Our culture today grapples with the meaning of life and death. Human
beings enjoy a tremendous amount of freedom as well as technological
advances, so that we are faced with questions at the moment life
begins, as well as when it ends. This commandment addresses the realm
of questions related to what we humans can do to start life, to end
life, to prolong life, or to promote death. The media have brought
death into our homes through newscasts, violent programs, video games
and documentaries even. And we see in our homes children killing
children and seeming not to understand death's finality. And of
course, the incidents of murder in this country is a prolonged
national tragedy.
Buried in this clamor is the gentle, life-affirming voice of God who
asks us a very important question. "Whose life is it
anyway?" For God himself knows the answer to that question. The
world around us proclaims it, and God's word confirms it, that God,
God alone, is the author of life, and we, mere humans, tangled in
questions, are stewards of the life God has given.
I suspect that by the end of this sermon, I will have offended some.
It's not because I want to, but because the topics covered under the
sixth commandment represent some of the most controversial issues
before our country and the world today.
I also know that we may be tapping into some pain or guilt over some
of the difficult decisions you have already had to make in war or at
a hospital bedside. And so I want to reassure you. While we
explore the ethical implications of this commandment, I want you to
know that God is present with you and ready to forgive and ready to
comfort and to heal you of the wounds of the past, whatever they are
and whatever their reason.
And so let us look at the commandment. Number Six. You shall not
murder. You have to decide, first of all, the scope of this
commandment because there is a debate about the meaning of the word
translated in the NIV as murder. The word in Hebrew is "rasah",
and most often in the Old Testament it is translated, "Thou
shalt not murder," which would limit its scope to a private
citizen taking the life of a personal enemy.
However, it is also used in a few other places, not predominantly,
but occasionally, in reference to capital punishment and for
accidental manslaughter. There are other words translated "to
kill," but because of this ambiguity, I believe we have to take
the safe course and include not only private killing of an enemy but
the concerns we have in taking people's lives in other settings as
well. And so negatively stated, the command is this: You shall not
take the life of another.
But positively stated, the commandment says this: Love your
neighbor! Loving fulfillment of this command requires that we
do all we can to protect and sustain our own and our neighbor's life.
This comes out of our awareness, our deep awareness that life itself
is a gift.
I think about dear Walt Jennings who has been in the hospital again
this week. A few weeks ago, trembling, he was asked, "Walter,
how is your spirit today?" And he said, "I am glad to be
alive today." He saw life as a gift. It is a gift we are called
to cherish and preserve for one another, to appreciate and to celebrate.
The Christian Church through the ages has been the one that has
celebrated life in all its aspects. We do this by caring, by giving
care and compassion, by protecting, by harboring, giving safe refuge,
and by honoring life that others would discard or show contempt for.
John Calvin, the theological father of Presbyterianism, put it this
way: "If we have anything useful for serving our neighbor's
lives, faithfully to employ it. If there is anything that makes for
their peace, to see to it. If anything harmful, to ward it off. If
they are in danger, to lend a hand." And this has given guidance
to the church through the centuries. The positive obedience to this
commandment is to love and care and show compassion.
Why is it wrong to kill? God gives us this commandment because human
beings are persons. Human beings are more than cells, more than
organisms, more than something that has or possesses life. Human
beings are persons, and their sacredness as persons puts them off
limits to killers. What makes human beings sacred is not their
behavior. What gives human beings innate dignity is their
relationship to God, not that they are believers, for all human
beings possess this sacredness, whether or not they believe in the
living God. But they were created in God's image. Every person, every
human being has got God's designer label imprinted in their hearts.
They are sacred not because they love God, but because God loves them
and extended his life for their salvation. Whether or not they
believe, persons are sacred and therefore off limits.
Another reason why it's wrong to kill is that respect for human life
is embedded in our hearts, too. We have seen the evidence of this
respect from creation onward, but there is actually a physiological
reason for that. According to David Grossman, who describes himself
as a "kill-ologist," a person who has studied killing for
the Marines, human beings have a built-in aversion to killing other
people. There is a "safety catch" in our thinking processes
that prevents us, that inhibits us from taking a life, and in war
that inhibition has to be overcome in order for a person to stand and
defend one's comrades in war.
In fact, the beginning of this science starts with the evidence from
the Battle at Gettysburg in which the guns of those who died were
examined and found to have several charges of gunpowder pressed into
the barrel. Everyone lined up for battle, everyone raised their
weapons, but not everyone fired. In fact, a majority of guns did not
go off. And then in obedience to the command, another charge was put
in and raised again but not discharged. Hand to hand, face-to-face
combat provided an aversion to killing that possessed many of those
men, even in that horrendous situation. Now what caused that to
happen was this wiring of God that makes it extremely difficult for a
human being to kill another.
