{"id":1905,"date":"2013-02-03T21:34:19","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T04:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegatheringcincinnati.org\/?p=1905"},"modified":"2013-02-03T21:34:19","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T04:34:19","slug":"february-3-2013-does-the-end-justify-the-means-the-film-lincoln","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/2013\/02\/03\/february-3-2013-does-the-end-justify-the-means-the-film-lincoln\/","title":{"rendered":"February 3, 2013, "The Gathering Goes to the Movies: Does the End Justify the Means and the film 'Lincoln'""},"content":{"rendered":"

Message 120, \u201cThe Gathering Goes to the Movies: the Film \u2018Lincoln\u2019 and Does the End Justify the Means?\u201d, 2-3-13\"lincoln\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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(c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n

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To listen to the message, download here:<\/p>\n\n

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As President, Abraham Lincoln enjoyed telling a story about two religious women who were discussing the possible outcome of the Civil War.\u00a0 One of the women announced that she believed the South would win the war.\u00a0 \u201cJefferson Davis is a praying man,\u201d she piously said.\u00a0 \u201cBut Abraham Lincoln is a praying man too,\u201d the other exclaimed.\u00a0 \u201cYes, indeed he is,\u201d the first woman replied, \u201cbut the Lord thinks Lincoln is joking!\u201d<\/p>\n

This story perfectly captures one of the great qualities of Lincoln.\u00a0 He had a keen sense of humor and he peppered many of his conversations with funny stories.\u00a0 He used them to poke fun at himself, to disarm his critics, to politely end conversations that had gone on too long and, just as Jesus used parables, to leave his listeners with something memorable.<\/p>\n

It is in that regard that Lincoln\u2019s calculating brilliance showed through.\u00a0 His folksy humor suggested his backwoods Kentucky upbringing.\u00a0 When matched against more educated and supposedly refined opponents, he seemed the country jester or the rural na\u00eff who was out of his element.\u00a0 Many did not take him seriously.\u00a0 But friends and opponents who ignored Lincoln\u2019s cunning and intuitive wisdom did so at their own peril.<\/p>\n

False impressions of Lincoln have also shaped him into a mythic hero of honesty and moral purpose – one who fought and was martyred in order to preserve the Union and end slavery.\u00a0 In many biographies about him and even in his marble Memorial in Washington, Lincoln is depicted as embodying all that America sees as good, righteous and moral about themselves.\u00a0 For many, he is the quintessential good and decent American – a man of pure and noble purpose.<\/p>\n

A closer examination of Lincoln by historians and, more recently by the filmmaker Steven Spielberg, reveals a far more complex, nuanced and often conniving person who was, at times, the nastiest description of all – a consummate politician.\u00a0 Such revelations surprise many people.\u00a0 Recent histories strip away the gloss of myth and thus uncover a statesman who was a regular practitioner of the sometimes sordid art of politics.\u00a0 Machiavelli, the famous renaissance Italian writer, claimed that an effective leader must act in morally questionable ways in order to achieve a higher good.\u00a0 While few leaders wish to be labeled Machiavellian, Lincoln lived true to that philosophy.<\/p>\n

As I have done in February for the past three years, we\u2019ll look this month at different films that have been nominated for the Best Picture award.\u00a0 We\u2019ll seek insight into spiritual lessons we might learn from them.\u00a0 Since most forms of entertainment are ultimately morality plays about life and human behavior, finding spiritual enlightenment from great film artists is a worthy endeavor.\u00a0 A movie\u2019s views may or may not be our own but, like most works of literature or art, good movies provoke introspection and deep questioning of what is right and wrong.\u00a0 They help lead us to a better understanding of our values and how we might live in ways that advance humanity.<\/p>\n

