Rick Warren and tyrannicide
- The Tyrannicides, statue of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Naples. Roman copy of the Athenian version by Kritios and Nesiotes
I've seen posts everywhere about Evangelical minister Rick Warren's statement that it would be ok for the US to assassinate Iran's president, based on the Bible .... the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped.... In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers ... (hat tip to the Episcopal Cafe).
I don't know enough about the Bible to know if it does indeed say that or not, though I'm pretty sure God doesn't sign off on murder, even the murder of bad guys. Still, tyrannicide has quite a history, and some of the same people who are freaked by Rick Warren's statement might be admirers of someone like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who tried to assassinate Hitler. My own opinion is that both Rick and Dietrich are wrong, but first lets look more at tyrannicide.
The assassination of a tyrant, tyrannicide, was (occassionally) considered a noble deed in the time of the ancient Greeks and what student of Roman history will forget the Ides of March? It fell into disrepute in the middle ages (divine right of kings), and was taken up again by the French Huguenots (Monarchomachs) during the Protstant/Catholic religious wars. As Wikipedia writes ....
The Monarchomachs also claimed that if the sovereign persecuted true religion, he would violate the contract concluded between God and the people, who were thus granted a right of rebellion. They inspired themselves of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas*, and the School of Salamanca on the killing of "bad kings." This legimitization of tyrannicide may have inspired as much the friar Clément, who assassinated Henri III in 1589, as Ravaillac, who assassinated Henri IV in 1610. Rebellion against tyranny was considered not only as necessary, but as a divine right.
The Catholics were for tyrannicide too - Pope Gregory XIII considered it a moral duty for believers to assassinate Queen Elizabeth of England. More modernly, when John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln, he believed himself to be following in Brutus' footsteps, and contemporarily, the US government since WWII has considered knocking off unwanted foreign heads of state without breaking much of a sweat (Allende/Chile, Castro/Cuba, Hussein/Iraq, etc).
I don't know much about politics or religion either, but as one of the articles I linked to mentions, there seems to be a fine or non-existent line between terrorism and political assassination, and I believe that the ends don't justify the means, that tyrannicide is murder, much as it may be in some ways deserved.
* I turned to St Thomas Aquinas who, in the Summa , echoed Cicero's praise of tyrannicide, albeit on four strict conditions: 1) that the man to be killed had usurped power violently; 2) that he had broken the divine and the natural law and was a threat to the lives and morality of his subjects; 3) that there was no other remedy; 4) that his killing would lead to some better state of affairs. It must not be done for vengeance or for punishment - those matters were in God's hands. - from When is it 'laudable' and 'lawful' to kill a tyrant?
A good discussion of why Rick Warren is wrong on the Bible ok-ing assassinating Iran's president can be found in a post at Religion Dispatches - Rick Warren's Biblical Blowback
Check out THE HISTORY OF TYRANNICIDE. - John Milton, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates [1649]
posted by crystal | 11:39 AM
51 Comments:
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As problematic as all of this may be, what Warren says is particularly disturbing, because Ahmadinejad is not our tyrannical king. He's an elected head of state of another country.
As much as I deplore the things Ahmadinejad says, and even though I have doubts about his sanity, I have a feeling the people of Iran are not going to tolerate him much longer themselves, because he's failed miserably at delivering on his campaign promises. Most likely, they are going to vote him out of office.
Rick Warren bugs me anyway. Plenty gets said here in criticism of the Catholic hierarchy, but it really bothered me during the campaign how McCain and Obama both had to go out to his church in California and bow and scrape and grovel in front of this goateed, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing evangelical pope.
Interesting that you should bring this up, because on Christmas Day, the new Tom Cruise movie 'Valkyrie' is coming out, about the plot to assasinate Hitler.
Hi Jeff,
I just saw in the news that the US and UK are calling for the forced removal of the leader of Zimbabwe (I think?). I guess it's hard to figure out when the ethical thing is to do so or not.
Yeah, that Obama/McCain/Warren thing was all about getting the Evangelical vote, I guess.
