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Hypothetical situation: your city has been invaded by the enemy. Opposing soliders are going house to house, killing every woman that they found.
The soliders come to your house. You, a male, answer the door.
“Are there any women in your house?” they ask you.
Hesitating, you hope that your pause doesn’t give away the truth: your wife and daughter(s) are hiding in the basement.
In Exodus 20:16 God instructs Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
Translation: Don’t lie.
So here’s the question:
God has clearly commanded you not to lie. Do you tell the truth and allow your wife and daughter(s) to be murdered, or do you lie and disobey God?
Atheists - you can play along. Just make it relevant to you.
(Thanks to an interview that I watched on Dr. Zach’s site for the inspiration)
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Were I and my family Christians, I’d let them die; after all, they’ll go to heaven sooner that way, right?
Although, there’s still the option of “lie and confess later.” Jesus will apparently forgive you for anything up to and including murder. Surely a lie to save lives can’t be that bad.
Me? I’d look at the greater good of preserving the lives of those who I care for since the existance afterlife has scant if any evidence backing it up. Where I stand, we get one chance at life, so we damn well better preserve it.
This brings back memories…I remember being in a Bible study class, probably about 5 years ago, after my beliefs had been changing but before I’d gone public about it.
A question essentially like this was asked and I was sitting there thinking how GLAD I was that I could simply do what would be most likely to save my family. That the ‘conflict’ was gone, for me, because if I did believe in God, I no longer believed in one who would put a painful choice like that in front of me - of course he would understand my desire to protect my family and whatever I did to save them.
Anyway even if I hadn’t thought that way, Rahab lied to protect the Jewish spies and she never got in trouble for it so there’s Biblical precedent for lying to protect people.
I respect people who believe that God wants people to tell the truth in these situations. But I’m glad I don’t have a belief like that which turns this into a painful dilemma.
What a stupid question. Forget about whether you’re a Christian or atheist or Buddhist or whatever. If you let your family (or anyone for that matter) die, when you can do something about it, you’re a terrible person. If you have to even think about it, you’re a terrible person. And if your god wants you to have to think about it, then your god is a demented fool. And you are still a terrible person.
This is a more complicated question then most people think. There are examples in the Bible of God honoring lying. Exodus 1:19-20 with the midwives, and as mentioned above, Rahab in Joshua 2.
It may be worthwhile stating here that the commandment is to not bear false witness, or false charge. I am no Hebrew scholar, so I can’t tear apart the original wording to truly support any alternative meaning, but I suspect there is a distinction in there based on the purpose of the words. We have seen very clearly that lying to save lives (in the case of the midwives) or to serve gods will and help his people (in the case of Rahab). A point may be made on innocent lives. Lying to save a murderer from justice probably isn’t as respected by God as lying to save some innocent people (see Jews in the attic, which is where all these questions really come from, anyway).
There are, of course, other, more extreme cases. Should a Christian deny God to save his own life? I think the answer, as shown in scripture, is fairly obvious. How about their families life? What about a strangers life? 100 strangers lives? 100 children? And then you can get into even more corner cases. Kill this man to save those 100 children. Sleep with this other mans wife to kill 100 children. Kill this one child to save the other 99. At what point is the line drawn? It is a difficult question that, I’m sure, most of us don’t want to have to answer in any real world situation.
This reminds me of an interview with the Iranian president. Suppose Iran is building a nuclear weapon, but the president cannot admit it. On the other hand, as a deeply religious man, he can’t lie about it either because it would offend his God. So, in the interview, when asked about if Iran is making the weapon he faces a dilemma: If he answers ‘yes’ he reveals the information and if ‘no’ he’s violating God’s commandment by lying. To me, it seemed that the president resolved the dilemma by never giving a ‘yes’- or ‘no’ -answer at all by using his good speaking skills! I don’t know anything about Iran or politics, this is just something I thought while listening…
Not that this proves or disproves anything, but Muhammad (not the president) specifically allows for lying in at least three situations: Reconciling two fighting Muslims, a Husband to a Wife, and the necessary deceit involved in war.
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/032.smt.html#032.6303
If I had to guess, I would say Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was being intentionally unclear about his answer because he didn’t want to be shown saying he did, thus giving America far more justification in attacking, but he certainly wanted people to question if he actually does or not. Uncertainty in battle.
I’m utterly fascinated by Ahmadinejad. The man’s a bit off his rocker, for sure (No homosexuals in Iran? Please… My gay Iranian friend was very tickled to learn that he doesn’t exist ;-)), but he’s not a stupid man, and I think the U.S. is currently mishandling it’s relationship with Iran. Ahmadinejad has a lot more in common with Bush than either man would ever like to admit (including being objects of rancor by their respective citizens), and if they could only agree on Christ’s divinity I’m sure they’d be best friends forever.
Back to the post:
I’d lie through my teeth, then do whatever I could to detain the bastards until proper authorities show up to take them away.
As an atheist this is a simply equation. I’d lie my socks off. There are nine other commandments that I’d break as well to protect my loved ones. Any deity who would not take circumstances into consideration or force that decision is utterly unworthy of respect.