In that regard, Spielberg\u2019s movie \u201cLincoln\u201d is a worthy contribution.\u00a0 In his examination of Lincoln\u2019s efforts to pass the 13th<\/sup> amendment in a deeply divided House of Representatives, Spielberg compels us to consider a timeless question we frequently face but are usually too afraid to answer.\u00a0 Does the end justify the means?\u00a0 Did the passage of one of the hallmarks of constitutional amendments, the 13th, outweigh the dirty means by which it was achieved – by lying, bullying, bribery and other nefarious tactics?\u00a0 In the film, Lincoln is shown to deceive Congress, lie to them and even meet in the middle of the night, to arrange with paid henchmen, efforts to bribe, trick and bully wavering Congressmen to vote in favor of the amendment.\u00a0 What we see is almost, almost! a 19th century version of \u201cNixonian\u201d dirty tricks.\u00a0 What Lincoln did was possibly criminal and certainly executive abuse of power.\u00a0 His actions make the nickname \u201cHonest Abe\u201d seem ridiculous.<\/p>\n

But, the film also depicts the joyous and uplifting approval of the amendment by the House.\u00a0 After its adoption ten months later by three fourths of the states, the amendment insured an end to slavery throughout the United States as it enshrined in law the ideal that each and every citizen, no matter race or ethnicity, was free and equal.\u00a0 Not only did it permanently end slavery, it became the foundational constitutional precept for ending Jim Crow practices and the resulting Civil Rights laws.<\/p>\n

Many people of faith and, indeed, those who profess no faith, believe they operate by a set of guiding morals or principles that are often universal and eternal.\u00a0 Do not kill.\u00a0 Do not steal.\u00a0 Do not lie.\u00a0 Such ethics are framed in the Biblical Ten Commandments even as they are also represented in many other moral codes of conduct.\u00a0 The Jewish faith has thousands of religious laws and countless interpretations of them by which those of orthodox belief seek to maintain their purity before a perfect deity.\u00a0 Muslims have their Five Pillars of faith by which they regulate devotion to Allah and the teachings of his prophet Muhammad.\u00a0 Hindus and Buddhists have their own traditions and rituals which also prescribe how one ought to live in a morally decent manner.<\/p>\n

Importantly, however, such religious and moral rules often conflict with other moral principles humans wish to achieve.\u00a0 Did defeating Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler allow for the firebombing of Dresden and the killing of thousands of civilians?\u00a0 Did the defeat of Japan and preventing countless additional troop and civilian casualties allow the United States to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two cities with minimal military value?\u00a0 Would water-boarding a terrorist who has knowledge of an attack that could kill thousands be morally justified?\u00a0 On a simpler level, is it OK to lie to a friend or family member if it means not deeply hurting his or her feelings?<\/p>\n

How far can we go in bending or breaking so called rules of morality if the goal we wish to achieve is believed to be greater or better?\u00a0 These are vexing questions to ask ourselves and I don\u2019t believe we will arrive at any perfectly satisfying answer for each and every situation.\u00a0 But, we either ask such questions and seek solutions, or we ignore them at our peril.<\/p>\n

As I often say, truth is not a black and white, yes or no, good or bad proposition.\u00a0 Truth often lies somewhere in the murky, obscure and grey middle.\u00a0 Those who say life can be led by adhering to absolutes either delude themselves or else are too rigid and too doctrinaire to be of practical use in any real world solution.\u00a0 Indeed, those who are moral, political or religious absolutists are, in my humble opinion, immoral because they fail to discern and think about the many ambiguous or even negative implications of their unbending rules and beliefs.<\/p>\n

In the Biblical story of Exodus, the Jewish people find themselves, after forty years of wandering in the desert, without a leader.\u00a0 Moses has died.\u00a0 To lead the Jewish people into their new land, God selects Joshua.\u00a0 In a prudent effort to scout out the new land, Joshua sends three spies across the Jordan River to determine the strengths and weaknesses of Jericho – the walled border city that was key to gaining entrance into Palestine.<\/p>\n

