the straightjacket of religious agreement.” (p. 4) He is correct. It is not that tolerance is wrong, but as Adam Seligman (who Prothero references) states, “…the notion of religious tolerance assumes differences, since there is no need to tolerate a religion that is essentially the same as your own.” (p. 4) If someone says Islam and Judaism are essentially the same they risk misunderstanding both and they offend those who are participants in these religions by claiming a third religion–namely, my morphing of your two religions into one better version that suites my worldview.

Even in the same religion good-hearted ecumenism can lead to ignorant bliss, but such bliss isn’t safe. If we disagree we must discuss it, name it, be honest about it, and ask how we can coexist in the meantime.

On another note, there is something similar about how we discuss religious tolerance and how we frame race. Our view of “tolerance” is the pretend that differences don’t exist and that tensions are not present. We are like scared children who think if we ignore our fears they will go away. Yet the tension between a Hindu and a Muslim will not be resolved by pretending they are the same. Likewise, different people groups cannot live life as if one day we will all just magically understand each other.

I am for tolerance, but tolerance isn’t ignorance. Tolerance doesn’t equate to pretending differences don’t exist. Tolerance falls short of its own goal–both in inter-religious and inter-racial dialogue.

Of course, tolerance is inferior to loving engagement. Tolerance may allow for pretend. It may allow for groups to ignore each other. Love seeks to understand and even disagree where it matters most! It doesn’t have to be done in an ugly way, but it must be done. Otherwise, without engagement between different people groups, we will find a volcano of repressed emotion boiling under the surface of our society waiting to engulf us all.

1. What is the status of truth in the discourses of history?

Jenkins suggests that gaining real (true) knowledge is “unachievable”. (p. 28) As discussed in the last post there is a chasm between the event and the historian. We know the event through the traces it has left, but how reliable are those traces? Jenkins says we can still use the word “know”, but he makes this qualification:

We are (our culture is) a-moral, skeptical, ironic, secular. We are partners with uncertaintiy; we have distruved truth, have tracked it down and found it to be a linguistic sign, a concept. Truth is a self-referencing figure of speech, incapable of accessing the phenomenal world: word and world, word and object, remain separate. (pp. 29-30)

Jenkins states plainly, “…truth is always created and never found.” (p. 31) So, we can’t “find” the truth of history, we merely “create” it. This is what we know. Jenkins follows Foucault stating, “…truth is dependent on somebody having the power to make it true.” (p. 31)

Of course, the reader should stop in his/her tracks to ask, “Is Jenkins telling the truth?” Should we find it problematic that Jenkins expects us to believe him when he says, “History is a discourse, a language game; within it ‘truth’ and similar expressions are open, regulate and shut down interpretations. Truth acts as a censor–it draws the line.” (p. 32)

2. Is there any such thing as objective history, or is history just interpretation?

Jenkins says that it is true that we can find “facts” (p. 32) like the year someone was born, but he claims, “…historians are not too concerned about discrete facts (facts as individual facts), for such a concern only touches that part of historical discourse called its chronicle. No, historians have ambitions, wishing to discover not only what happened but how and why and what these things meant and mean.” (pp. 32-33) So it isn’t so much the problem of say know Jesus of Nazareth was understood by people to be the Messiah of Israel (a fairly self-evident fact), but what historians do with that data when they write their histories on Jesus of Nazareth. They are not objective anymore. They import their subjective understanding of Jesus into their discourse.

3. What is bias and what are the problems involved in trying to get rid of it?

Historians are bias. This is a plain fact. Let me use Jesus of Nazareth again. If someone is an atheist they will have no room for the possible historical accuracy of miracle reports. If they are a believing Christian they may have a very hard time denying the accuracy of such reports. There isn’t much to add to this.

4. What is empathy; can it be done, how, why, and if it cannot be achieved, why does it seem so important to try?

So how do we avoid pure subjectivity based on our bias? Many historians suggest empathy. In other words, “the claim that one has to get into an informed appreciation of the predicaments and viewpoints of people in the past in order to gain real historical understanding…” Let me return to historical Jesus studies. Scholars learn as much as possible about Second Temple Judaism, ancient Rome, the geography of the land, the religious beliefs of the people, and so forth. Why? Because if you don’t know the historical context you will import your modern context.

BUT Jenkins doubts that this is all that effective. He gives some reasons for why this is unachievable:

(1) “The philosophical problem of ‘other minds’…[which] considers whether it is possible to enter into the mind of another person we know well…” If we try our hardest to pretend we are a Jew in Jerusalem in the first century can we do it? Jenkins says no. (p. 39)

(2) “For what  is effectively ignored in empathy is that in every act of communication there is an act of translation going on; that every act of speech (speech-act) is an ‘interpretation between privacies’.” If I try to think like a first century Jew as a twenty-first century American it is inevitable that I will translate things from that world into my own. I cannot understand it from their world.

