The ends and the means

[Emly]

Hi guys. I am wandering about the ends and the means. I know you can not do evil to defeat evil…

Well, on LOST, in a flashback, a Aferican boy stole food to feed his brother. ILater,a Nigerian warlord ordered his brother to murdar a man in cold blood. In the older brothers mind, if he didn’t kill the man, his little brother would be killed, and if his little brother killed the man, he’d be the killer instead.

What are we supossed to maek us this?

 

[Tantum_ergo]

How glad we are not to watch that much TV??

Seriously. . .

Even though it sounds ‘terrible’ to us, we should not do something wrong in order that something ‘good’ comes of it.

Murder is wrong. In the contrived scenario “lost” gives us, the choices are apparently:
older brother ‘must’ kill someone

OR
younger brother ‘must’ kill someone

OR
one or both brothers will be killed.

Well the only ‘choice’ to take I’m afraid is for both brothers to refuse to kill. Does that mean they will be killed? Yes indeed it may.

In the Bible, we are told not to fear the one who has power to kill the body, but the one who has power to kill the soul.

If either of the brothers commits a murder, CHOOSES to commit (because always, ALWAYS there is the choice NOT to commit that murder), then he/they have killed not only the body of the one they murder, but their own soul (s) through that evil act.

IF OTOH the brother (s) refuse to commit the murder, he/they may die. . .but the eternal soul will not be condemned.

Are we more afraid of the physical reality of death–which will COME TO US ALL SOME DAY–or more afraid of the REALITY of eternity, which will LIKEWISE come one day.

We can die ONLY ONCE. How we LIVE is much more important than our death (unless we have been bad people who suddenly are converted and die a heroic death, having sincerely repented our sins. The numbers of people who actually do this are, however, quite tiny; whereas the number of people who live very ‘ordinary’ lives with ‘ordinary’ deaths are quite high. Hence, for the average person, it matters very much HOW one lives and not THAT one dies, so to speak).

 

[psteichen]

Emly: I’m afraid I’m LOST as well. I never have been able to understand that show. I’m not sure we can rely on it to teach us any kind of moral truths. What I think you are asking though is, can the ends ever justify the means. The answer there is no. As Catholics we believe that you cannot justify a sinful action by saying you were working toward a greater good.

In the example of the boy who stole food for his brother to eat, he may have a good reason, but the stealing is still wrong.

Now some people become confused by this. A current example is voting for pro-abortion candidates. It would always be wrong to vote for a pro-abortion candidate, this we can all agree on. But what about the case of voting when both candidates are pro-abortion to varying degrees? Now we can vote against the candidate that will likely do the most harm to the unborn. In this way we are casting our ballot against an evil, not for the less evil candidate. The result is a loss for the dangerous candidate, and we can hope that by ensuring this loss we have helped to save lives. Thus no evil committed by us.

That may not apply to your particular question, but its a similar question that is being asked in thousands of ways as people try to justify not voting this year out of disgust for the options. Almost always there is a less harmful alternative that you can select on your ballot in order to prevent the seriously harmful candidate from winning. Oh, and writing in a name in no way prevents the bad guy or gal from winning, so that is if not sinful, at least useless.

 

[nydas]

I love LOST and i no exactly which episode your talking about.

The younger brother wasnt going to kill the man, so to save his younger brothers life, the older brother grabed the weapon and shot the man.

Several years later we see that the older brother became the drug lord and that the younger brother had become a priest.