The spies do their duty and eventually meet a prostitute, Rahab, who because of her profession had close contact with leaders of Jericho.\u00a0 She also lived in a strategic part of the city – near its defense walls.\u00a0 Rahab gave confidential information to the spies about Jericho and even hid them in her home.\u00a0 When that city\u2019s military leaders learned there were spies in their midst, they questioned many people including Rahab.\u00a0 She, however, acted as a traitor and lied to the leaders by denying any knowledge of the Jewish spies.\u00a0 Rahab did so knowing full well the spies would report back to Joshua who would then lead a military assault on Jericho that would likely succeed, since they now had inside knowledge.\u00a0 Given how ruthless the Jews were known to be when fighting so-called pagans, Rahab knew her lies meant the death of most of Jericho\u2019s residents.\u00a0 Indeed, that would soon be the case.<\/p>\n

But nowhere in the Bible is Rahab condemned for her actions.\u00a0 She is even called a righteous woman.\u00a0 And, in one of the highest compliments paid to any Biblical character, she is listed in the New Testament book of Matthew as a direct ancestor of Jesus.\u00a0 Such an inclusion clearly indicates Jews and Christians condone Rahab\u2019s lying.\u00a0 In almost all Jewish and Christian commentaries, her lies were moral lies because they helped achieve a supposedly good result – the ability of Jews to claim the land promised them by God.\u00a0 In the name of a godly cause, it seems that almost any action, including bearing false witness and breaking one of the Ten Commandments, is not only OK, but good.<\/p>\n

The same is also true about the conquest of the rest of Palestine.\u00a0 In the Biblical book of 1st Samuel, God tells the Jews, \u201cNow go, attack the pagans and totally destroy everything that belongs to them.\u00a0 Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.\u201d<\/b>\u00a0 Again, almost all Jewish and Christian commentaries approve such a command – even the death of innocent children and infants.\u00a0 They claim that God\u2019s ways are perfect and that such harsh measures were necessary to insure the moral purity of Palestine, since the pagans practiced ritual sex acts and child sacrifice.\u00a0 Indeed, that is the implicit motivation of God in issuing his command.<\/p>\n

Jesus himself acknowledged that breaking absolute rules in the name of human compassion is a good and right thing.\u00a0 He purposefully approved the theft of small amounts of wheat, even on the Sabbath, when one is hungry and in need.\u00a0 He committed such theft himself.<\/p>\n

While some, including the Atheist writer Richard Dawkins, assert that these examples render the Bible unworthy of respect, such an assertion is equally absolutist.\u00a0 The Bible was written by many different individuals, at many different times, each with different agendas and purposes.\u00a0 It is likely that the history portions of the Bible were written with the intent to justify Jewish conquest of Palestine and even to encourage a bit of boasting on their part:\u00a0 \u201cLook at how God was on our side!\u201d\u00a0 For us, however, we need NOT abandon the countless great insights and pieces of wisdom in the Bible even if portions are morally inconsistent.<\/p>\n

The essential question for us today is how we humans often justify the methods used to achieve a desired result.\u00a0 Just like the Jews of the Bible, many Americans have justified the killing of Native Americans and the conquest of their lands because it was a manifest or even Divine destiny that our continent be settled and supposedly civilized.\u00a0\u00a0 Our nation and its history are not perfect but America has significantly contributed to world-wide ideals of democracy, compassion and equality.\u00a0 How do we reconcile that fact with our history of land theft and conquest of Native Americans?\u00a0 That is not an easy answer, for if we say such actions were totally evil and indefensible no matter what, then we must also claim that America is not a just nation and its existence is based on a moral wrong.\u00a0 Much like some writers of the Bible used allegedly good outcomes to justify the conquest of Palestine, so must we also grapple with our own dark history contrasted against the inherent goodness of American ideals and institutions.<\/p>\n