(3) “…there is no presuppositionless interpretation of the past…” and “…interpretations of the past are constructed in the present…”

We can boil down Jenkins’ objection to the distance between historian and events, the need for translation, and they presuppositions we use to filter the data. At the end of the day we are no where near thinking like a first century Jew. We think about first century Jesus through twenty-first century paradigms no matter how hard we try not to.

That said, anyone who has done historical work knows from experience that one’s ideas do alter when we try to be empathetic. We do not obtain objectivity, and we do filter the data, but we move closer to understanding a different world when we try than those who do not. I think Jenkins point here must be taken with a grain-of-salt since he often comes across as “all-0r-nothing”.

5. What are the differences between primary and secondary sources (traces) and between ‘evidence’ and ‘sources’: what is at stake here?

Jenkins makes the assertion that all sources as “surface” sources. We cannot dig any further down. This leads him to the conclusion that we are “…if we are freed from the desire for certainty, if we are released from the idea that history rests on the study of primary/documentary sources…then we are free to see history as an amalgam of those epistemological, methodological, ideological and practical concerns I have outlined.” (p. 48)

I admit, I am a bit surprised by this assertion. Even if our knowledge of history is always on the surface at least primary sources are ground level while secondary sources are a few stories from the ground. There is no way to avoid making history into total mythology if we do not have primary sources. Not all secondary sources are created equal either.

Jenkins asks, “Does the evidence of the past press itself so irresistibly upon the historian that he/she can do not other than allow it to speak for itself?” (p. 48) No, of course not, but it is still the evidence, the data, and not merely a secondary report on the data.

Let’s compare historical work to that of a detective. Reading a newspaper’s account of a murder is not the same as investigating the murder scene and interviewing witnesses. Yes, interpretation is involved, and no we cannot have absolute certainty, but degrees of plausibility and certainty do exist. I am puzzled by Jenkins here.

6. What do you do with those couplets (cause and effect, continuity and change, similarity and difference) and is it possible to do what you are asked to do through using them?

I alluded to this problem earlier: when event A is followed by event B does it necessitate “cause-and-effect”. When a historian says that the United States bombed Hiroshima because of A is it really because of A or is that a construct made by the historian? Is it like a bat hitting a ball pushing it away? Do event work like that or when we do history do we create cause-and-effect?

7. Is history an art or a science?

History isn’t a science in Jenkins’ view, but more like an art. This threatens the guild, because it turns a nose to their methodology and regulations.

In addition to our differences in dogma we sometimes part way over race, ethnicity, language, and culture. This manifests itself in many ways including churches that are primarily one skin color or another (so-called “white” and “black” churches) in the United States, churches that have different tastes in music, those that function primarily in English or Spanish, and so forth and so on. While it may be pragmatic at times to establish churches around these differences (have you ever spent time listening to a bilingual sermon?) it is often the case that these divisions harden into serious contentions with one another.

Many good-hearts have sought ecumenism that is actually a form of hegemony. Some Caucasian pastor in California decides that he wants the church to reach Latinos but he leads his church to approach said partnerships in such a way that essentially ignores the unique contributions Latinos bring to Christianity. He may try to get them to use more English thinking he is doing them a favor without realizing that Spanish is a sense of identity. He may ask them to calm down their expressiveness in worship so that others don’t feel uncomfortable. It isn’t done to be hurtful, but it is controlling none-the-less.

Somehow unity must exist in the dynamic relationship between acceptance and critique. Often we think of unity or catholicity as everyone being the same, but this isn’t so (not even in doctrine). Sometimes we think unity is when people agree to disagree. This can be the case, but is it healthy for us to avoid challenging each other so that we can feel unified?

There is no denying that the early church sought visible unity. The Apostle Paul seems consumed by this subject sometimes. The early church fought and bickered over things in hopes of coming together as one (sometimes successfully and other times not so much). Yet I wonder if this side of the resurrection if we are hopelessly seeking something that we cannot achieve.

Even if we cannot achieve it here and now it seems we should pursue it. Much like we know there will be no final and lasting peace before the return of Christ yet we continue to pursue it as a witness to the Kingdom, so we know we will never be fully unified, but if we accept this as inevitable the chasm will widen and we will lose our testimony before a broken world. The world around us doesn’t need to see everyone thinking and acting the same. This seems quite cultic. They need to see us loving one another in spite of differences and through those differences. This is easier said than done.

