Loving Life - American Reformer

Protestant Ethics Today: The Sixth Commandment

Be sure to check out part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6 of this series on Protestant Ethics Today.

The sixth commandment might seem to be the most straightforwardly narrow in scope of the ten commandments: you’ve either murdered someone or you haven’t. However, simply as a matter of translation, we can see that more is involved: the Hebrew verb found in the commandment (Exod 20:13) is used for murder but also for negligent, but unintentional manslaughter (see, for example, Numbers 35). In the sermon on the mount Jesus uses the sixth commandment to begin showing how the laws of the OT must be understood in an expansive sense that addresses both the sin in the heart that ultimately leads to murder, as well as other sins that also flow from the interior rage that is at the root of murder (Matt 5:21–26). It must also not be forgotten that merely refraining from such evils is insufficient: one must actively do all that one legitimately can to protect and prosper the lives of others.

Actions that might not immediately seem like murder should be considered under the heading of the sixth commandment. Suicide is one such action, which is nothing other than self-murder. Some downplay the significance of suicide precisely because they do not recognize it as a form of murder. But it is clearly an unjust taking of a human life. The fact that it is one’s own life does not change that fact. The extreme emotional distress that often attends suicide likely also makes it difficult for some to recognize it as murder. It may seem as if the suicidal individual is incapable of acting otherwise, but this is not true. It might even be that a societal recognition that suicide is self-murder could help deter it. Suicide is not an unforgiveable sin (Matt 12:31–32), but its seriousness should not be minimized either.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are forms of murder that are increasingly accepted (culturally and legally) in our world. In the same way that the evil of all forms of suicide has been downplayed by some, so has it been with euthanasia and assisted suicide. The rhetoric of “compassionate care” has obscured the evil even more: these acts are said to be nothing more than the equivalent of palliative end-of-life care. The difference, of course, is that both acts terminate life that would not end naturally. There are obvious difficulties in deciding when certain attempts to prolong the life of a dying person become too extreme. The individual, along with his or her family and doctors, will sometimes have to make difficult decisions about not continuing certain medicines, chemotherapies, or mechanical means of keeping organs functioning. This is very different, however, from euthanasia, which is active killing; thus, murder. The fact that the victim is very sick does not change the moral calculus. Assisted suicide is more expansive than euthanasia. It was once claimed (disingenuously) that assisted suicide would only be allowed for extreme cases. Even then, it would be wrong, but the bait-and-switch quickly became evident. Assisted suicide is rapidly becoming legal in country after country for any reason whatsoever: minor depression, physical disability, discontentment about one’s physical appearance, and so on. What is particularly sinister about assisted suicide is that doctors and psychologists have begun to aggressively push patients to employ it. Even worse, in countries like Canada there is already evidence that it is being used on patients unable to speak for themselves (in a comatose state, for example), usually under the flimsy pretext that they expressed some kind of desire to die when they were able to (even mainstream and leftist organizations recognize these abuses to some degree: AP News, Jacobin; see also a Christian evaluation). The Christian Institute in the UK notes that instances of euthanasia and assisted suicide begin to rise significantly when such laws are passed: “The change to the law changes the culture.” This is what all laws do. They teach people what is right and wrong and reinforce this through rewards and punishments. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are acts of self-murder, but they also involve many others as accomplices to murder who should be subject to criminal sanctions against murder.

Abortion is another example of murder. Most evangelicals still affirm this in principle, though some very confused thinking often attends the moral reasoning employed in public about this issue. It is said by many pro-life groups, for example, that abortion doctors commit murder, but that the mother getting the abortion does not. The claim is usually also made that most women getting abortions do not know what they are doing. There may be some truth to this, in that abortion supporters do everything they can to make abortion seem like a harmless surgical procedure to remove unwanted tissue, but ignorance is no excuse (this is a basic principle of our legal system). It is not actually the case that most women getting abortions don’t know what they are doing. Furthermore, the proper response to the claim that women getting abortions don’t know what they are doing is for the law to serve its proper teaching function to show them that this is the case. If abortion were criminalized under all circumstances, and if appropriate punishments were applied through the courts in the appropriate fashion to all involved (fittingly as to perpetrators and accomplices), then no one could continue to say that they did not understand what they were doing: the law would have clearly taught them that abortion is murder. This would be an application of the second (“pedagogical”) use of the law as understood classically in Protestant theology, as well as of the first (“civil”) use. Many prolife groups have shied away from such arguments because they fear either that they will come across as unloving toward women seeking out abortions, or because they are afraid that such a stance will make it difficult to pass any laws restricting abortions. Prudence with regard to what is actually possible in our society and legal system is, in principle, valid, but at the very least, we must not let this obscure the moral issue at stake: abortion is murder on the part of all who are involved in the process.