Oh, that movie sounds interesting - I'll have to look it up.
I suppose that, in theory, there are times when it might be justified to kill a tyrant, in order to defend innocent people. But I hate the idea of us assassinating Iran's leader; it just smacks of an attitude that says that the U.S. is God's holy instrument of justice, as if we don't perpetuate any injustice ourselves to worry about.
Anna
Oh,
and on the topic of killing Hitler, there's this.
The two wOOOORse persons in American Christianity:
Rick (kiss my a..) Warren AND
Bishop ( I am the only teacher..) Martino of Scranton, Pa.
Both make secularism look mighty good!!
Jack
Anna,
I agree about Iran's president and thanks for the link.
I think it can never be ethically right to kill one person to save others, although whenever it happens in the movies, I find it ok .... weird dichotomy between real life and fiction. Deposing and imprisoning one person to save others seems a good idea, however.
Rick Warren is a moron politically, theologically, and morally. He should actually read a little about Iran before he makes stupid pronouncements.
As usual, St. Tommy A tackles the tough questions with brilliance.
Sigh... The same-old, same-old.
What amazes me is that people like Warren and Hannity can talk this way and never sense for a moment that they may sound just like the Muslim extremists they detest.
It's one thing to talk about removing a leader you don't like. That's the way of the world. The strong will devour the weak. The Godfather will eliminate his enemies. But to wrap this kind of stuff up in religious clothing is sick. Though, certainly, nothing new. Obviously, God loves us, special that we are, more than S/He loves those we hate.
It's disappointing to see this coming from Warren, because I was under the impression that he had been influential in getting evangelicals to move towards better stands on the environment, AIDS, etc.
Liam,
What Aquinas says sounds good in theory, but how is it any different from the usual excuses given? Couldn't many leaders fulfill the 4 criteria?
Liam,
St. Tommy :)
Like William comments, I'm a little disappointed in him for figuring out a way to make assassination ok with God. At least he had some standards, though.
William,
I don't know much about Warren aside from that question/answer thing he did with Obama and McCain. Jeff said he wears Hawaiian shirts, but I'm not sure if that's a negative or a positive :)
Agree about Aquinas.
In fairness to Thomas Aquinas, I think that #3 doesn't have to be so easily brushed aside as some would like to have it. I think it would be hard to argue that lifelong imprisonment, in solitary if absolutely necessary, is not possible for any leader who really is that much of a danger to innocent people.
I'm not sure I completely agree with Tommy, but like I said, he doesn't back down from tough questions. Anna makes a good point about #3. Of course politicians could argue that they fulfill all of his requirements, but it's difficult to really prove it.
It's sort of like just war theory. Even if you hate the concept, if you look at what's required it's hard to find a real war that was just by its standards. Even a war like WWII, which addressed something that was truly evil, was too destructive and indiscriminate to pass the just war test.
Liam,
The atomic bomb was certainly indiscriminate. But do you know something about our engagement of the German troops specifically which you think was too destructive and indiscriminate?
Yeah, I think #3 is a deal breaker - very hard to imagine someone who couldn't be sucessfully imprisoned.
But look at #4 .... that his killing would lead to some better state of affairs.
That's just so ends jutifying the means. It's ok to do a bad thing if it results in something good?
William James wrote once that one could not accept a happiness shared with millions if the condition of that happiness were the suffering of one lonely soul. The lonely soul he was talking about probably wasn't a Hitler-ish leader, but does that make that big of a difference?
The fire bombing od Dresedn comes to mind
I guess for the sake of argument, that a tyrant by his or her nature has tied his or her life to the political process by his or her own decision.
One problem I see with St Tommy's idea is the question of who decides that the conditions are met. Citizens of the country in question? Outsiders?
Who decides the conditions are met?
Even if countrymen of the tyrant decide so, they may not have the power to do anything. In New Guinea, the part that now belongs to Indonesia, the original people are very upset and have rebel organizations to try to free themselves, but they are pretty powerless, and we won't help them because the biggest gold mine in the world is owned by an American company and facilitated by the Indonesian government. This might actually be an example where it would be ethical for outsiders to help but it won't happen. Does another country ever usurpt a foreign leader without some personal interest?