It takes saturation exposure to violent images and behavior to
overwhelm this inhibition. It turns out that prolonged exposure to
the violent images and behavior of realistic, violent video games is
one of the things that markedly reduces inhibitions towards killing.
Respect for human life is written in our hearts.
Now thirdly, it's wrong to kill because God is the author of life,
and as author of life, possesses the authority to take it away. God
has the authority to take life. No one else has that authority
without it being God's authority, and so we talk about playing God
when we talk about some of the life-and-death decisions that we must
make as human beings. The fact is that God has shared authority over
life-and-death decisions with us. This is part of the dominion he
gave us at the creation. And so - perhaps without realizing it -
we are making life-and-death decisions in the case of conceiving
children, of giving and withholding medical treatment, of punishing
capital crimes, even defending one's country in war.
God has shared authority with us to make decisions under those
circumstances, and I'm sure there are more. But because these are
life-and-death matters, they require a dialogue with God about what
is right and what is wrong. This commandment requires us to hold a
baseline bias toward not taking life unless we can sense from God an
adequate justification to do so. But this, of course, is where we
must be very careful because our own motives enter in, and those
motives can be selfish or arrogant or unfaithful. The question of
where is the line, where do we cross the line between what is good
and what is wrong, can be very difficult sometimes.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor of the 20th Century,
faced this dilemma head on as he was asked to participate with three
others in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He grappled with the
ethics of that decision, and as he participated, asked for God's
forgiveness if he had somehow misread the justification for this
conspiracy. But he did the math, and what he saw was, if this one
person (Hitler) dies, millions will be saved.
Our news is full of stories these days that help to illustrate the
ambiguities and the heart-breaking decisions that human beings must
make. In fact, faithful Christians disagree about both the public
policy and the private moral ethical decisions in these areas.
For instance, the ambiguities of killing in war have recently
been brought out into the open by former senator Bob Kerrey, who in a Time
magazine article described the unbearable anguish of realizing in the
little village of Thanh Phong, Vietnam, that he had killed twenty
civilians - women, children and elderly. There was a difference of
opinion apparently among the group because another man from that same
group came forward on 60 Minutes and said, "No. We knew
full well what we were doing. We did not just shoot into the dark to
an unseen enemy. We knew they were innocent. We lined them up and
shot them execution-style." The question is, where is the line,
and we recoil in horror at the thought that the latter might be the
case. So we ask: "When does defending one's country turn into murder?"
Ever since Karen Ann Quinlan, at age 25 collapsed after a party in
1975 and remained in a permanent vegetative state for ten years after
that, Americans have been grappling with the issue of a so-called right-to-die.
Where does letting a person die naturally turn into active pursuit
of death in euthanasia or Physician-Assisted Suicide? Oregon passed a
law in the last couple of years, a very tightly restrictive law, that
gives permission for doctors to participate, to aid in, a person's
suicide. The Netherlands has a more broadly applicable law and
ethicists around the world are watching these cases very carefully to
see where they lead. When does see alleviating suffering actually
lead to causing a person's death? Somewhere on that continuum the
line is crossed in violation of the sixth commandment.
Another case is the case of abortion which has been a tragic
reality in American now for decades. In 1997, the last year for which
full statistics are available, 1.19 million abortions occurred in the
United States alone, less than 3 percent for reasons related to rape
or threat to the life of the mother. The ambiguities in this case
rest on the question: When is there life that must be protected? When
is there a person who must be protected? There is no ambiguity on the
subject of the biology: at conception distinctly, uniquely human life
begins. But some would ask the question, is human life worth
protecting, or must one be a person in order to be
protected? And when does person-hood begin? Murky waters.
When does prenatal care tip in favor of the mother at the expense of
the baby? Somewhere along that continuum the line is crossed, and the
sixth commandment is violated.
Again in the front pages of the newspapers in the last few weeks, we
have been faced with the issue of capital punishment. The news
that Timothy McVeigh's case has been delayed a month has people
wondering, not perhaps about his guilt but about the carriage of
justice leading to his removal from society. To what extent has God
given the authority to states to execute criminals? When does
punishment for crime become murderous revenge? Along that continuum,
somewhere, is the line past which the sixth commandment is violated.
Now, any one of these cases is worthy of its own sermon, and I have
been agonizing all week over what to include and what not to include
today. When I teach this as a class, I spend an hour on each one of
these different cases. So you can understand my frustration today.
But the bottom line is this, that in each situation, we must start
with the presumption: if a human being is involved, we are not
permitted to kill him, and we are obligated to preserve him. So in
judging each case, we have to ask the hard question: is a human being
involved? That's a question relevant in all four of those cases. And
in every case when killing occurs, a depersonalization, or
dehumanizing train of thought enables the taking of a life. But if a
human being is involved, are we permitted kill him anyway as an
exception to the rule God has set down?
