Dennis Prager - “What is the biggest sin of your religion? It is murdering in the name of God...” (paraphrased)
But, Dennis, what if the only way to do good is to murder in the name of God?
This is the question asked by the supposed evil thinker Niccolo Machiavelli, which he addressed in his Christian sermon “An Exhortation to Penitence” (yes, Machiavelli wrote sermons and even wrote a play based on a story in the Torah (Genesis 29). But I bet you never heard that just as you never heard that Americans “don’t give a hoot about race” (Prager).
This is the issue that Pres. Truman might have asked when he authorized dropping A-bombs on Japan to stop a war.
Or it may have been the question that Winston Churchill may have asked when he lied to the British City of Coventry when he failed to tell them the precise date and time when the Nazis were going to bomb that city because to do so would have been to disclose that the Brits had broken the German military code in WWII.
This is the question that Pres. Reagan may have asked himself when he invoked plausible deniability that he knew nothing about the Iran-Contra Affair where guns and drugs were traded for release of American hostages in Iran.
And it may have been the question that Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself when he was an accomplice in an assassination attempt on Hitler’s life.
I don’t think those examples are ‘murdering in the name of God.’ Did Churchill wonder if God wanted him to do...whatever? To decide you MUST kill (or allow deaths) to protect against some bigger danger is most certainly a conundrum for a moral person.
When Prager said that I was thinking of jihadis, who believe God EXPECTS them to kill for Islam. That truly is committing an evil act in God’s name.