The problem is if you have enough power to remove a foreign leader, you're already working in a context of power-creation, not justice for its own sake.
William's right -- the Godfather will always go after his enemies. What's depressing is when a power grab is dressed up in the rhetoric of justice. Like the Iraq war, for example.
Sometimes, of course, the interests of a state line up with something like justice -- like when the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer Rouge.
I think the criteria of requiring good to come out of it would be 'ends justifying the means' IF it were the only criteria. But I would say that the other criteria (especially 3) are directed towards making sure that the means are not themselves immoral. (In Aquinas' opinion). Criteria 4 is just saying that it's not ok to kill a tyrant for revenge or something, if it's not actually going to save lives.
As for the 'who decides' question, I was wondering that too. One of the criteria for just use of most force (such as imprisonment) is legitimate authority (otherwise it's kidnapping). But a tyrant by nature has no one in direct secular authority over them. I wonder if Aquinas ever addressed that question. Maybe the legitimate authorities of other countries? Maybe the citizens of the country? Maybe anyone? Maybe no one?
Fire bombing of Dresden... yes, thanks for the link.
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Not at all impressed with Aquinas on this subject. Each of his 'reasons' just raises additional questions. Kind of like his natural law statement that men should seek the good and avoid the evil.
What men seek they call the "good." What they avoid they call "evil." Word game? Jack
I think Aquinas would say the good is not always the same as what most people would seek - he's probably working with those "transcendentals"
I think Anna is right on Thomas's no. 4. This is not a justification for killing a tyrant, but a prohibition of killing a tyrant unless this condition is met. How one could ever know if this condition will be met is beyond me.
I suspect that most often it would not be met, more likely civil war and confusion would result, which more than likely would be worse than conditions under the tyrant. Just take a look at what happened in Iraq after Saddam was killed.
Mike L
Hi Mike,
Even if good were accomplished and you could prove that it would be so, I can't see God agreeing that it's ok. Can you imagine Jesus as a conspirator in Pilate's assassination?
"Scream Bloody Murder" will air again tonight (Sunday night) at 8 p.m. ET on CNN. Christiane Amanpour presents the stories of genocide that has taken place in the world during the 20th and 21st Centuries. I urge all of you to watch this documentary. It will help you to think about the issue at hand here. It will encourage you to ask questions about what kind of actions civilized nations should take when genocide is taking place.
You can read more about this documentary here: Scream Bloody Murder
I do not know that much about Rick Warren or his church. However, he strikes me as a good person with a a mature moral intelligence.
Hi SusieQ,
Thanks for the link. I'll take a lokk at that because I don't have tv any more.
It's not that I think we should do nothing about genocide or other terrible things, just that assassination hopefully isn't the only solution. Maybe it's harder to depose bad guys than kill them?
I don't know much about Rick Warren, but for a preacher to propose murder, even of a bad guy, seems non-Chtistian.
Liam, I think the real question is where Aquinas comes down on Hawaiian shirts. I'd like to read that.
Yes, "who" gets to decide is an excellent question. Of course, the answer is usually "He who has the greater force." So the U.S. invades Iraq, despite the fact that most of the people in the world were against it. (And, please, no one quote me the number of countries who were our "allies." I'm talking about the people in those countries, not the leaders who made the decision despite opposition from their own people. 92% against in Spain!)
Question: Does God Himself actually follow Aquinas' four conditions? What about "His servant" Nebuchadnezzar usurping power violently from the king of Judah? (Jeremiah 25) Nebuchadnezzar broke natural law and was a threat to the lives of his subjects. Though, admittedly, I guess he didn't break divine law, since God set the plan in motion. Was there no other remedy for the Israelites? Repentance. But I guess God had had enough and determined that no other remedy would work. From the Israelites' view, taking out the king of Judah didn't make things better for them. Instead, they were carted off into slavery in Babylon. Does God fulfill the conditions?