All of this takes us back to the moral question posed in the movie \u201cLincoln\u201d.\u00a0 Does the constitutional ban on slavery – and its resulting foundation for complete human equality – somehow make the dishonest and deceitful practices Lincoln used to pass the 13th amendment permissible and even moral?\u00a0 We ask ourselves once again, can a moral end justify immoral means?<\/p>\n

John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century English philosopher, writer and economist, advanced the ideas of utilitarianism<\/span><\/b>.\u00a0 Mill proposed that humans judge the utility or merit of anything in life by the goodness it brings.\u00a0 A thing or action is moral if it achieves the \u201cgreatest possible good for the greatest number of people.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/b>\u00a0 That is a key proposition and it can inform our own tentative approach to moral quandaries similar to Lincoln\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Mill rejected the Christian belief that goodness is revealed to us by God.\u00a0 Rather, goodness is largely determined by reason and applied intuition.\u00a0 Indeed, we have just considered examples from the Bible where seemingly immoral acts were justified by supposedly moral results.\u00a0 Even God and Jesus, according to the Bible, abandoned the absolutes of the Ten Commandments and used ethical reasoning to determine that stealing, lying and killing are permissible in certain circumstances.\u00a0 Such examples indicate that even religion and holy Scriptures cannot address all questions of morality.\u00a0 Ultimately, we are left to ourselves, our minds, our hearts and our intuitive sense of love and compassion to determine what is good, right and true.<\/p>\n

As Steven Spielberg depicts in his film, Lincoln knew that if an end to the Civil War resulted without an emphatic end to the very reason over which it was fought – that of slavery – then the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the war, both in the North and the South, would be of no meaning.\u00a0 Even worse, without a constitutional ban on slavery – something the Emancipation Proclamation did not do – the nation could very well have found itself once again in a civil war.\u00a0 American history would be very, very different – and far worse – had the 13th amendment failed.\u00a0 If the amendment\u2019s passage required a few bribes, a few untruths, a few threats and a few patronage jobs, then the great good it brought to millions of people was and is worth such actions.\u00a0 Indeed, as a counter-intuitive statement, Lincoln\u2019s lies and deceptions in that instance were deeply moral acts.\u00a0 The utility, and thus the intrinsic morality of the 13th amendment have been proven time and time again.\u00a0 It brought the greatest good to the greatest number of people.<\/p>\n

In making any decision about the means we use to achieve goals that are good and right, we must apply rigorous examination.\u00a0 There is little question that Lincoln deeply thought about his actions.\u00a0 His guiding star was saving the United States and ending racial slavery.\u00a0 He knew America was not perfect and yet he also understood the implicit goodness of our nation.\u00a0 Such a nation must not perish, as he said, lest the high ideals of liberty, justice, fairness and democracy be diminished instead of enhanced.<\/p>\n

For each of us, let us not presume to understand or know absolute morality or absolute certainty on any matter.\u00a0 As we all know, there are very few absolutes in our universe.\u00a0 In matters of what is right, true and good, there are even fewer.\u00a0 But we have been endowed with wonderful minds, compassionate hearts and collective insights that grant us the tools to sort through moral questions with reason and heart wisdom.\u00a0 I suggest we abandon the extreme poles of right and wrong, moral and immoral, believer and unbeliever, liberal and conservative, and move instead into the often messy and ill defined grey zone where compromise and collective reason prevail.\u00a0 Let us look to the greats of the past – men and women like Jesus, Lincoln and others who acted not with absolute certainty but with well-reasoned intentions to serve and love as much of humanity as possible.<\/p>\n

I wish us all peace and joy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Message 120, \u201cThe Gathering Goes to the Movies: the Film \u2018Lincoln\u2019 and Does the End Justify the Means?\u201d, 2-3-13   (c) Doug Slagle, Pastor at the Gathering, UCC, All Rights Reserved   To listen to the message, download here:   As President, Abraham Lincoln enjoyed telling a story about two religious women who were discussing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gnhuu.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}