Why Christians Shouldn’t Kill Baby Hitler

[angels4u]

http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/why-christians-shouldnt-kill-baby-hitler

Why Christians Shouldn’t Kill Baby Hitler

 

In 2007 Desmond Warzel wrote “Wikihistory,” an intriguing, very brief science fiction short story in the form of a series of messages posted to a time-travelers’ forum. As one writer noted at the time it was published, Wikihistory is “basically a Wikipedia edit war, where the old hands have to keep on slapping down the noobs [new, inexperience people] for killing Hitler”

Here’s how the story opens:

International Association of Time Travelers: Members’ Forum
Subforum: Europe – Twentieth Century – Second World War
Page 263

11/15/2104
At 14:52:28, FreedomFighter69 wrote:
Reporting my first temporal excursion since joining IATT: have just returned from 1936 Berlin, having taken the place of one of Leni Riefenstahl’s cameramen and assassinated Adolf Hitler during the opening of the Olympic Games. Let a free world rejoice!

At 14:57:44, SilverFox316 wrote:
Back from 1936 Berlin; incapacitated FreedomFighter69 before he could pull his little stunt. Freedomfighter69, as you are a new member, please read IATT Bulletin 1147 regarding the killing of Hitler before your next excursion. Failure to do so may result in your expulsion per Bylaw 223.

At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:
Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what’s the harm?

At 18:33:10, SilverFox316 wrote:
Easy for you to say, BigChill, since to my recollection you’ve never volunteered to go back and fix it. You think I’ve got nothing better to do?

If time-travel to the past were possible it likely would be true that “everybody kills Hitler on their first trip.” Many of us who endorse just warfare would like to think that, if we possessed the courage, we’d have joined Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the others involved in Operation Valkyrie in their plot to assassinate ein Führer. Going back in time and stopping the brutal dictator before he slaughtered millions therefore has a strong and obvious appeal. 

But would we go back and kill baby Hitler?

That was the question recently asked in a poll byThe New York Times Magazine. Of those who responded, 42 percent said they would, 30 percent said they would not, and 28 percent said they weren’t sure.

The question was even asked of some Republican presidential candidates. Gov. Jeb Bush said that he would kill Hitler as a baby, while Dr. Ben Carson said that he would not. (Carson was asked a slightly different question: would he abort baby Hitler. He responded by clarifying that he would not abort anyone.)

If you find the question to be silly, it’s because it is rather silly. The entire scenario is predicated on a pile of absurdities, such as the metaphysical implications of time travel (e.g., killing Hitler might prevent us from being born). But even silly questions can have a purpose, and this question can help us as Christians better clarify both our moral intuitions and our trust in providence.

You Don't Have the Authority to Kill Adi

From a Christian perspective the answer seems rather obvious: If we had the time traveling abilities, we should not use them to kill dictators in their infancy.

There are many sophisticated ethical rationales for why that particular action would be morally unjustifiable. Rather than exploring all the nuances and listing all the reasons, though, let’s consider one simple, humility-based ethical model.

Let’s assume we were transported back to a small Austrian village of Braunau Am Inn at 7:30 pm on April 20, 1889. Baby Adolph—who went by the nickname Adi—was born an hour earlier and is sleeping in his crib. What would it take, from a practical and moral perspective, to justify killing little Adi?

At a minimum it would require three things: (1) Ability, (2) Authority, and (3) Will. Since you time-traveled specifically for this purpose, you presumably have the will to commit to the act. You also, being an adult, have the ability to overpower a newborn. That leaves only the matter of authority. And that’s where Christian morality says we must stop. Simply put, you have no authority to kill Adi.

Without legitimate authority for the killing you would merely be murdering an innocent child. And there is no generalized legal or moral rationale for such an act. Even the most liberal reading of preemptive action under just war doctrine cannot justify killing an infant now because of what they will do in the future as an adult. Indeed, there is only one way the action would be legitimate: If God directly told you to take the child’s life.

But we, as time-travelling would-be assassins, have a compelling reason for assuming that God did not give us such a mandate: We are aware of Hitler’s crimes.

Trust God With the Past

There is one person who has the ability and authority to make killing the child justifiable—God himself. As an omnipotent being who has the power over life and death (Deuteronomy 32:39), God meets the prerequisites for a justified killing. Since it is a matter of God’s will whether the child is to live or die, we can assume that it was his will that the child live. Why? Because we in the twenty-first century know about the adult Hitler, we have sufficient reason to believe it was God’s will that the child not die in infancy. If it were not God’s will, the baby Adolph would never have survived to adulthood.

By saying, “Yes, for the good of mankind, I’d kill baby Adolph” we are essentially saying God willed wrongly and that we would use or ability and will to get it right. It is saying that we are willing to put our trust in our own authority and our knowledge of what is good and evil. It is saying that rather than trusting in the sufficiency of the revealed will of God (“You shall not murder.” – Deuteronomy 5:17) we can take upon ourselves the authority to “correct” his hidden will (i.e., his will to allow baby Hitler to live).

Obviously none of us are members of the International Association of Time Travelers, and there is no chance we will face this particular test. But considering this hypoethetical scenario, and our initial response to the question, can help us to reflect on the ways that we do second-guess God’s hidden will about thingst that happened in the past.

