Why Evil Means Can Never Serve Good
Note: I would like to credit ChristCenteredGamer for the inspiration behind this post, based on a discussion on the CCG Discord channel when discussing the topic covered below.
There is a common fallacy in both real life and fiction that evil means used for good ends can somehow have the evil origins of the means negated by using them for the noblest of causes.
That could not be farther from the truth, especially for Christians.
For a popular fiction example, the comic book hero Batman is a good example of being very aware of this problem. Batman knows he has no moral or legal right to pass judgment on any criminal he stops from committing a crime, hence why he leave them to be apprehended by the police to dealt with by the legal system. He knows if he allows himself to believe he has the right to kill in cold blood, even of the most evil and depraved of people who "deserve it", he will quickly become just like them, and no matter how much the world might be better off for the absence of such evil people, he refuses to take the lives of even the most wicked of people because that would forever cross a moral line he walks every night he dons the cowl.
Even then, even if he doesn't kill, he is still a vigilante operating outside the law, and while he is tolerated by the law to some extent because of his firm moral code, he has been warned more than once by the law he's on the razor edge between acting a good citizen and detaining a criminal in the act of committing crime for their processing by the proper authorities and being little more than the same thugs he stops.
To now use a real world example, it is argued in some circles child molestors should be killed on the spot and their deaths by extralegal killings should be celebrated, but the same reasons Batman does not kill even the most heinous of people still apply in reality: no one has the moral or legal right to determine the punishment of someone outside the law, both the legal and moral. Obviously, killing in self defense or the defense of another if such is required is acceptable if such is necessary, but finding excuses to do this is just rationalizing one's slide into becoming a murderer, and if the life of a child molestor or murderer should be taken, it should be by the very laws they show contempt, not the unsanctioned killing committed by someone who tells themselves they have the right to kill a criminal because they are "doing good".
No one person has that right. Even when God personally ordered the deaths of those who earned it under his Law, those who did the killings of the condemned were commanded not to exceed their mandate.
Those that did became little better than Jehu, who was originally commended for following God's instructions in wiping out the house of Ahab on God's instructions, but became little more than a bloodthirsty killer who became what he sought to destroy.
Jehu fulfilled his original mandate, but then stepped over the line and murdered the priests of Baal, who, while they were a stench in God's nostrils, they had not been ordered to die at Jehu's hands, he chose to add their blood to his sword on his own.
In doing so, he rationalized their deaths as doing what God would have wanted without getting God's explicit instructions, but in Jehu's way of seeing it, he was destroying those who opposed God, how could that be wrong?
As seen above, it's we humans assuming we can step outside lawfully and morally justified instructions to do what we THINK is right that is wrong and therefore evil.
And in doing something evil, you don't serve God, you serve yourself.
Evil means can never be used to fulfill good ends. Sure, you could argue the parties who gassed Jews should have been gassed themselves as a form of punishment appropriate to their crimes, but those who punished the parties responsible chose not to sink to such depths because that would have been compounding the original sin.
Murdering people in gas chambers had been declared a war crime and an act of genocide without any legal or moral protection. Had the people who ordered the executions of those who operated those gas chambers to die in the same manner, they would have been hypocrites who justified doing evil to evil people based on tainted laws and morality, and when you taint the law and morality, you become a hypocrite.
Under the laws of God and Men, such is legally and morally unacceptable for any reason, nor should it ever be.
Going back to fictional examples, let's say you use magic in a fantasy based game to summon demons, but you only use them to fight against evil people. Even if under a fictional code of ethics that is not inconsistent, under real world ethics, Christians are never supposed to consider using any evil means to serve a righteous end, as the ends then are no longer righteous.
While it not possible under most known means available to humanity in reality to perform such acts as summoning demons or shooting fireballs or some other acts of actual spellcasting, it's not something that should even be contemplated under ANY circumstance for ANY reason because.
1. As far as God is concerned, it's evil, end of story. He has a LOT to say about the very concept,and NONE of it is good.
2. Even if God gave someone power to do His Will, goes back to the example of Jehu, who was given leave to kill certain people on God's orders,but the temptation of bloodlust overcame Jehu and he became a bloodthirsty murderer outside of God's grace because he exceeded his heavenly license and did as he deemed fit, not God.
If God gives anyone else leave to do His Will either naturally or supernaturally, then one must do explicitly as God commands and do no more and no less. Doing otherwise is a but a gateway to Perdition itself, and the fate of those who do so is to die outside of the grace of God and to live the life after the one we live on this Earth in an even worse place than we will if we live outside of God's grace in our current one.
And there is no "evil means" one can justify to use for a "good" end that can be allowed, such is a deviation from God's command to do good and not evil, and everyone, especially those who know God's instructions, should know to never consider such means to ever be justified.
