Thursday, December 17, 2009

Why Sacrifice is Evil

Let us discuss the logic of sacrifice and why sacrifice is evil.

Situation 1:

Suppose two children are drowning in a pool. You can save only one of them. Your child is 1 foot further out than your neighbor's child. Therefore, there is a slightly greater cost to saving your child's life than your neighbor's child. What do you do?

Do you save your child? Do you save your neighbor's child?

Situation 2:

You have a choice to give up $1 for a hamburger. Is this a sacrifice?

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My answer: in situation 1, I save my child.
My answer: in situation 2, yes, it is an extreme sacrifice even more so than situation 1.

Why?
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I believe that most people would agree with me about situation 1. You would save your child. Yet you sacrificed the neighbor's child by your choice to do so. You were being SELFISH and definitely not altruistic. Jesus says in Mark 12:31, "Love thy neighbor as thyself. There is no greater commandment than these." These in this case refers to love of God and love of neighbor and the love of God part is irrelevant for this argument. Yet virtually all of us in Situation 1 would tell Jesus to go fly a kite. We are saving our child and it is the moral thing to do.

In situation 2, most people would argue that it is not a sacrifice. However, it is an even greater sacrifice than in situation 1! Why? $1 can save a child life (actually even far less than that can) by insuring that they do not suffer from iodine deficiency (total cost in a child's lifetime = 5 cents). So when you eat your hamburger instead of paying for a child to receive adequate iodine, you are effectively stating that the child's life is not worth as much as your hamburger.
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So now you are going to take that $1 and send it to stop iodine deficiency. Good! Well, not exactly. Let's take it one step further. Since you agree that one should "Love thy neighbor as thyself" then your life is no more precious than my life and certainly your life is not worth as much as two lives. But if we kill you and take your money, we can save hundreds or even thousands of lives. So, logic dictates that we should kill you. Jesus commands it. After all, "There is no greater commandment than these." (love God and love thy neighbor) Surely if your life is worth my life, then two of my neighbor's lives are worth more than one of my neighbor's lives.
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Logic further dictates that I should kill myself and allow the money to go to others but there is a problem with this. You see, if I kill you, I can GUARANTEE that your money will go to good causes. I cannot guarantee that for my own life. Therefore, since I know that you are not spending your money properly (since you are sitting there eating that hamburger), God commands me to kill you, take all your money, and spend it all on curing iodine deficiency (which killed 7,000 in 2002).
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Wait a minute! you say. God also commands, "Thou shall not kill." God also commands, "Thou shall not steal." Hmm... Okay, but God said with regard to love of God and love of neighbor, "There is no greater commandment than these." Therefore, your objection is noted and you will still die.
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Doesn't anyone else see the utter EVIL in this line of reasoning? Yet it follows from the basic logic of altruism. If your life is more important (or even AS important) as mine, the logic is incontrovertable. You must die (from my perspective). I must die (from your perspective).
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Since this cannot be good, sacrifice must be evil. End of proof. Now let me go and eat my hamburger. Class dismissed.

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