Once upon a time an acquaintance and I were having a philosophical discussion about our individual beliefs on good and evil. My friend described to me his belief that:
The right thing, done the right way, and for the right reasons,
was the only Good
Now, I’m not a mathematician, but if I wanted to express that belief in a formula, it might look like this:
Rt + Rw + Rr = G
He went on to say that any inclusion of a wrong (W) in the formula would always result in Evil (E); i.e.;
- Wt + Rw + Rr = E
- Rt + Ww + Rr = E
- Rt + Rw + Wr = E
- Wt + Ww + Wr = E
As an application of his belief, I’ve always thought of the book by Corrie ten Boom called “The Hiding Place.” In it, she describes the horrors suffered by the Dutch Jews during the Second World War. In one chapter, her sister was hiding a group of Jews in the cellar under her kitchen table (the cellar door was hidden by a rug). When the Nazi’s came in to search the house, they asked the sister where the Jews were being hidden. She truthfully replied, “Under the table,” and then broke out in hysterical laughter when the soldiers overturned the table and couldn’t see anyone. They left the home thinking that the sister was insane.
This example would seem to support the expression above…but what if things had turned out different? What if the Nazi’s had looked under the carpet under the kitchen table and found the hiding Jews? Would the internment or death of those people be “Good” because the sister told the truth?
How far does the equation reach?
In “The Hiding Place” example above, the sister told the truth (Rt) when asked a question about the hiding Jews (Rw), but was it for the right reasons? Did protecting the family have a lower priority than telling the truth? In addition, wasn’t this already a lie of omission or disobedience as the Germans had outlawed the protection of Jewish people?
Taking the mathematical expression further, you can add other Rights/Wrongs to the equation…
The Right or Wrong People,
At the Right or Wrong Time,
The Right or Wrong Place, etc.
At what point does doing the Right thing become wrong?
Does telling the truth, even if it causes harm to an innocent, still count as the “Right” thing?
