Hotpepper, the Rahab story is a classic example in discussions of Jewish-Christian ethics. So are the cases of the Hebrew midwives who protected Hebrew children from Pharaoh, Abraham lying about his wife and half-sister, Tamar entrapping Judah and sleeping with him, and Esther sleeping with Xerxes against several laws.
Lots of ink has been spilled on this, both by Jews and by Christians. Some Christian writers, like Norman Geisler, argue that when you have two absolutes that conflict, you need to grade or rank them, and choose to pursue the one with the higher score. They usually differentiate this approach from situational ethics (and Geisler doesn't do it very well, because he's over-invested).
Another situation that's often mentioned in ethics discussions is the Holocaust. I read
The Hiding Place several years ago, and I thought that the family tension over the issue of lying was very interesting.
Corrie ten Boom's sister Nollie had taught her children that lying was wrong, so when the Nazis came looking for her sons (to enlist them in military service, I think), her daughter told them that her older brothers were hiding under the table, which was true. The soldiers looked under the tablecloth but not under the rug, where there was a trapdoor in the floor, so they didn't find them and thought that the girl was joking. Nollie was also hiding Jews, but they were posing as household servants and had false papers.
The family disagreed on whether lying was right in that situation. Nollie wouldn't lie with words, but she had no objection to using false papers for the Jews that she helped. The rest of the family thought that lying was necessary in that situation and pointed out the apparent inconsistency in not lying with one's mouth but lying by one's actions.
At one point Nollie was actually arrested because the Nazis came to her house and asked her directly if a young woman who was working for them was a Jew. Nollie said yes, and both she and the woman were arrested. However, Nollie was never sent to a concentration camp; she was kept in prison for several weeks and then released. The Jewish woman was scheduled to be sent to a death camp in Poland or somewhere, but before she and the other prisoners who were being held together could be transported, someone broke in and rescued them, and she later sent word to the ten Boom family that she was free. Nollie viewed that as a sign from God to vindicate her stance against lying; whether it was or not, at least no harm came to the Jewish woman because of Nollie's truthful words.
On the other hand, Corrie and her sister Betsie, who believed that lying was necessary under the circumstances, were sent to a concentration camp, where Betsie died, but they used even the darkest circumstances as opportunities to minister to others and to share the love of God with them. Their imprisonment was not a punishment from God for lying but a punishment from the Nazis for saving Jews.
While reading that book, I was struck by the fact that there was no clear agreement among Christians about lying even during the Nazi regime, but all of the members of the family stood up for their beliefs even though it brought them into disagreement with each other. There is not always a black or a white choice--and maybe not always a better or a worse choice. Sometimes the right thing to do is ambiguous, and perhaps there are times when the right thing to do is just to make a decision and to stand firm.