So is genuine unity achievable? Unlikely, but our witness is not in achieving unity but in seeking it.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:10-16 says:

“I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)

As evidently seen from the text, the issue here is one of division (c.f. 1 Corinthians 3:3-4). But the question is what is the division over? Currently I’m reading Kenneth E. Bailey’s magnificent work on 1 Corinthians Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians. Every time I open up a book written by Bailey, whether this or his Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, my mind is blown by his meticulous scholarship. Bailey does his homework. Back to the issue of division. He notes that Corinth was a melting pot in the Roman Empire. He goes on and says that “the three groups [Paul's Crew - The Romans, Cephas's rabbis and Apollos's philosophers] that would have naturally dominated the young Christian community would have been the Romans, the Greeks, and the Jews.” The basis of his argument stems from the different citizenships for the individuals mentioned in the text: Peter (he uses Cephas because it is his Jewish name), himself and Apollos.

The issue I find with this interpretation is the very fact that Christ is seamlessly mentioned after the other names. This wouldn’t seem to make sense if you subscribe solely to his interpretation. To me, it seems like the division might be over multiple issues. Like most relationships that have division, it begins with one issue of division, but later forms into a relationship that has multiple issues of division.

Because Christ is mentioned, I tend to think that there is more going on here than just ethnic and citizen based division. It seems to be over doctrine, too. Because the church at Corinth clearly had people practicing the spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 1:7), it wouldn’t be a stretch to say people believed to have revelation from Jesus, perhaps even such revelation that caused them to think they had apostolic authority, much like Paul himself. The reason for assuming this is the very fact of the Pauline formula throughout this and his letter to the Philippians. It’s clearly one of Christ<Me<You. “Follow me as I follow Christ (1 Corinthians 11).”

To learn more go here.

Persons? Manifestations? Does it matter?

I have friends who are Oneness Pentecostals and many more friends who are Trinitarians. It has been an interesting day since T.D. Jakes appeared at an event called “The Elephant Room” (i.e. MMA for evangelicals) where he was asked about his understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. Many of my friends and acquaintances in Oneness Pentecostal circles have understood Jakes to be one of their own. Yet today he told Mark Driscoll, James MacDonald, and others the following (according to Trevin Wax’s transcript):

Driscoll: We all would agree that in the nature of God there is mystery. But within that, for you, Bishop Jakes, the issue is one God manifesting Himself successively in three ways? Or one God existing eternally in three persons? What is your understanding now? Which one?

Jakes: I believe the latter one is where I stand today. One God – Three Persons. I am not crazy about the word persons though. You describe “manifestations” as modalist, but I describe it as Pauline. For God was manifest in the flesh. Paul is not a modalist, but he doesn’t think it’s robbery to say manifest in the flesh. Maybe it’s semantics, but Paul says this. Now, when we start talking about that sort of thing, I think it’s important to realize there are distinctives between the work of the Father and the work of the Son. I’m with you. I have been with you. There are many people within and outside denominations labeled Oneness that would be okay with this. We are taught in society that when we disagree with someone in a movement, we leave. But I still have associations with people in Onenness movements. We need to humble both sides and say, “We are trying to describe a God we love.” Why should I fall out and hate and throw names at you when it’s through a glass darkly? None of our books on the Godhead will be on sale in heaven.

For Trinitarians there is the simple confession of “One God-Three Person”, but some may think he fudged things a bit with the caveat that he isn’t “crazy about the word persons though” and that he is OK with “manifestations”. Some Oneness Pentecostals may be a bit upset that he said “persons”, but they appreciate that he struggles with the word “person” just as they do.

What do you think of this statement? Are you a Trinitarian or a Oneness adherent? Does it matter to you either way or do you find this to be a debate over semantics? 

__________

See C. Michael Patton’s “T.D. Jakes Not a Modalist?” as well.

OK, so who has watched episodes 2 and 3 of Alcatraz? The show has captured my attention thus far. Of course, I find the most perplexing thing to be the timelessness of Dr. Beauregard and Dr. Sangupta/Lucy Banerjee. They are the same age as the “63′s” and they were both on Alcatraz when the prisoners disappeared. Also, as the moderator of AlcatrazHub.com has noted there seems to be something important about the drawing of blood.

Anyone have any theories as to what is happening?

In other words, when someone writes a “history” they take data available to them (archaeological, botanical, paleontological, papyrological, etc) and they reconstruct a narrative from that data. It could be argued that many events given a cause-and-effect relationship in say a book on Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon are the complete invention of the author. Sure, we find that this or that happened, but do we know that this or that caused Caesar to move toward Rome? How do we know?