There is a common fallacy in both real life and fiction that evil means used for good ends can somehow have the evil origins of the means negated by using them for the noblest of causes.
That could not be farther from the truth, especially for Christians.
For a popular fiction example, the comic book hero Batman is a good example of being very aware of this problem. Batman knows he has no moral or legal right to pass judgment on any criminal he stops from committing a crime, hence why he leave them to be apprehended by the police to dealt with by the legal system. He knows if he allows himself to believe he has the right to kill in cold blood, even of the most evil and depraved of people who "deserve it", he will quickly become just like them, and no matter how much the world might be better off for the absence of such evil people, he refuses to take the lives of even the most wicked of people because that would forever cross a moral line he walks every night he dons the cowl.
Even then, even if he doesn't kill, he is still a vigilante operating outside the law, and while he is tolerated by the law to some extent because of his firm moral code, he has been warned more than once by the law he's on the razor edge between acting a good citizen and detaining a criminal in the act of committing crime for their processing by the proper authorities and being little more than the same thugs he stops.
To now use a real world example, it is argued in some circles child molestors should be killed on the spot and their deaths by extralegal killings should be celebrated, but the same reasons Batman does not kill even the most heinous of people still apply in reality: no one has the moral or legal right to determine the punishment of someone outside the law, both the legal and moral. Obviously, killing in self defense or the defense of another if such is required is acceptable if such is necessary, but finding excuses to do this is just rationalizing one's slide into becoming a murderer, and if the life of a child molestor or murderer should be taken, it should be by the very laws they show contempt, not the unsanctioned killing committed by someone who tells themselves they have the right to kill a criminal because they are "doing good".
No one person has that right. Even when God personally ordered the deaths of those who earned it under his Law, those who did the killings of the condemned were commanded not to exceed their mandate.
Those that did became little better than Jehu, who was originally commended for following God's instructions in wiping out the house of Ahab on God's instructions, but became little more than a bloodthirsty killer who became what he sought to destroy.
Jehu fulfilled his original mandate, but then stepped over the line and murdered the priests of Baal, who, while they were a stench in God's nostrils, they had not been ordered to die at Jehu's hands, he chose to add their blood to his sword on his own.
In doing so, he rationalized their deaths as doing what God would have wanted without getting God's explicit instructions, but in Jehu's way of seeing it, he was destroying those who opposed God, how could that be wrong?
As seen above, it's we humans assuming we can step outside lawfully and morally justified instructions to do what we THINK is right that is wrong and therefore evil.
And in doing something evil, you don't serve God, you serve yourself.
Evil means can never be used to fulfill good ends. Sure, you could argue the parties who gassed Jews should have been gassed themselves as a form of punishment appropriate to their crimes, but those who punished the parties responsible chose not to sink to such depths because that would have been compounding the original sin.
Murdering people in gas chambers had been declared a war crime and an act of genocide without any legal or moral protection. Had the people who ordered the executions of those who operated those gas chambers to die in the same manner, they would have been hypocrites who justified doing evil to evil people based on tainted laws and morality, and when you taint the law and morality, you become a hypocrite.
Under the laws of God and Men, such is legally and morally unacceptable for any reason, nor should it ever be.
Going back to fictional examples, let's say you use magic in a fantasy based game to summon demons, but you only use them to fight against evil people. Even if under a fictional code of ethics that is not inconsistent, under real world ethics, Christians are never supposed to consider using any evil means to serve a righteous end, as the ends then are no longer righteous.
While it not possible under most known means available to humanity in reality to perform such acts as summoning demons or shooting fireballs or some other acts of actual spellcasting, it's not something that should even be contemplated under ANY circumstance for ANY reason because.
1. As far as God is concerned, it's evil, end of story. He has a LOT to say about the very concept,and NONE of it is good.
2. Even if God gave someone power to do His Will, goes back to the example of Jehu, who was given leave to kill certain people on God's orders,but the temptation of bloodlust overcame Jehu and he became a bloodthirsty murderer outside of God's grace because he exceeded his heavenly license and did as he deemed fit, not God.
If God gives anyone else leave to do His Will either naturally or supernaturally, then one must do explicitly as God commands and do no more and no less. Doing otherwise is a but a gateway to Perdition itself, and the fate of those who do so is to die outside of the grace of God and to live the life after the one we live on this Earth in an even worse place than we will if we live outside of God's grace in our current one.
And there is no "evil means" one can justify to use for a "good" end that can be allowed, such is a deviation from God's command to do good and not evil, and everyone, especially those who know God's instructions, should know to never consider such means to ever be justified.
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