I bring that up in part, because if you read the full exchange between Warren and Hannity, they go off on the Evangelicals' favorite topic - why we need to follow the Old Testament more. I tell you, if a Christian is one who believes in the new covenant of Jesus Christ, then many of these people may not even be Christians. I personally know evangelicals who would prefer to live under the Old Testament.
Crystal - Do you think it's even humanly possible for James' statement to be true? I think that's the tragedy of humanity. So much of our happiness is based precisely on NOT knowing who has to suffer for it. If you think too much about the interconnections and the price that someone pays for our comfort, you go insane. I think all we can do is try to reduce the number of people made miserable by our happiness.
Good discussion, btw.
William,
You're right about the OT stuff. One of the articles I linked to has an interesting discussion about the OT example used as justification for Warren's opinion and how badly it turns out. I think the OT is a pretty scary bunch of books :)
James maybe was an optimist about human nature. I thin many people are fine with others suffering so they can be happy. But I admire his idealism.
Crystal, when you visit the website, be sure to read up on the Canadian Lt. General Dallaire's account of what it was like in Rwanda when the Hutus were slaughtering the Tutsis.
Dallaire, who was in charge of the small U.N. peacekeeping forces there, tried frantically to get more help (5000 troops is all he thought he needed to make an impact) from Annon who was head of the U.N. peacekeeping operations. But Annon could not get the U.N. Security council to go along with this. Nobody cared about what was happening to these people. Dallaire felt so helpless and was so distraught over it all that he wished he himself would be killed, too, so that he could join the victims. Later after he left his military post he battled with depression and the urge to commit suicide over his failure to help the Tutsis. An excellent dramatization of all of this is the movie Hotel Rwanda.
Whether or not an assassination is a moral act and meets with God's approval depends on the circumstances. Something that would not meet with God's approval would be to stand by and do nothing while a tyrant persists in murdering thousands of innocent civilians, men, women, and children. Surely that would anger a just and moral God.
Whether or not an assassination is a moral act and meets with God's approval depends on the circumstances
I don't know if I believe in situational ethics. I don't know if the God of the NT who says we should forgive even our enemies would say murder is ok in certain circumstances. Maybe I'm being too idealistic, but it seems that when you decide one person's life is more worthwhile than anothers, when you decide many peoples lives are worth more than one, you are on a slippery slope.
I'm not saying people should stand by and do nothing, but why does doing something have to mean assassination?
WOW! You really got things going on this one Crystal. Two things came to mind as I read your post and the comments. One was Rolheiser's column last week on dealing with terrorism..not specific to a tyrannical leader but I think his ideas remain valid for this situation too. Namely that some fires are so horrible destructive, so filled with hate, that the 'fight fire with fire' mentality only serves to fuel the flames further.
The other think that I thought was in reference to the Old testament image of God that often comes up when speaking of moral issue of this nature. The old, "God does it, so why can't we?" idea. The difficulty is that, in the OT we are not dealing with a fully developed revelation who just who God is...its' such a difficult thing to get through to people, the OT is an incomplete Revelation and is not intended to stand on it's own as a moral guide. It's the starting place, but not the complete picture. It describes only the progression in understanding of who God is and how God acts, and it is heavily influenced by the authors' own preconceived notions of how 'gods' act. They write about a God who issues deathn warrent for entire nations and metes our similar punnishment upon God's own people largely because that is how everyone understood the gods to act. Gradually...VERY gradually, this image of Who Yahweh is, begins to change and we start to hear the OT authors speaking of God more and more as loving, kind, faithful, merciful...VERY different from the other gods.
Once the People of God begin to develop the idea of a Messiah, they begin to understand that they do not yet know exactly who God is and what God is like and that it will be this Messiah who will reveal once and for all the full nature of God.
That's why the images of God seem so different between the OT and NT (though that NT image can be found within the OT in bits and pieces). At the end of the day, what the Fundamentalist view of the scriptures forgets is that the Bible is not Revelation in bits and pieces, but only as a complete work.