Some historians seek to do history as scientists do science. They want testable hypothesis that result in some form of “objective” knowledge. Others say that this is not possible, so the best analogy for the work of a historian is that of an artist taking various materials to paint a picture for his/her audience.

In Jenkins’ book he advocates a very subjective, almost relativistic understanding of history.  I think there is a lot to learn from what he says, though I have my contentions. Over four parts I will interact with Jenkins as an amateur in historiography. I hope to come away a better thinker on how to do historical studies.

History is Histories; there isn’t one “history”.

Jenkins is a Lyotard of historiography in that his first attack is upon the idea that there is one “history” that is all encompassing. Rather, Jenkins argues that there are many, many “histories” (plural) that tell many, many stories from many, many angles. (p. 3) These histories are discourses on various subjects. (p. 5) History and “the past” are not one and the same since the past has happened, but history is a present interpretation of some of the events of the past. (pp. 6-7)

When the historian seeks to bridge the past to the present s/he does so with presuppositions involved. S/he has “epistemological fragility” as Jenkins dubs it. He states, “…no historian can cover and thus re-cover the totality of past events because their ‘content’ is virtually limitless. What he wants the reader to note is that even a modern historian writing on say the election of President Barack Obama must chose to include and exclude details and there are thousands of details that the historian cannot know. “Second, no account can re-cover the past as it was because the past was not an account but events, situations, etc.” (p. 11)

In addition to the chasm of time we have the chasm of experience. Jenkins notes that “…history relies on someone else’s eyes and voice”. (p. 12) Often we aren’t the primary source of our historical work. We rely upon the accounts of others. We receive the events through their subjective lens.

So how do historians make their work secure? Often it comes down to a discussion of methodology. Jenkins thinks this falls short since historians use many different methodologies and often do not agree on how to do the task at hand. (pp. 15-16)

Even if a historian thinks they have a well-developed methodology there are many more factors to consider: the guild and it’s influence, epistemological presuppositions, particular “routines and procedures”, the influence of the work of other historians, the process of writing a history (including the work of editors, limited word counts, sell-ability), and finally, to move to the reader, their own subjective understanding of what you wrote. (pp. 20-24)

What Jenkins accomplishes in his first chapter “What is History?” is the deconstruction of the reader’s confidence in objective historiography. He humbles the reader’s epistemological self-understanding. He challenges the whole guild of historians who feel that their club has discovered the “rules of engagement” for doing good historical work that allows us to say with confidence that this happened, this did not, and this is why this happened.

So you may ask what Jenkins offers once he has torn down the common understanding of historiography. This is his definition of “history”:

History is a shifting, problematic discourse, ostensibly about an aspect of the world, the past, that is produced by a group of present-minded workers (overwhelmingly in our culture salaried historians) who go about their work in mutually recognizable ways that are epistemologically, methodologically, ideologically and practically positioned and whose products, once in circulation, are subject to a series of uses and abuses that are logically infinite but which in actuality generally correspond to a range of power bases that exist at any given moment and which structures and distributes the meanings of histories along a dominant-marginal spectrum.” (p. 26)

If Jenkins is correct in his understanding of “history” then we should abandon any idea that we can be “objective” in our historical work or that we are recovering the “bare facts”. No, we are reconstructing a narrative from the available data. That said, it seems that Jenkins departs from epistemological arrogrance to epistemological nihilism. Does it have to be “all-or-nothing” or can we reframe the discussion around “degree” of “plausibility” instead? 

Arizona

In the State of Arizona the law AZ 15-112 was passed to ban ethnic studies. (You can read the details of the law here.) In my estimation it is inherently contradictory if you’ve heard the stories of the teachers from these programs (I had the opportunity to hear Curtis Acosta at Portland State University recently thanks to my wife bringing me along to an event.) They suggest that it is illegal to teach classes that do the following:

1. Promote the overthrow of the United States government.

2. Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.

3. Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.

4. Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals

Many of us would agree that a public school shouldn’t promote the overthrow of our government. This isn’t happening though. We agree that there shouldn’t be an effort to promote resentment toward another people group. I’ve seen footage of these classes, and it seems to me that this isn’t what these classes teach at all.

The third and fourth points are odd. What the legislators of Arizona ignore is that most of our books on United States history are designed for a particular ethnic group already, namely those of European heritage. Our textbooks are Eurocentric! They depict the history of our nation through the eyes of those who immigrated here from Britain, France, Portugal, Spain and so forth. They do not tell the story of the people who lived here already, unless it is to poo-poo the injustices they suffered as they faced genocide, broken treaties, forced relocation, and as one Native American acquaintance of mine has described it, a “post-apocalyptic world” where their way of living was devastated and they’ve fought to find an identity ever since.