As finite creatures it’s natural for us to ask “Why?”—why did God allow our child to die, why did God allow the storm to destroy our home, why did God allow a monster like Hitler to kill millions? That is natural, and not itself a sin. The sin comes not in the asking why but in harboring in our heart the desire, even if we don’t possess the ability, to “fix what God got wrong.”

Instead of wishing we could travel back in time to correct “God’s mistakes” we should look forward to the future in eschatological hope, praying this prayer attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr:

God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

[Kan]

Do we need the same topic twice?

[*Deidre*]

Funny how many people capitalize on one man's stupid comment. 

[angels4u]

Do we need the same topic twice?

Not the same question..:)

Do we need the same topic twice?

The topic is  different Kan, with this article you have to agree if you are a Christian but  I can understand that a lot of unbelievers would have trouble to agree  with the article because  there is still so much hate and hurt among people who lived through the war..may the Lord open their eyes to the gospel so they might be able to forgive like Corrie ter boom did..

“It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former SS man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing centre at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s painblanched face.  He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message Fräulein”, he said “To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!” His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him

.http://www.humiliationstudies.org/documents/DanaherCorrieTenBoomsStory.pdf

I was debating with myself to put this up or not but then decided this is of a different point of view...

 

[leftoverture]

Two threads on this forum about hypothetically killing baby Hitler? Shouldn't we be talking about ways we can be sharing our faith or how we can become more Christ like or how we can show the love of Christ to those in need? Seems to me as Christians we should be concerned with higher things. Just saying......

Edited November 15, 2015 by leftoverture

[Kan]

Angels4u,

Sure it is on another way to approach the topic, I wasn't going to comment on either thread, mainly because it doesn't ask the direct question about justice in the world, comparing our view with that of the Lord's, so I expect it to roll around with differing feelings/comments for a while. 

But I have thought about it in the past, wondering if suffering and wars can be avoided...if we studied this topic of suffering and God's jurisdiction and power, it would cover this kind of hypothetical. I don't want to forget how important it was to be able to reason for answers.

I find the question of suffering and justice/mercy confusing at most times, because I am thrown to extremes and inadequate thought on the issue, due to judging by my feelings, which change so much, depending on circumstance etc. So I accept everyone's view on these things, knowing that I feel that way too at some time.

(Investigation into Hitler's life would reveal that he was played by the devil - through his human agents on earth. This organization and its members will be paying the higher price of justice, by a very large measure. They will also be exposed before the world's end. The result of this exposure will not be taken seriously until it's too late to be saved, nevertheless the world governments will capture every participant and member of this organization, and imprison them for the death penalty, which was globally reinstated by the captured, and the city which is the headquarters will be burned so fiercely that its smoke will circle the world. What a beautiful sight that will be. But the kingdoms which burn it, will be destroyed also by the returning Christ. They repented too late. A good way to end both false religion and politics)

[Qnts2]

I will only make one comment since I disagree with the op.

If, for some reason, God granted the ability to go back in time (and such a miracle would require God), then the answer is simple, God set up the situation.

Compare today on another topic. You have a simple disease to cure, but failure to take the treatment means death. As Christians, we could refuse the treatment because we believe God heals, or we can believe that God provided the knowledge for the cure, and refusing to take the cure expecting God to heal, is presumptuous. 

[The_Patriot21]

this is a very intelligently written article. Its to bad more people wont spend the time to read it.

[Guest Butero]

This presents a serious moral dilemma.  It is not as easy to answer as it may seem on the surface.  World War 2 was at least partially caused by Adolph Hitler, and it led to many people dying.  You could easily rationalize that it makes more sense to take the life of one person to prevent a world war than to kill the multitude our soldiers had to in order to stop Hitler, and he was killed in the end anyway.  If that was all I was looking at, I would kill Hitler if I had the ability to do it.  There is more involved here.  God used the atrocities perpetrated by Hitler to restore Israel to their land, so if someone was to kill Hitler, how would that have affected the Jewish people scattered throughout the world?  I think that God had a reason for allowing Hitler to come to power and I don't think I would be doing the right thing to interfere with his plan.  It isn't really killing Hitler that is the issue to me.  The man was evil, and I would be preventing the death of hundreds of thousands of people by taking out one man.  The problem would be the other unintended consequences of how it would change history.  I don't know how the world would look today if Hitler had never come to power, and it might be worse.  Nobody really knows. 

[Guest Butero]

I will only make one comment since I disagree with the op.

If, for some reason, God granted the ability to go back in time (and such a miracle would require God), then the answer is simple, God set up the situation.

Compare today on another topic. You have a simple disease to cure, but failure to take the treatment means death. As Christians, we could refuse the treatment because we believe God heals, or we can believe that God provided the knowledge for the cure, and refusing to take the cure expecting God to heal, is presumptuous. 

That is an interesting thought.  If we were granted the ability to travel back in time, you are right, God would have to give us that ability.  I have pondered how different this country would look if the south had won the civil war, and thought about how I would like to be able to go back in time and help them do that by taking modern weapons to them, and giving them information I had based on things I know that occurred.  The entire war may never have been fought if they had not fired on Fort Sumter.  If we could change history, should we?  I admit that I really don't know because there is no way to know what the consequences would be.