Who created who?

I was talking to a friend the other day about their attitude to alcohol. They are total abstainers and I am not. The conversation was quite friendly and there was no rancour involved, but it made me think. Not about my attitude to alcohol, but about the difficulty of determining the status of any action. I wonder now if we can say that any activity is, of itself, either good or evil.
Consider the question posed above. Should we, or should we not, drink? My friend and his family have considered the matter carefully and have arrived at their decision to abstain. I have considered the matter equally carefully and decided to enjoy a drink sometimes. I do not attempt to persuade my friend to change his mind, nor does he think that my decision is wrong. He is as correct in his decision as I am in mine, but this leaves us with a paradox. The same question was considered by each of us and we arrived at two different answers, both of which are right. His “No” decision is just as right as my “Yes” verdict.

The difference is not in the question, we each considered the same question. What, then, is the reason for the difference and how can both decisions be right? The only variation is in the situation that the question applies to. We each made the decision according to our own situation. My friend and I are different people and neither of us wanted or tried to make a decision for the other. This leads me to consider if the same parameters apply to other questions. Can we say that any action is either right or wrong when seen in isolation?

Most people consider murder to be definitely wrong and I must agree that the majority of such acts are committed for personal gain in one form or another. But the motives for murder can vary widely. Perhaps a robbery goes wrong; perhaps the perpetrator is in danger of being apprehended for another offence, perhaps the victim is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I can envisage a set of different circumstances which challenge the traditional view. Murder is defined as the taken of another person’s life without lawful reason. Defense personnel kill the enemy that is the reason they are in a combat zone, they are acting on the instructions of their government. An executioner is obeying the ruling of a court, no matter what our opinion of capital punishment is, the executioner is carrying out the decision of a legally appointed court and he cannot be charged with murder.

Just after WW1, a group of ex USA Air force pilots were making a living barnstorming. One of the stunts went very wrong and the plane crashed, splitting open the fuel tank and trapping the pilot in the wreckage. The fuel caught fire and his mates were unable to free the pilot who cried out in terror “Don’t let me fry”. One of his friends, who had served in the same unit with him, took a bit of timber lying on the ground and beat his friend to death with it. The first blow killed him. Now the USA had not declared war on the victim, nor had he been sentenced to death by any court, so legally speaking, it was murder. But was it really? Incidentally, that incident formed the basis for one of the scenes in the film. “The Great Waldo Pepper”.

If murder is wrong, then self murder is also contrary to God’s laws and there are many who hold that belief. What is suicide? It occurs when a person either takes or fails to take action or actions which result in their own death. The victim can perhaps take poison or may fail to get off the tracks when the train comes through. Captain Oates was an officer in the British Navy who was well experienced in exploration and he was part of an expedition to reach the North Pole. Having achieved their object, they set out on the return journey and were caught in a blizzard of such intensity that they had to camp where they were for quite some time. The camped for so long that they did not have enough supplies to cover the return journey to base camp. Captain Oates said to his friends “I am going out for a moment, don’t wait for me” This was the usual way of announcing that a call of nature was being answered. He went out, lay down in the ice and froze to death so that his friends would have sufficient supplies to reach the base. There once was a man who enjoyed a supper with his friends. During the course of this supper he told one of them to go out and betray him. The host, after the meal, led the friends to a place where he knew he would be met by his enemies. The enemies did, indeed, meet him there and attacked him and so his friends attempted to repulse the attack. But the leader told them not to fight and told them that he could, if he wanted, call up an army to defend him. So the host was arrested and executed.

Both of these incidents come within the definition of suicide, they took and failed to take, actions which resulted directly in their deaths. Yet Captain Oates was hailed as a hero and the host of the meal is our salvation. Why are these actions not seen as suicide and condemned as wrong? The thing that sets them apart is the motive, the reason for the action. They are called as self sacrifice, yet, by definition, they are suicide.

The Israelites had their ten commandments, a set of fairly simple, basic regulations designed to make life easier for them. Yet the leaders of these people expanded this half page of foolscap into documents, folders and folios of definitions and supplementary rulings, covering every aspect of life and activity. The actual laws themselves paled into insignificance under the sheer weight of the additional material which eventually assumed an importance greater than the laws they were meant to explain.

Jesus had quite a bit to say about this. The opening paragraph of Matthew 12 is a case in point. Jesus pointed out to the critics that the spirit of the law is far more important than the letter, and He was strongly condemned those who enforced the law at the expense of other people. The second paragraph says the same thing with regard to healing a man’s withered hand. This is re iterated in Mark 2 and 3 and again in Luke 6. It was the legalistic attitude of the Temple leaders that allowed the money changers to conduct their business. By a strict observance of the letter of the law, the coffers of the priests were swelled at the expense of the people. But according to the priests, it was all quite correct and above board. They managed to legitimize their actions under the law by using their own definitions of what was meant and ignoring the spirit and the intent of the law. To quote Mark 2:27 “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”

It is my opinion that a lot of the current argument about what is or is not allowed by the scriptures falls under the same sort of heading. We, today, are so concerned about what is permissible, we are so strong in our comments on things such as the abortion debate or Sunday working that we have forgotten that there are actual real people involved in these issues. We have created a world where the law rules supreme, observance of the rules is paramount to our worship. It is said in Genesis 1:26 that God created man in His own image, yet we have turned that around and are in danger of creating god in our image, a god who rules by the letter of the law without regard for the people who the law is meant to serve. We have re created the very thing that Jesus came to destroy.

This worship of the letter of the law has blinded us to the real issues involved. It is my belief that there can be no "one universally correct answer" to moral dilemmas, rather that each question should be decided on its own merits, according to the circumstances of the people involved and that people should not have to suffer as a result of the vey laws which God gave us for our benefit.