Negotiating Evil

There is an evil man holding 100 innocent people hostage and he thinks he has the right to kill them all. He says he won’t kill all of them but will only kill one if we agree to the terms of passing a law that allows someone to kill the youngest 1% of people in a group. If we comply, he gets away with murder and making threats but there are 99 very real lives saved. We would word the law as restricting some evil rather than permitting it- “a person is prohibited from killing only the oldest 99% of a group”. We would also write a statement of intent to make all murder illegal at some point in the future. However, passing the law would set a precedent that this scenario can be legally repeated in the future for others in the same or similar ways. *Note that we did not create the initial unjust premise – the evil man did.

Question

“Given all that is in the Bible and all that God already commanded us about murder, justice, and obedience- would it be acceptable to God for us to comply with the evil man in order to save real lives and mitigate worse crimes?”

Alternate parameters to consider

What if we changed the numbers to the youngest one murder-able and 9,999 saved? This puts even more pressure on the concept of the parable. Numbers do not trump God’s commands when His commands are direct and non-negotiable about protecting victims from perpetrators. “You shall not murder”.

What if we changed the numbers to the youngest 90 murder-able and only the 10 oldest saved? This is more realistic to the relative numbers of abortions done at earlier stages of development.

The answer to all of these question variations is still - No, God made it clear He would not find it acceptable. Even when we put as much pressure on the principle as we can - change the numbers around, word the law as restricting evil rather than permitting it, write a statement of intent for future actions, the hostage taker initiated the evil- still none of those things makes it ok to comply with the evil man to write his desired law.

What’s the point?

Many pro-life incrementalists do not understand the abolitionist position. The very crucial point we’re making is that the act or provision of murder itself cannot be negotiated, even in part or even if it might seem to save some lives. Enacting law is more about godly justice than it is about physical rescue.

However, something like banning mifepristone as a drug is not inherently sinful or partial. Banning mifepristone might be ineffective and a distraction from truly outlawing all murder but it does not contradict God’s commands to prohibit the act of murder itself for all people. Conceivably, we could simultaneously propose a total ban on abortion and IVF in addition to banning mifepristone. However, we could not propose something like a 20-week abortion ban or an exception for women at the same time as a righteous, total ban on all abortions and IVF. All victims and perpetrators are to be treated with righteous justice at all times in the legislation we propose.

In this way, the incrementalist hypothetical of the “burning building” scenario is solved and brought under subjection to the principles of the Bible. The scenario goes like this- “If there is a left and right wing of a burning building and you only have time to save people in one wing or the other, would you save people in one wing or save none at all?” This scenario is not in regards to justice for the act of murder by a perpetrator against an innocent victim. Nobody remains legally killable based on their status or characteristics as a human and no perpetrator is immune from proper justice in a scenario where we would save one wing over the other. Clearly, we can all imagine scenarios where we wouldn’t compromise on what God has already said to save a greater number of lives. The ends do not justify the means.

In addition to asking what I would do in a given scenario, we should be asking what would God have us do?