What this means is that, while at one point in it's history, the people of God thought that Yahweh enjoyed the the and require the indiscriminate extermination of all of their enemies regardless the cost, (which made sense because at the time, that's what all the gods wanted eventually, they grew to understand that what their God really wanted was that they would learn to "Love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you."
Just knowing this one thing about scripture would solve a lot of horrible misunderstandings.
Hi Cura,
I'll have to check out Fr. Rolheiser's post.
Thanks for the info about the OT. Sometimes I forget why it seems so different than the gospels. I miss your bible study blog :)
I forgot to give the link to the post...but he's got it still as his 'Current Column' even though it was last week which means that in the next week or so it will get moved from it's current address and into his archives. here's where you can find it today though;
The Struggle With Terrorism
I miss my Bible Study blog too. I still have it up. Maybe I can start it up again in the new year.
Crystal,
The question is, from the perspective of Aquinas and the Church, is it possible to love someone completely and still choose to kill them?
You can't rape someone you truly love. You can't torture someone you completely love. That's why the Church calls these intrinsically evil. The Church defines "murder" as killing someone who has done nothing to deserve it, and that, too, is intrinsically evil.
(Hypothetically) If your own sister, or son, pointed a gun at someone in a moment of anger and threatened to shoot them, how would you react? You love them, and so you would do anything you can to stop them from shooting that person, without killing your loved one. The question is... could you kill your own son, or your own mother, if at last you have exhausted all your resources and are unable to stop them from shooting unless you kill them first?
This is the attitude that God demands of us; that we treat even a cold-blooded tyrant who has killed everyone we love as if he himself were also our brother, our mother, our child. What Aquinas says is that, if it really does come down to such a desperate situation that there is no way to prevent our loved one from killing more innocent people, except that we ourselves kill him, then it is not incompatible with a complete love of him to do so.
And you are right that this is a slippery slope. It is all too easy to go from the idea of killing someone you love because you cannot find any other way to stop them from sinking into further evil, to killing people because it is convenient. It would hardly surprise me if Rick Warren, and others with him, have advocated tyrannicide without truly considering if it was the last resort (although I try not to assume too much about what people have or haven't thought of).
Anna
Cura,
If you do start up the bible study again, let me know, ok?
Anna,
What Aquinas says is that, if it really does come down to such a desperate situation that there is no way to prevent our loved one from killing more innocent people, except that we ourselves kill him, then it is not incompatible with a complete love of him to do so.
If this is so, Aquinas is saying that it's ok to kill someone to stop them from killing someone. That makes no real sense to me, unless you have already decided that either the person you want to save is more important than the one you kill, or that a number of lives are worth more than a single life. Neither of these ideas seem consistant with the stuff Jesus said/did. If he believed that, he'd have been a Zealot, killing bad people to save good people, instead of a preacher getting killed himself, I think.
I've been thinking about this idea a lot. I come to two conclusions. Either life is cheap, not sacred in any sense, and it's ok to give it a price tag (one life is worth less than 10 lives, for instance), or to value one person's life above another's (a good person is more worth saving than a bad person). Or God really does exist and every life has worth, no matter if it's one person or many, good or bad.
I don't know which idea is true, but I like the second idea better than the first most of the time.
Crystal,
Every life has intrinsic value. Every life is sacred. I don't think killing a tyrant is based on a comparitive value of the *worth* of the people involved. My brother could be a holy man who prays daily, gives half his money to the poor, and spends his day helping everyone he can, while the man he is currently threatening to kill could be a scumbag who lies and cheats and neglects his kids in order to all his money on gambling, alcohol, and hookers. The point isn't that either one is somehow worth saving and the other not; the point is that it would not be just for my brother to kill the other man, because despite that man's sins, he is not threatening the life of anyone. Whereas, my brother IS threatening the life of someone, unjustly. And therefore it would not be incompatible with love for me to kill my brother, if it is the only way to save the other man.
Anna,
I don't think we'll ever agree on thsi :)
my brother IS threatening the life of someone, unjustly. And therefore it would not be incompatible with love for me to kill my brother, if it is the only way to save the other man.
