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Question about suicide and murder from a religious perspective

So, without intending to be snarky, if I walked out in front of a bus and stopped knowing I would be hit, is that not suicide?

Did you intend to kill yourself when you stopped in front of the bus? Intent plays a significant role, I think.
 
You're in a boat which gets sunk by a storm before you have the chance to radio for help - no-one knows you are out there, or that you are missing, and the area that you are in is totally isolated because of REASONS. Two of you make it to the life raft, and you know that you will naturally drift to safe land in five days - but you only have enough fresh water for one person to - barely - survive that long. Oh, and for more REASONS there is a loaded gun on board the life raft. No, you can't use it to kill fish, or signal for help, etc - more REASONS.

Hypothetical engaged.

(For those who think this sounds familiar - yes, I do watch Arrow)

A Christian will not kill the other person just because there's only enough water for one. He'll share that water until it's gone (or even have the other person have the water).
Then you leave everything in God's hands, and humbly accept whatever the outcome.

That goes too with the space station scenario.
 
First, I presume that failing to save yourself from certain death when you could do so easily would be considered suicide.

I offer the following conundrum.

If there are two people who are about to be killed by some non intentional and unstoppable action and the only way to save themselves is to murder the other person and they could easily save themselves. How would you resolve that in a Christian biblical sense? Is there anything in the bible that provides evidence to your answer?

Thanks.

Intentionally killing the other person would be murder, which is a mortal sin. Knowingly yet unintentionally killing the other person would be a lesser good than refraining from doing so, yet would not be sinful. An exception would be if there was some sort of unusual situation which could create an obligation to refrain from doing so.
 
Intentionally killing the other person would be murder, which is a mortal sin. Knowingly yet unintentionally killing the other person would be a lesser good than refraining from doing so, yet would not be sinful. An exception would be if there was some sort of unusual situation which could create an obligation to refrain from doing so.

Is there a reference in the Bible or is this your interpretation?
 
Is there a reference in the Bible or is this your interpretation?


I'm not sure if Paleocon is referring to accidental killing, but there are verses in the Bible about that.


Exodus 21
12 “Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death. 13 However, if it is not done intentionally, but God lets it happen, they are to flee to a place I will designate. 14 But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death.


Joshua 20:1-9
The Cities of Refuge

20 Then the Lord said to Joshua, 2 “Say to the people of Israel, ‘Appoint the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses, 3 that the manslayer who strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there. They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood. 4 He shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city and explain his case to the elders of that city. Then they shall take him into the city and give him a place, and he shall remain with them. 5 And if the avenger of blood pursues him, they shall not give up the manslayer into his hand, because he struck his neighbor unknowingly, and did not hate him in the past. 6 And he shall remain in that city until he has stood before the congregation for judgment, until the death of him who is high priest at the time. Then the manslayer may return to his own town and his own home, to the town from which he fled.’”



Deuteronomy 19:1-10
Laws Concerning Cities of Refuge

19 “When the Lord your God cuts off the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you, and you dispossess them and dwell in their cities and in their houses, 2 you shall set apart three cities for yourselves in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. 3 You shall measure the distances[a] and divide into three parts the area of the land that the Lord your God gives you as a possession, so that any manslayer can flee to them.

4 “This is the provision for the manslayer, who by fleeing there may save his life. If anyone kills his neighbor unintentionally without having hated him in the past— 5 as when someone goes into the forest with his neighbor to cut wood, and his hand swings the axe to cut down a tree, and the head slips from the handle and strikes his neighbor so that he dies—he may flee to one of these cities and live, 6 lest the avenger of blood in hot anger pursue the manslayer and overtake him, because the way is long, and strike him fatally, though the man did not deserve to die, since he had not hated his neighbor in the past. 7 Therefore I command you, You shall set apart three cities. 8 And if the Lord your God enlarges your territory, as he has sworn to your fathers, and gives you all the land that he promised to give to your fathers— 9 provided you are careful to keep all this commandment, which I command you today, by loving the Lord your God and by walking ever in his ways—then you shall add three other cities to these three, 10 lest innocent blood be shed in your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, and so the guilt of bloodshed be upon you.



