Answers in Genesis: Lying to save a life is bad.

[laconicsax]

What would we do without Answers in Genesis?

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/11/13/feedback-righteous-lie

Short version: Christians hiding Jews during WWII had a moral obligation to give them up if the SS came calling.
Answers in Genesis says:

I often wonder if a Nazi soldier asked if someone was there hiding and they told the truth before God, could the Lord have in mind a greater purpose? Could God have used that person to free a great many people who ultimately died in the Holocaust? Or have done something to stop the war earlier? Or cause a great number of Jews and Nazi’s[sic] to come to know Christ? It is possible, but we simply cannot know. And one should not dwell too long on “what ifs” anyway.

<snip>

Let’s consider again the Nazi-Holocaust situation: there seems to be a conflict in the situation to lie before God to try to save someone else’s life. The result is often called the “greater good” or “lesser of two evils.”

I’ve been told in the past that the lesser of these two evils would be to lie to save a life—hence the common phrase “a righteous lie.” This is often justified by appealing to the command to love our neighbor (Romans 13:9).

But how does God view this, remembering that God is a discerner of our motives. To God, a lie for selfish motive was worthy of death to Ananias. But, in fact, just one sin is worthy of death (Genesis 2:17). (This should be a reminder that we should continually praise God for His grace that is bestowed upon us). But let’s look at Scripture again. The two greatest commandments are:

<snip>

Consider this carefully. In the situation of a Nazi beating on the door, we have assumed a lie would save a life, but really we don’t know. So, one would be opting to lie and disobey God without the certainty of saving a life—keeping in mind that all are ultimately condemned to die physically. Besides, whether one lied or not may not have stopped the Nazi solders from searching the house anyway.

As Christians, we need to keep in mind that Jesus Christ reigns. All authority has been given to Him (Matthew 28:18), and He sits on the throne of God at the right hand of the Father (Acts 2:33; Hebrews 8:1). Nothing can happen without His say. Even Satan could not touch Peter without Christ’s approval (Luke 22:31). Regardless, if one were to lie or not, Jesus Christ is in control of timing every person’s life and able to discern our motives. It is not for us to worry over what might become, but rather to place our faith and obedience in Christ and to let Him do the reigning. For we do not know the future, whereas God has been telling the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).

We're all going to die anyway, so we shouldn't care about what goes on in this life. Way to assert that moral high-ground, AiG!

And people scoff at the notion that this life is all we get, so we should make the most of it.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. I live a perfectly happy, fruitful, and spiritual life without...

"Answers in Genesis."

Aside from Nazi strawmen, it is my understanding that Jewish practice (for some 5,000 years of so after having been the people who actually WROTE Genesis)is that there are several circumstances when lying is not only appropriate, but mandatory. This would be one of them.

Non-assholish Christians of my acquaintance tend to agree.

[laconicsax]

4. Raised in Judaism, I understand the same thing.

In fact, the very same Nazis at the door question (or variations therein) were used in my Sunday school classes to teach the primacy of life--that you are obligated to break any and all commandments to save a life.

[Meshuga]

7. Your understanding is correct

Jewish tradition says that "truth is a high value but not an absolute one." And Jewish law finds it immoral when someone tells the truth to an evil person when that truth leads to the person's own death and it is immoral not to lie to an evil person who wishes to kill an innocent person.

The article in question uses the Hebrew word "shaqar" to make its case but it does not explain the context of the story in Exodus.

The midwives tell a lie to the Pharaoh and that is not viewed in the story as something negative. Quite the opposite, they are rewarded in the story by God. There are other stories in the bible where God even instructs others to lie. I don't know why this clergyman is trying to sell it otherwise.

[Meshuga]

2. Yikes

Is he suggesting that perhaps God had a greater plan in the holocaust so Jews can finally find Christ? :scared:

I mean, who is "that person" in the quote below?

"I often wonder if a Nazi soldier asked if someone was there hiding and they told the truth before God, could the Lord have in mind a greater purpose? Could God have used that person to free a great many people who ultimately died in the Holocaust? Or have done something to stop the war earlier? Or cause a great number of Jews and Nazi’s to come to know Christ? It is possible, but we simply cannot know. And one should not dwell too long on “what ifs” anyway."

I believe I am misreading this because it can't be serious.

[laconicsax]

5. No, you're reading it right.

It's the extreme of "God has a plan." Something in their belief tells them that it isn't barbaric to kill millions to teach someone a lesson.

[Meshuga]

8. Same mentality as the inquisition

Make them suffer here in this life so they don't have to suffer in hell. This is ugly stuff.

[BurtWorm]

3. Who's dead collaborator of an uncle is Ken Ham covering for, I wonder?

Probably his own.

If you need a better example of Scripture's inadequacy to deal with what's real, I don't think you'll find a better example than this.

[laconicsax]

6. +1

"If you need a better example of Scripture's inadequacy to deal with what's real, I don't think you'll find a better example than this."

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. This is the absolutist "must have unbreakable rules or society will dissolve into chaos" school of

religious thought. It's mostly found among fundamentalists.

[Odin2005]

10. Us Aspies have issues with it, too.

I have great trouble with being too honest and being a sticker for rules.