It sounds then like you are killing the person doing "wrong". But you are still killing someone. I'm thinking it's wrong to kill anyone. I think I'll post something about this - maybe it will make more sense about what I mean.
I like Anna's explanations here.
Crystal, I believe I understand your dilemma in thinking about this issue of taking one life to save another.
I wonder if it would help you to think of Jesus in a different way. We tend to make him too meek and mild, too much like a soft marshmellow. But look what he did to the moneychangers in the temple. He turned over their tables and he chased them out with a whip according to the account. So maybe our Jesus was capable of a full range of human emotions including justifiable anger.
Something that stands out for me when I look at Jesus in the New Testament is how he focused on the spirit of the law and not the letter of it.
This is from Luke 14:1-6. "On a sabbath he went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees, and the people there were observing him carefully.
In front of him there was a man suffering from dropsy.
Jesus spoke to the scholars of the law and Pharisees in reply, asking, “Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?”
But they kept silent; so he took the man and, after he had healed him, dismissed him.
Then he said to them, “Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?”
But they were unable to answer his question."
There was another occasion when he and his apostles were gathering grain from the field on the Sabbath. This was against the religious law at that time. Jesus was confronted and his reply was that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.
Dallaire said that he knows that there is a God because he came face to face with the devil there in Rwanda. If you were to come face to face with the devil in a situation similar to the Rwanda one, do you suppose you would know immediately what God expected you to do? I think you would.
We are at a disadvantage when we try to discuss this issue, because we are removed from the victims of these crimes against humanity. We can only imagine and our imaginations may not be all that sharp. Or we may be reluctant to allow our imaginations full rein, because we might be forced to abandon our previously formed ideas of right and wrong and that could be very uncomfortable for us.
Crystal,
Don't get me wrong, I understand how you feel. And there is a wrongness, a sadness, about any killing, even if there are times when it is not a sin. But for me, that urge is balanced by knowing the evil that happens when otherwise good men don't stop it. Hitler, for example, who was voted into office and couldn't have perpetrated the evil he did if the Germans hadn't let him. Or Susie Q's example of us withdrawing during the Rwandan genocide. To sit back and watch while evil happens, to pretend it isn't your responsibility because you aren't the one doing it - that is not ok.
So yes, we have to try to stop it in non-lethal ways if it is at all possible. But when there really is no other choice, when it comes down to a question of whether I kill Anthony before he kills Bob, I have to keep in mind that I am as responsible for Bob's life as I am for Anthony's, even though I am not the one threatening Bob. And Bob, no matter how worse of a person he is than Anthony, is innocent, whereas Anthony is the unjust attacker. It isn't so much that killing Anthony is something good, but that letting Bob die when you could have stopped it is worse, since he's not threatening anyone's life.
Susie Q,
On the Rwandan genocide, you might be interested in the book Left to Tell, by Immaculee Ilagabiza, who lived through it. Very good book.
SusiQ,
I do think Jesus got angry but I don't believe he would ever kill another person. When he was resurrected, he didn't come back to take revenge on those who hurt him, he visited friends. I don't think that makes him weak, I think it's the easiest thing to strike out at those who hurt you, harder to forgive. And I absolutely do not believe God or Jesus expect us to kill people, even bad people.
I think I understand the compassion and outrage you feel about the people who were terribly harmed in Ruwanda and other places. I don't mean to say we shouldn't feel for them or try to help them any way we can or that the people who are hurting them shouldn't be stopped and punished. All I'm saying is that I think murdering a head of state cold blood in the hopes it will end a genocide or war is morally questionable, especially when he could be captured and imprisoned.
A thought, one of the few that passes through my head this morning, is that this discussion seems to be based on the assumption that the worse thing we can do to a person is kill him, and that also implies that the worse thing that can happen to anyone is that we can die. I don't really believe that is a valid assumption.