An application from the Westminster Larger Catechism that could be a of particular importance today is its application of the sixth commandment to gluttony and general unhealthiness: the catechism argues that the commandment requires “a sober use of meat, drink, physic, sleep, labor, and recreations” (WLC 135) and forbids an “immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreations” (WLC 136). One certainly can become obsessed in an ungodly way with fitness (obsession over a desired body image; i.e., vanity) and health (obsessing over supplements and “health” cures; etc.), but this does not change the fact that certain unhealthy actions are in their own ways a movement toward self-harm, and thus tend toward self-murder.

Translations of Exodus 20:13 rightly use the word “murder” rather than “kill.” The reason this is correct is that the Bible itself requires and allows killing in certain circumstances. It requires that murder and other extreme forms of crime be punished with death. The Bible also allows killing in self-defense or the defense of other innocents. Exodus 22:2–3, for example, states that “if a thief is found breaking in [to one’s house] and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for him, but if the sun has risen on him, there shall be bloodguilt for him. He shall surely pay. If he has nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.” In other words: one may kill a thief in the night without guilt because it is impossible to determine in the darkness the threat one faces. In the daytime, the situation may be different, allowing less force to be applied. Regardless of the specifics of determining when violent force may be employed, it is clear that it is legitimate in certain instances when self-defense is necessary.

Defending others would be an application of the same principle. Interestingly, the just war tradition in Christian theology, stretching back to at least the church father Augustine, is more or less an application of the principle of self-defense, just applied to nations instead of individuals (for a brief survey of what theologians have said are the criteria necessary for a just war, see this article). Matt 5:38–42, while often appealed to as a denial of the legitimacy of self-defense, is rather a prohibition on personal revenge. In none of the examples Jesus provides is one’s life in danger. When one is treated shamefully, the temptation will be to get the person back. Jesus commands self-denial and trust in God’s justice in such moments (a justice that should be manifest even in this life through the civil magistrate).

The Protestant theory of legitimate resistance by “lesser magistrates” to tyrannical human governments is also an application of the biblical principle of self-defense: the highest level of human government is appointed by God, but so are lower levels of governing officials (1 Pet 2:13–14); thus: the lower levels (lesser magistrates) may in certain circumstances use force to resist the tyrannical rule of higher magistrates without falling into the sin of unjust rebellion. John Calvin’s successor Theodore Beza (1519–1605), powerfully articulated the evil that would result if such resistance were in principle impossible: “The authority of God and men would be equal and alike if it were required that men should always be unconditionally obeyed in like manner with God.” Beza was by no means dismissive of the evil of human rebelliousness:

I admit that I most strongly approve of Christian patience as laudable beyond all the other virtues and never sufficiently commended; I admit that men should be zealously exhorted to it because it contributes largely to the attainment of eternal bliss: rebellions and all disorder I detest as awful abominations; in affliction especially I am of opinion that we should depend upon God alone; prayer accompanied by a serious recognition of our error I recognize as the true and necessary remedies for the overthrow of tyranny since this evil is rightly counted among the scourges sent by God for the chastisement of the people.

Ordered civil society is impossible if men are always quick to rebel, even against unjust governing authorities. And yet, Beza continues,

I deny that all these considerations deprive nations crushed by manifest tyranny of their right to safeguard themselves against it by means of prayers and repentance as well as other just remedies; and this I corroborate whilst I reply on the following powerful arguments.

Including in these “just remedies” is—or at least can be, given the right conditions—the use of force in the resistance of the lesser magistrate to violent and tyrannical rulers.

There are other sinful acts that could rightly be discussed under the heading of the sixth commandment, but this survey should be sufficient to reveal the expansive sense in which the commandment must be understood. Murder is not simply the unjust taking of the life of another individual. It originates in a human heart that has become consumed with evil hatred, and then is manifest in a wide variety of evils that all have one thing in common: the desire to harm and destroy one made in the image of God (whether another person or oneself).

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