[struggle4progress]

11. Galatians 5:14 "The whole law is found in a single word: Love your neighbor as yourself."

I suspect many people, from a number of faith or nonfaith traditions, would question whether one could really show love for one's neighbors by betraying them to the Gestapo

[laconicsax]

12. Depends on how one defines "neighbor."

If I understand correctly, in the Tanakh, 'neighbor' and other similar terms meant "other Jews," and in the New Testament, it was slightly broadened to "members of your community."

The more narrowly one defines these things, the more leeway one has to exclude people.

And on a less serious note, what if you were hiding Jews in a closet and your downstairs/upstairs/across the hall/etc neighbor was SS?

[struggle4progress]

16. *yawn*

:hi:

[trotsky]

19. It's funny, isn't it...

that when the bible says something embarrassing or just evil, you'll never hear the end of the "out of context" or "we have to analyze what that word means" hand-waving and excuse-making.

But when the English verse says something they like, well by golly that's all that needs to be said. Oh for just one Christian to be consistent.

[laconicsax]

20. It is.

It's like the joke about rabbis and opinions.

[onager]

13. Render unto Caesar?

Of course, we all know that ONLY Xians saved Jews from the Holocaust during WWII...

(Insert sarcasm smiley here.)

We began by interviewing Zofia Baniecka. She was a Polish atheist who worked in the resistance in Warsaw. She hid guns in one part of her apartment and Jews in another. And when she was warned of a raid, she moved the Jews to another person's flat...

We went to Czechoslovakia to visit a friend, and there we met Antonin Kalina, a Prague Communist who saved 1300 children in Buchenwald...

When we asked them: "Why did you do this?", they bristled, resenting the question. They said: "How could we not?"

We replied, "But so few acted. Were you kinder or braver?" They answered, "No, we're ordinary--we just did what a human being is supposed to do."

http://www.malkadrucker.com/respeech.html

Thus endeth your Fundamentalist Atheist sermon for today. Go forth, do good, and thereby continue to confuse the religious.

[Angry Dragon]

14. It was a very good sermon

[Angry Dragon]

15. If there is no excuse for lying

then when Peter deneid Jesus in the garden, he lied 3 times, he should have been struck down by the Holy Ghost.

And Peter is the one that the Roman Catholic Church is founded upon. Makes one ponder.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

17. AIG lies all the time.

They lie about the facts concerning evolution, so this is bizarre coming from them.

[Igel]

18. He forgets that David took the show-bread

from the altar. This was forbidden, yet it wasn't held against him.

Similarly, the priests worked on the Sabbath, harder work that a fair number of laborers rested from. It also wasn't held against him.

In David's case, one could argue that it's unclear what would happen if David was righteous and left the bread. If David resisted taking the showbread and eating it, why couldn't God have provided him mannah or some other food? It's wrong--but overruled.

This creates problems for some people. There are a few ways of dealing with morality. My favorite mirrors Optimality Theory, a constraint-based theory of phonology that says we avoid violating certain constraints. We all have constraints, values. They're ranked. In order to maintain a high-ranked value we are permitted to violate lower-ranked ones. People differ in their rankings. Pretty much we all have the exact same set of values, with minor differences--we may rank things differently, or we may have slightly different definitions of words like "family". With a little inquisitive discourse, you can usually get agreement on nearly any value, as long as you word it in such a way to avoid violating another value that's higher ranked.

Some people reject the idea of fixed values that are ranked. Typically small children have a flat ranking. When rules come into conflict, they have troubles. Some adults resolve the problem by producing messier and messier rules, meaning that new situations produce a problem--they don't have a rule specifically for that. Others don't like the idea of inviolable rules because, well, it means that they are put in the uncomfortable moral position of having an inviolable rule--so they assume that there's no ranking possible, instead we figure out what the outcome is that we want and go with that even if it means reranking constraints ad libitum, and even making up new ones. (This also has ranked rules, but often puts the person's emotions and feeling good as the involiable constraint: *Feel-bad, where * means "avoid").

[B3Nut]

21. Epic exegesis fail.

For being such literalistic fundamentalists, AiG sure shows a hilariously appalling lack of biblical literacy here. There is a situation in the Bible that describes exactly this, involving a prostitute named Rahab who concealed Jewish spies and lied to the authorities about their whereabouts. She is memorialized in the book of Hebrews as one of the righteous for DOING PRECISELY THIS, and is even listed in the lineage of Jesus!

Then again it's irrational to expect anyone who thinks the earth is 6,000 years old to be any semblance of literate or intelligent, so I'm not surprised to see this screaming exegetical excreta from Ken Ham's gang of buffoons. This also illustrates how ethically bankrupt a non-thinking literalistic worldview can become.

[geistvomeinzelganger]

22. whatever

And I often wonder why so many people who claim to believe in God and Heaven are so opposed to dying and going to Heaven that they will give up everything ( and I mean EVERYTHING) just to stay alive on this planet when anyone who believes (I do) should KNOW that Heaven is WAAAAAAAY better than here? That's kinda stupid, isn't it? If Heaven is so great why do they do everything they can to avoid going there?

I myself am DNR, as in, if I'm unconscious, not breathing and dying I want you to keep your freakin' hands off me and let me die. If I'm resuscitated by somebody I'm not only going to kick their azz but if I can I will probably sue them for everything they've got and then leave it in my will that after I am finally dead and gone they can have their money back.