This came up in Bible Study discussion this past week.  Scott Roeder has been convicted of first degree murder for his shooting of George Tiller last year.   Some Christians are not happy that Roeder was convicted, feeling that the rationale for his actions should have had some impact on what he was actually convicted of.   Tiller was one of the few people in America who performed late-term abortions.  Roeder is a Christian who believes that abortion is wrong. 

The jury took only 37 minutes to find Roeder guilty based on overwhelming evidence.  Some Christians feel that this is unfair, that the volatility of the abortion issue somehow should mitigate Roeder's conviction.  In essence, their argument is that Roeder was motivated by a deeply held belief that is shared by a great many Americans, and therefore his actions are at some level justified.  The jury foreman reports that the issue of abortion had nothing to do with the jury's deliberations.  Their task was to determine if Roeder committed the crimes of which he was accused.  The evidence left little to debate.

The jury foreman is correct, and those people who think that somehow Roeder was justified - or at least not deserving of the full penalty of the law - are misguided.  Roeder committed the crime of murder.  It appears to have been pre-meditated and about as cold-blooded as you can get.  The Bible condemns murder very strongly (Exodus 20:13).  It acknowledges the equivalent of manslaughter and crimes of passion (Numbers 35), and indicates that the punishment for these crimes should be different than the punishment for murder.  The Bible does not attempt to delineate in a legal sense if there are situations where murder is permitted. 

Philosophically and in the discussion of ethics, there's this conundrum:  Would you murder one person to spare the lives of 100 other people?  It sounds like a reasonable and straightforward situation.  Most people would answer yes.  After all, the 99 lives that are saved seem to justify the murder of the one person.  However, the trap closes quickly.  Would you kill five people to save 100?  What about 20?  50?  At what point does the law of diminishing returns kick in?  How many people do you have to save in order to justify the killing of some other number of people? 

Biblically, murder is prohibited.  All life is God's, and all life is in God's hands.  We are not permitted to assume the role of God in arbitrarily taking the life of someone else that we believe has taken, is taking, or will take the lives of other people.  We are not allowed to justify murder so casually.  We are not allowed to assume control of the world in such a rash way.  We are allowed to take a life if that person has been justly convicted of murder (the Bible allows for this and proscribed it for the Israelites - it is not insistent that capital punishment ought to always be an option).  But acting unilaterally?  That's a no-no.  Period.

There may be times when someone is faced with that option - murdering someone in order to try and protect other lives.  If that person is a Christian, they are faced with the fact that such an action is a sin.  It is not condoned, not even when the outcome is numerically or otherwise beneficial.  Some Christians when faced with this choice have decided to act in sin, to attempt to take the life of one person in order to save the lives of a great many others.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one such example.  Like Roeder, he was captured for the intentions that he never got to carry out.  He was convicted of plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and was executed shortly before the fall of Nazi Germany. 

Most of us would say that it surely must be acceptable to kill a man like Hitler to save literally millions of people.  The Bible says no, it's not.  Roeder undoubtedly believes that he was saving lives by killing Tiller.  I have no doubt that he's probably right.  But that rationale does not justify his actions.  His actions are not in keeping with the Biblical witness.  He deserves to be punished.  As awful and terrible as abortion is, murder is every bit as awful and terrible - whether the victim is an hour old or half a decade old.