The fourth point falls to the same criticism. If our histories are exclusively Eurocentric then they advocate ethnic solidarity for Caucasians. If we deny that other people came here (or lived here already) from places other than Europe then we are promoting an ethnocentric story.

At that I might add that the second point can’t stand either. I remember hearing the stories of the European explorers and as a young man it was inevitable that the pioneers were ‘good’ and the natives ‘bad’. This is the story we’ve taught our children to justify the establishment of our empire. It is too late in history to rewind what happened, but do we have to lie to our children pretending that our Eurocentric history is baptized? We in this country loved to demonize people like Hitler, but we ignore the actions of generals like G.A. Custer or Presidents like Andrew Jackson.

At the end of the law clause F. states:

Nothing in this section shall be construed to restrict or prohibit the instruction of the holocaust, any other instance of genocide, or the historical oppression of a particular group of people based on ethnicity, race, or class.

I’m sorry, but this is not possible. The legislators can add this to try to cover themselves from the accusation that they are (in effect) silencing the voices of minorities who want to know how their story fits into the broader narrative of this nation. You can’t prevent Latinos, Native Americas, African Americans, and other minority groups from learning history with their unique histories in mind and not “restrict and prohibit…the historical oppression of a particular group of people based on ethnicity, race, or class.” In fact, this law is another form of  ”oppression of a particular group of people based on ethnicity, race, or class.”

The legislators in Arizona needs a good dose of Lyotard! They want to frame their Eurocentric metanarrative as a universal story. It is not. This doesn’t mean it is wrong to study history from a particular perspective, but that is the point….it is a perspective! For some of our citizens there is no connection to the story of French men coming here as trappers or the British coming here for a “new world”. No, for some their people know the story from the other angle. A story where they lived here in their own land only to have it taken from them. This is as much a part of the history of the United States as the stories our textbooks like to tell.

Our history (singular) is impossible without the recognition of our histories (plural). In this nation we have sought to try an experiment where people of different groups come together to share ideals. Some of those ideals is free speech, free inquiry, access to knowledge and information and the right to acknowledge E pluribus unum– not people only but the history of the people.

For my readers with a European heritage I want you to imagine sending your children to a school where the only history class allowed is one where it is taught from the perspective of Native Americans. It would be a history and one could argue a truly “American” history, but it would isolate your children from being allowed to understand how they fit into the big picture. This is what happens when school districts deny people the right to have an approach to history that considers their ethnicity’s perspective.

If this bothers you consider learning more at  saveethnicstudies.org.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on making decisions regarding morality from the starting point of “the greater good”. I don’t mean “the greatest good for the most” like utilitarianism argues, per se. Rather, let’s ponder two examples:

(1) If you have a Jewish family in your home in WWII Germany and some Nazi soldiers come to your door asking whether or not you have Jews in your home are you obligated to preserve their lives or tell the truth? Some argue that you should tell the truth because it is your moral responsibility. If the Nazi soldiers kill the Jews this is not something you have done, but something they did. Yet it is quite difficult to make this sequence all about the autonomous behaviors of the various people involved. Many realize in their gut that there is something intuitive about saving human life even if it means lying.

Could we suggest that this isn’t about “doing the lesser evil” (i.e. lying), or pure autonomy (i.e. what the soldiers do is their responsibility alone), but “the greater good”. In other words, could we argue that saving life makes the lie a good deed? If we were to lie for our own sake to gain or defraud others this would make a lie an evil deed, but this lie was to (A) save life and (B) prevent another from taking life–both good things.

(2) If someone enters your home seeking to harm your wife and children and you harm them (even kill them if it seems that murder was their intent) could it be argued that murder for many reasons is evil, but in this case it was good because it saved the life of those for whom you are most responsible? Obviously, you will notice that this scenario shifts a bit because your action is technically the same as the action you sought to prevent (taking human life) and objectively you chose one human’s life over another.

What do you think? In scenarios 1 and 2 does a “greater good” emerge? Does it nullify the deed that would have been evil (a lie, a killing) because it is submerged into the good action? Can we think about morality this way or do you see potential problems? 

__________

Some who have discussed the merits of Christians in the military with me may see this as a softening of my stance, but I maintain that it is unwise for a Christian to give permission to the state to control their decision making to the extent that a soldier must submit to the state. On the other hand, this may allow for Christian participation in law enforcement where you usually are not placed in a position where a superior asks you to kill another human on the mere authority of the superior’s position.