Numbers 35:11-12

11 then you shall select cities to be cities of refuge for you, that the manslayer who kills any person without intent may flee there. 12 The cities shall be for you a refuge from the avenger, that the manslayer may not die until he stands before the congregation for judgment.




 
Is there a reference in the Bible or is this your interpretation?

This is the Catholic position.

Killing an innocent person is an intrinsic evil, so it may never be pursued as the object or end of one's act.

If the killing is incidental, however, it must be weighed under double effect.
 
First, I presume that failing to save yourself from certain death when you could do so easily would be considered suicide.

I offer the following conundrum.

If there are two people who are about to be killed by some non intentional and unstoppable action and the only way to save themselves is to murder the other person and they could easily save themselves. How would you resolve that in a Christian biblical sense? Is there anything in the bible that provides evidence to your answer?

Thanks.

I know you want to be vague, but the scenario matters. The reason it matters is because the type of ethics promoted by Christianity is aretaic, not consequentialist. That being the case, we need more information about what action it is you are proposing and under what circumstances. Only a consequentialist could look at something as abstract as you are proposing and give you an informed answer about what "the right thing to do" is.

It really depends. Are we talking about pushing someone off a bridge (or jumping off it yourself) before it collapses from too much weight on it? or are we talking about shooting someone in the head because a psychopath is forcing you to either kill him or he will kill you both? There are different answers depending on what the scenario is.

csbrown28 said:
We are on the space station, just you and I. There is a catastrophic failure and we are caught at each end of the station with the part between us impassable. NASA says that it can have a shuttle up in 8 days, but there is only 4 days of air at your end and 4 at my end. We both have the ability to take the air from each others section.

This one is fairly simple. The right thing for a Christian to do would be to give the other guy your air. Selflessness is a Christian virtue and giving your life for someone else is the ultimate act of love.

John 15:13
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.(NIV)

There's a few quirks with your scenario. Can you push air? If not, are you able to convince the other guy to take your air? But they are quirks of the scenario, not really part of the ethical question you are proposing.

One can imagine other similar scenarios where the answer is the opposite. Take some "Saw" movie scenario wherein you either kill another person or you both die. At that point, the right thing to do is to let the psychopath do what he will and face the consequences himself even if you are 100% certain that he will choose to murder you both. It would go against Christian ethics to murder someone in order to save yourself.

You'll basically find two approaches to Christian ethics. Among fundamentalist circles, you will find a deontological ethics approach which views the bible as the arbiter of what is right and wrong and everything can be judged by the "rules" in the bible. You'll find that view primarily among the southern baptists and other fundamentalist groups. The more mainstream Christian view is an aretaic ethical view that sees the goal of Christian ethics as leading us towards being more "Christ-like". It's from this stream of thought that the old cliche "what would Jesus do?" arose in the 1990s. The goal of Christian ethics is not to follow rules, but to turn us into people "of character", people who truly embody the Christian ideal modeled for us by Christ and taught to us throughout the bible. So, in questions like this, the idea isn't "what rules does the bible say about x or y and how do we balance what it says of x with what it says of z?", the question is "how should a righteous person act in this situation?". Ideally, in a real life situation, the Christian won't even have to think, they will have been practicing virtue throughout their life to the point where making the right decision in a crisis like this would be instinctual.
 
Do you have an exact scenario in mind or is this just an impossible hypothetical?

impossible hypothetical.

it also depends on who you ask. catholics think that suicide is the ultimate sin. IE anyone that commits suicide will never get to heaven and will be rejected.
my opinion is that the ultimate sin is the utter total rejection of Christ.

I think what is worse and most offensive in God's eyes is the rejection of his son and the embracement of sin and evil.
 
There's only one unpardonable sin - to die in unbelief.



There is no pardon for a person who dies in unbelief. John 3:16 tells us, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

The only condition in which someone would have no forgiveness is if he/she is not among the “whoever” that believes in Him.

Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). To reject the only means of salvation is to condemn oneself to an eternity in hell because to reject the only pardon is, obviously, unpardonable.


Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/unpardonable-sin.html#ixzz3ZsYYtpbu
 
Jesus gave his life to save us all.

When he went into the garden of Gethsemane, he knew he would be betrayed by Judas. He still went. To save others, he had to allow himself to be killed.

Edit: I'm agnostic, but have a long memory...
 
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