Through the ages, acceptable exceptions to the rule have included
situations where living would cause unspeakable pain and suffering,
or living would cause the death of others. And so we have the
exemptions for self defense, or defense of the community, which would
include war and peace officers working.
So to quote Lewis Smedes, an ethicist from Fuller Seminary, one of my
teachers, from his book, Mere Morality on the Ten
Commandments, "Causing or permitting people to die must always
be a tragic situation in which not doing so would bring
intolerable suffering to someone. Whenever a life is taken or
permitted to die, it must only be with fear and trembling, with hope
for grace, and with clear understanding that we are acting, not in
arrogant disregard for life, but in the only way possible, given this
ironic and tragic situation."
So what can we rest on so far? You notice I have asked a whole lot of
questions, and I haven't given very many definitive answers yet, have
I? We start with what we know.
1. We are to cherish ourselves and our neighbors. We ought to
promote joyful living and help others to hang onto life or to die
naturally, and we do this through acts of kindness and provision.
This is why the church has started orphanages, have provided
alternatives to abortion, have attended the dying with compassion in
Calcutta. This is why the church over the centuries has built
hospitals, to give care and to provide food, to promote joyful living
and peaceful, natural dying. When we do this, it is part of our
worship of God as the author, the giver of life.
2. We also know that "Thou shalt not murder" forbids
us from taking our own life or the life of anyone else, unless under
grave circumstances, without any other alternative, doing so
preserves the life of others. You notice that we are not allowing
consideration for what is "useful" or
"utilitarian" or economically feasible to enter into our
decision about who lives and who dies. But what about the
tradeoffs, my life for the life of many. From this viewpoint,
we are obeying God with fear and trembling. We are living in fear and
trembling. We are dying or causing death, only in fear and trembling.
3. And then the third thing we know is what Jesus taught us,
the passage I read at the offering. "You have heard it said, 'Do
not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.' But
I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject
to judgment." And here what we know of this commandment is that
"Thou shalt not murder" also forbids the precursors to
killing, the attitudes and the motivations that lead towards
destruction: hateful thoughts, rage and abuse of those around us. The
classic motives for murder, anger, revenge, jealousy and greed, all
of these are covered under the umbrella of the sixth commandment.
Rage, road rage, is a violation of the sixth commandment, as one with
a deadly weapon in one's hands and under one's control could be
unleashed in the passion of impatience.
On the positive, as we act out what we know in this aspect of the
commandment, we are submitting to the process of discipleship,
allowing God to shape our attitudes and our behavior, the process
that eventually shows in a Christ-likeness of patience, compassion,
and mercy.
I've asked a lot of questions because God has given us choices.
And as I mentioned before, faithful Christians disagree not only on
the moral decisions, but on the public policy that is reflected in
these different instances. But they are fundamentally moral choices,
and just because something is legal does not make it right. What is
important to the Christian is how we make these decisions. How we
make the choice is important. And we are called as God's children to
make those decisions with God at the very center of them. What
we do must be justified before God, the author of life. God has been
giving us choices since he planted that tree of the knowledge of good
and evil in the garden of Eden, and it was a very bad choice to eat
from that tree. And because of that very bad choice, we are now
plagued by difficult choices.
God asks us through this commandment to choose life. Choose life in a
world that seems hell-bent on self destruction. Choose life when it
is difficult, and the payoff doesn't seem very good. But choose life
because life created by God is sacred. Human persons are sacred.
Moses put it really well after forty years of wandering in the
desert. They've crossed the desert, and they're on the eastern side
of the Jordan. The people are ready to go across into the Promised
Land. Moses gives a final speech that lays out the issues before them
in very, very stark terms. Here's what he said. Deuteronomy 30.
"The Lord will delight in you and make you prosperous, just as
he delighted in your fathers, if you obey the Lord your God and keep
his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and
turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
"Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you
or beyond your reach. No, the word is very near to you; it is in your
mouth and in your heart so that you may obey it.
"See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and
destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to
walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then
you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in
the land you are entering to possess.
"But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if
you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I
declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You
will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter
and possess.
"This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that
I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose
life, so that you and your children may live, and that you may
love the Lord your God, and listen to his voice, and hold fast to
him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in
the land he swore to give your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."
It may not feel today as if this choice is before you. Spiritually,
it always is. But temporally, physically, today may not be the day
that you must decide a life-and-death matter. But it will come
sometime. Please put God at the center of that decision and choose
life, joyful life to Jesus Christ, the giver, the author of life.
Amen.