Do you know what else? I would not feel even slightly guilty about lying.
To obey this “law” not to lie and allow innocents to be killed (much less your loved ones) would be supremely disobedient to one part of the greatest law - “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” . What would you have your wife do if the tables were reversed.?
But, even though this question is a trifle absurd, legalists struggle with these kinds of things every day, and in the process they miss most of Jesus’ point. Aside from that, my understanding is that this commandment is directed more towards how someone would conduct business with another or how they would behave in court.
Or should I start telling my wife the truth when she asks me if I like her new dress?
My questions is why is it God’s fault if we are in that situation? I’ve heard it said that thousands of planes took off and landed safely before 9/11, and nobody was talking about how great God was that no one had hijacked and crashed a plane intoa building. But since 9/11 everyone wants to ask “Where was God?” Matt Chandler of Village Church put it like this …
“Every time an airplane goes down, you’ll find somebody on Larry King talking about “Where was God?” They’ll mention 9/11 over and over, “Where was God on 9/11? Where was He?” But here’s where the blasphemy occurs. Do you know that up until that point, there had been nearly 100 years of air travel where no terrorist hijacked a plane and crashed it into a building, and no one ever went on the Larry King Show (it’s been on for 100 years). No one ever went on the Larry King Show and said this, “How awesome is God that for the last 100 years nobody hijacked a plane and crashed it into a building.? How awesome is He? How gracious is He? How beautiful is He that He’s protected us in such ways?” So He gets absolutely no credit for the beautiful day and every ounce of blame for the horrific one. Blasphemy. Yeah, it’s who we are. And we’re unapologetic about it.”
I know this is not really answering the question posed, but responses reminded me of the blasphemy towards God that occurs. Somehow we think we deserve to know everything and indirectly we think we are God (or just as important). Yet, He is the creator of everything GOOD and RIGHT in the world and the amount at which we know is so very, very, very, very tiny. The thing is, I am trying to figure out where people get the idea that as Christians we deserve protection or an easy life? The Bible clearly shows we deserve death … we had a choice and chose to disobey - death. Thanks to God’s grace we live and not only live but still can enjoy a beautiful play, go on a hike, have a favorite food, love, …
Anyhow, just some thoughts. If any of you are interested, I encourage you to check Matt Chandler out … a great sermon to start with is here or you can go here for the podcast and go to the 2007 archives and listen to “Sovereign Over All - Luke Part 5.” I think all of you, Christians and Atheists will find this very interesting.
Oh, and before anyone says anything, the 100 years deal about Larry King was a joke … :d
If God has clearly commanded me not to lie, then clearly I would no longer be an atheist. Assuming that I am also convinced there are souls and an afterlife, I tell the truth. With souls and an afterlife worrying about dying is like worrying about ending your visit to the dentist early.
If I am still a naturalist and atheist, then I lie without a second thought to save my family.
Just after the 10 Commandments, which some people think they must follow, Exodus 21:17 states that “Anyone who dishonors (or speaks disrespectfully of) their father or mother must be put to death.” An inconvenient commandment?
How can you cite Exodus 20:16 as a command that still applies to you? Exodus is Old Testament, Old Covenant, special instructions given only to the Jews of the time. You are no longer required to obey those commands as a Christian. Unless you feel you are required to obey them and you are committing sin after sin by not stoning to death people who work on the sabbath, homosexuals, non-Christians, etc.
In Exodus 20:16 God instructs Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
Translation: Don’t lie.
Bad translation. Where did that translation come from anyway?
Bearing false witness against someone is a very specific type of lie. This has nothting to do with the issue in question in the rest of this post.
“How can you cite Exodus 20:16 as a command that still applies to you? Exodus is Old Testament, Old Covenant, special instructions given only to the Jews of the time.”
Do you realize what you are saying here? People were, in fact, actually killed over this command. What is your explanation to them: oops, you lived in the wrong century, or you might not have been justly murdered?
What kind of crazy moral position IS that?
@Dan Whitmer…
I can’t seem to find the translation that talks about being put to death. Which one is that? Although I did laugh when I read the King James translation:
hehe…
@Ben…
How can you cite Exodus 20:16 as a command that still applies to you? Exodus is Old Testament, Old Covenant, special instructions given only to the Jews of the time.
Yeah……..
See here.
@writerdd…
My translation. Heard it translated the same way a million times over. I’ll look into it a bit more for a better translation. Thanks Donna!
Preserving the lives of the two women in the basement is a higher value than this one instance of truth. I’m lying. I’m lying so hard.
These soldiers have not earned the right of honesty, which most people earn by merely doing nothing.
Well, I’ll throw this out there, and you can take it for what it’s worth: I argue that ALL of the old commandments are null and void. Following orders makes for very poor results when compared to the real, situation - specific gray world we live in (as the example you give demonstrates.) I argue that Jesus’ two principles are the ones Christians are living under now: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. The details of how you do that in any particular situation have to be worked out with values of empathy and compassion.