Let Us Do Evil That Good May Come?

By Joe Slater

     “They are going to be destroyed anyway, so why not use them for research that could benefit the rest of us? After all, they’re not really human persons. And think of all the suffering that could be alleviated by the knowledge gained from these experiments.” 
    Does this line of reasoning sound familiar? If you have been following the controversy over Planned Parenthood selling the body parts of babies it has killed in its abortion chambers, then you have heard this very same argument from the lapdog media and other defenders of the abortion industry. We have been assured that Planned Parenthood violated no laws, and that it is a wonderful, benevolent organization eminently worthy of taxpayer funding. 
    Do you realize, though, that the first paragraph of this article expresses the gist of the rationale used by the Nazis to justify their medical experiments and research on concentration camp inmates? Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and others, were viewed as sub-human beings who were going to be killed anyway. Some of the research actually was directed toward alleviating the suffering of the Nazi military. Lauren Howell has observed that “the image of killing in the name of healing was crucial to that terrible first step in reconciling their actions with their conscience.” 
    The infamous “Angel of Death,” Josef Mengele, brutally tortured and killed numerous sets of twins in the name of medical research. Though he escaped and was never prosecuted, 23 of his colleagues were tried at Nuremburg; sixteen were found guilty, of which seven were executed in 1948. The judges rightly rejected the argument that these inmates were going to die anyway, so the living might as well benefit from their deaths. How ironic that so many Americans are now using the very logic Hitler’s SS used to justify outrageous barbarism! 
    The apostle Paul was once accused of upholding the principle, “Let us do evil, that good may come” (Romans 3:8). He called the accusation slander, and said that those who falsely accused him deserved to be condemned. 
    Tempting as it is, we are never justified in doing evil, even if we intend to bring about a good result. The end simply does not justify the means. Killing vulnerable, defenseless human beings and using their body parts for medical research is no more justified today than it was in the concentration camps in the 1940s. 
    May God help this country to wake up before it is too late!

  - Joe Slater serves as minister of the Church of Christ in Justin, TX. He may be contacted through the congregation's website: http://justinchurchofchrist.com