Einstein

[MorkandMindy]

I remember back in the 70s I visited a house for a Christian meeting and the Baptist minister present said it was OK to lie if it would gain a convert and mentioned some early saint had stated exactly that.

I guess the reasoning goes something like that a Buddhist is allowed to lie in unusual circumstances where little or no harm is done and the consequences of not doing so would be severe, such as life or death.

The Christian reasoning must be that the alternative to lying is someone roasting in hell for ever, and therefore it would be wrong not to because the consequences of not doing so are even more severe.


The example used was of a woman whose husband was in hospital awaiting a very difficult operation. With nothing else to do the men in the ward all got to know each other very well, and particularly the husband had a closeness with a man in the next bed who was going in for the very same operation.

In the afternoon the husband was going in and asked how his friend had fared. Well the wife knew the friend had died in the operating theatre but told her husband it all went well.

The husband just barely survived and there was a general agreement that if the wife had not lied then he would not have made it.

What would you do?

 

[blackribbon]

I remember back in the 70s I visited a house for a Christian meeting and the Baptist minister present said it was OK to lie if it would gain a convert and mentioned some early saint had stated exactly that.

I guess the reasoning goes something like that a Buddhist is allowed to lie in unusual circumstances where little or no harm is done and the consequences of not doing so would be severe, such as life or death.

The Christian reasoning must be that the alternative to lying is someone roasting in hell for ever, and therefore it would be wrong not to because the consequences of not doing so are even more severe.


The example used was of a woman whose husband was in hospital awaiting a very difficult operation. With nothing else to do the men in the ward all got to know each other very well, and particularly the husband had a closeness with a man in the next bed who was going in for the very same operation.

In the afternoon the husband was going in and asked how his friend had fared. Well the wife knew the friend had died in the operating theatre but told her husband it all went well.

The husband just barely survived and there was a general agreement that if the wife had not lied then he would not have made it.

What would you do?

I don't believe that lying to gain a convert is ever "okay". A real God doesn't need to be protected with lies. He will survive all truths.

As for the scenerio, there are times to deliver bad news and this was not the correct time...I am going to assume she told him the truth later. In a surgical situation, attitude is important to survivial...so telling him that his friend had died would have actually been as harmful as giving him a bad drug. "All went well" is kind of a fudge factor since she didn't say he survived. Some surgeries do "go just fine" and the patient still dies.

And no one really can determine that knowing or not knowing really would have changed the outcome. There is no real way of "knowing" something like that because each of us is different. If the imaginary man portrayed had children at home, he might have fought to live in spite of what happened to his aquaintance...and maybe would have fought harder to live. (We aren't talking about a life long friend...honestly).

What would I have done? I would have told my husband that our energy needed to be focused on his surgery and I would find out and let him know about his new friend after he got through with his (my husband's) surgery.

 

[Doctor Strangelove]

Comment deleted, never mind...