OK my last post since this is my wife’s account.
You do a good job of identifying some of my presuppositions. However, I think you’ve confused identifying the presuppositions with actually constructing an argument against them. I could just as easily say, "You make the mistakes of thinking a) there’s **not **ever a situation where God requires…etc…
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In any serious debate you have the obligation to construct an argument or counter example that shows why my presuppositions are wrong. Simply identifying some of them (you haven’t identified them all) and tacking on “you make the mistake” is not exactly a compelling refutation.
If you assert against me, in a debate, that I am say, male whereas I’m really female, I don’t need to do any more than assert ‘you’re wrong, I’m female’. My gender will, for the most part, be beyond dispute to anyone who looks at me and hears me.
In regard to God never putting us in a situation where all the choices are evil - well, to do so would go against His trait of omnibenevolence (that is, that He wishes good to all men). And He is omnibenevolent - that is constant Church teaching from the very beginning, and the Jews believe the same. He can’t be omnibenevolent and at the same time place us in a situation where the only ways out are all evil to some degree.
It also goes against the idea that all evil (including the evil of lying) is abhorrent to God - clearly evil can’t be so very abhorrent to Him if He ever permits us to be cornered into choosing evil in one form or another. His utter hatred of all evils, all wrongs, is another constantly taught trait. Both of these facts - His omnibenevolence and His hatred of evil - should probably be obvious enough that they don’t have to be stated by me.
A good place for you to start would be with my example described above. What, in your opinion, is the best course of action our victim could take? Why is the course of action you describe more righteous than the victim claiming that his wife and kids are not actually his?
I’ve given several possible courses of action - and there are others (if there is more than one person in the house, for example, one person can distract the guards while the other sneaks the Jews out of the house and to a place of safety). One could tell the truth and appeal to their better nature - it’s worked for me in many situations, and I know has worked on occasions for people in similar situations to the one you describe.
Which one is the best course of action would have to depend on so many individual factors of the situation - the character of the soldiers, how good an actor the householder is, loads of other things - that one couldn’t hope to know which one is ‘best’ until you’re nearly or actually in the situation. But put it this way - they’re all as good as, or better than, lying. If you value, as Jesus seems to value, truth as much as life, since He is both the truth AND the life. Liars, as St Paul says, will have their share in the lake of fire alongside adulterers fornicators etc. Which means we are to take lying seriously. Don’t see truth tellers (where the truth is slightly or extremely problematic for self or others) listed there.
Abraham did what you suggest with Sarah - claimed she was not his wife on several occasions because he thought she would be safer that way. On every occasion they got into no end of trouble - someone else wanted to marry her and Abraham got in Pharoah’s bad books among others for his lie.
Methinks that’s God’s way of teaching us not to lie, and of telling us that the goods we ignoramuses think we can achieve by lying are nebulous and unreliable enough that we shouldn’t resort to it.
Finally, I see you have “catholic” in your signature. What do you make of the church’s teaching on “Just War”? The same moral principles that apply in any just war would apply in this situation as well. If you want to just cut to the chase, you could examine those principles directly and see what you think is wrong with them.
I’ve seen the same just war principles used to argue in favour of contraception - that the sperm are ‘unjust aggressors’ in some circumstances (literally, that term was used about them) and therefore a woman could ‘defend’ herself against them with contraception. I rightly pointed out that by that logic the same could possibly be said of an unwanted pregnancy - that if innocent sperm were ‘unjust aggressors’ that there’s no real reason then why an unwanted embryo or fetus was not also an ‘unjust aggressor’ against the mother’s body.
The principles relating to ‘just war’ simply don’t transfer over to situations other than the ones in which they are specified to apply. This is obvious in the case of a pagan Roman, out to persecute Christians, who could save their skins by lying about their faith or the faith of others around them. Many rightly refused to do so - since to deny the truth is a sin.
If the principles of just war did apply in situations other than those in which they are specified to apply, the Church would either explicitly say so in discussing those other situations, or would use the same terminology in framing exceptions to the teachings against lying, contraception or what have you. It’s hardly like the question you raise has never been considered before, after all.
npatrol:
I think ANYONE who expects to get a party in heaven for anything they’ve done on Earth will get a very cold reception indeed - including your liars who thought they were doing such a wonderful thing by offending His truth. In loving and serving God and neighbour we’re doing no more than our duty, as scripture says, and that poorly at the best of times.