Much of Catholic belief is based on the teaching that it is God's right to decide when life shall occur and when it shall end. From what I have seen then, God has a long history of bringing death to people. Could one believe that at times God chooses that someone is to die at the hands of another human? Is this worse than His choosing a microbe to do the job? Or a break failure while driving on a curvy road? Certainly we shall all die, and is the cause of our death always evil?
Personally, I think that stealing a person's life through torture, or poverty, or drugs or sealing them in a prison until something else kills them ,may be a far worse evil then killing them outright.
It seems to me that there is an organization to society and to life, and that one can decide through evil acts to place themselves outside of that organization. And when that happens I believe that organization has the right to defend itself. However that organization must also take care not to take actions which will destroy it.
I think for Crystal to kill someone even to save another life, would destroy her, and would be wrong. For others, standing by and seeing others killed when they could have prevented it would destroy them. Each must do what is right for them.
Like I said, it is early in the morning, and by this afternoon I might think quite differently. In any case, let us all pray that we are never put in such a position.
Love and hugs,
Mike L
I think for Crystal to kill someone even to save another life, would destroy her, and would be wrong.
Actually, I'm afraid I'd feel nothing at all or even justitified and satisfied. You should see me when the ants swarm the kitchen - "take no prisoners" is my motto.
Mike L,
God has the right to take human life because (A) he makes us and therefore our lives belong to him in the first place and (B) being all-knowing, he knows when the best time for each person to die is, for the own salvation and to fit into his overall plan.
We, however, do not own human lives (not even our own) and we are not all-knowing. Life is GOOD, and human life is sacred. For us to act against that life is for us to do something destructive and evil. Tyrannicide, self-defense, those things can only be justified because (if and when) the destruction of life isn't the real intent of the killing; the intent is to save someone else's life.
I don't think anyone in this discussion has been assuming that killing someone is the *worst* thing you can do, only that it is a *bad* thing you can do.
God bless,
Anna
Mike and Anna,
Just wanted to add, I wonder if God does kill people. Jesus never did.
Crystal,
I'd say yes and no. Death wasn't part of God's original plan for humans. I think all evil, death included, comes immediately from Satan. But Satan can only do what God allows him to do, which means that Satan basically has to have God's permission to kill someone. (Sort of like he got permission from God to make Job suffer). At least, that's my understanding of how it works.
Anna
Anna,
The OT and NT are so different. In the NT, Jesus says God doesn't punish people by killing them, he lets the sun shine on the good and the bad alike. But I guess if one thinks that everything that happens is part ofGod's plan, then it would seem like all events are his choice. I don't think I believe that, though.
Crystal,
The OT and the NT sound different to us, because the context is so different. But both are meant to deal with basic human problems and lead us towards our loving God.
As for the sun shining on the good and bad alike, the OT says that too:
Ecclesiastes 9:2-3
[T]here is the same lot for all, for the just and the wicked, for the good and the bad, for the clean and the unclean, for him who offers sacrifice and him who does not. As it is for the good man, so it is for the sinner; as it is for him who swears rashly, so it is for him who fears an oath.
Among all the things that happen under the sun, this is the worst, that things turn out the same for all.
Job 21:7-9
Why do the wicked survive, grow old, become mighty in power?
Their progeny is secure in their sight; they see before them their kinsfolk and their offspring.
Their homes are safe and without fear, nor is the scourge of God upon them.
Indeed, I think half of Job is his friends telling him that he must have done something wrong for God to make him suffer, and Job defending his innocence. Finally in chapter 32, a young upstart named Elihu joins the conversation saying, among other things, that God doesn't immediately and obviously punish people who do evil in order to give them time to repent and come back to life. (Job 33:13-30).
The New Testament, too, is filled with warnings about God's punishments for wrongdoings, but says (2 Peter 3:9), "The Lord does not delay his promise [for justice], as some regard "delay," but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. "
I wouldn't exactly say that everything happens by God's choice; our will is really free. He doesn't choose that we reject him; he doesn't choose for us to hurt each other. But he chooses to allow us to choose. And he uses his power over our circumstances to bring about good for people; "We know that all things work for good for those who love God"(Romans 8:28).
Anna
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