Matthew moral conundrum: Is it wrong to wish evil on people whom we believe deserve it? The issue of when bad things happen to bad people.
… from the JFK assassination to bin Laden's death to Trump’s Covid diagnosis
The impulse to wish harm on others may come naturally, but that doesn’t make it right … [but] Imagining Mr. Trump’s illness as a metaphorical punishment for his misdeeds helps to satisfy at the level of fantasy a legitimate need to see justice done. Because Mr. Trump contributed to the illness and death of so many Americans, it is understandable that many feel satisfied in seeing him forced to contend with a harm to which he has exposed so many others.
Dr. Sasha Mudd, assistant professor of philosophy
I remember how I felt when I read that children in a Dallas classroom stood up cheered when they heard that President John F. Kennedy had been killed in their city.
I thought, "How reprehensible. Where do they learn such hatred?"
That is wrong religiously and morally.
We have dealt with this difficulty often over the past three months, and both Matthew and John point out what Christ would say about these challenges,
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you …
Matthew 5:44
But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you …
Luke 6:27
Jesus was very clear about loving your enemy, and as I have been writing every week, the second great commandment is this:
Love thy neighbor as thyself.
Yet, that is very difficult in real life when true animus and deep emotions are involved. I discussed this when talking about how those who lost loved ones in the attacks by Osama bin Laden on the U.S. on 9/11/2001 could forgive those who wrought that terroristic hatred.
Forgiveness in the abstract is simple, but when it confronts our human passions, that is much more difficult.
So, while it is wrong morally and religiously to hope that bad things happen to people whom we consider to be bad, dealing with its morality is challenging.
Philosopher confronts contemporary issue
Dr. Sasha Mudd is an assistant professor of philosophy at the largest Catholic university in Latin America. She teaches at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and as a moral philosopher, her young child presented her with a question with which she had to wrestle,
The other day, my 7-year-old, having gotten wind of President Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis, asked me point blank, “Mommy, are you glad that Trump got the coronavirus?”
I am a moral philosopher, and yet I had a hard time coming up with an answer. The question demands we grapple not only with the moral meaning of the president’s illness but also with our complex and contested reactions to it. To be clear, I am not debating whether it is morally wrong to wish for the president’s death. It is wrong. Full stop.
Nevertheless, now that Mr. Trump has been declared healthy enough to return to work, I think it is important that we assess the moral significance of the positive reactions his run-in with Covid-19 has produced.
Sasha Mudd, “What Moral Philosophy Tells Us About Our Reactions to Trump’s Illness,” New York Times [Op-Ed], October 9, 2020
So, she makes it clear that wishing for the death of another is wrong. That is true both in the Book of Matthew and in our moralistic philosophy — though many do not follow it.
We must express our love of political leaders with whom we disagree, even if they are hateful and have no love in their hears. Or so Jesus says.
“Wishing harm on others”
So, the Bible makes clear that evil on someone, despite that person being mean or evil or despicable, is wrong. Jesus has made that very clear,
Sometimes in life people may hurt us; it can be strangers, friends, and even family members. Regardless of who it is Christians should never wish death or harm upon anyone. We should never seek to hurt others in any way It might be hard, but we must forgive others who wronged us. Let God handle it on His own.
When Jesus was on the cross He never wished bad upon the people crucifying Him, but instead He prayed for them. In the same way we are to pray for others who wronged us in life.
Sometimes when we keep on dwelling on something someone did to us, that creates evil thoughts in our head. The best way to avoid this is to stop dwelling on it.
Fritz Chery, “Wishing harm on others,” Bible Reasons, March 17, 2020
That is very clear, but philosophically, how should we deal with this individually?
Right to question Trump’s mendacity toward Covid
Dr. Mudd dealt with this as she determined how to confront the issue with a 7-year-old. Here is the thought process that she used in order to determine the morality and practicality of the issue,
While I agree that the gloating over Mr. Trump’s illness is morally concerning, I also find it fair to ask whether certain less celebratory but still positive reactions to his disease are entirely blameworthy and without moral merit.
It is generally accepted that Mr. Trump’s mendacious and reckless attitude toward the coronavirus, including his contempt for his government’s own public health guidelines, has helped lead indirectly but predictably to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. This is not to mention the individuals he directly and perhaps knowingly endangered once he had learned of his own diagnosis. In light of these catastrophic misdeeds, was it morally wrong to want Mr. Trump to suffer the consequences of his own callous incaution?
Ambivalent reactions to President Trump’s medical condition become more understandable when we appreciate that valid moral principles are often in tension with one another and can pull us in different directions. Condemning the pleasure that his misfortune has produced is certainly correct from one moral perspective, but there are also valid moral reasons to regard his illness as a potentially positive thing. Judging the moral meaning of Mr. Trump’s bout with Covid-19 — and our reactions to it — is no easy task.
The same bedrock moral principles — that life is sacred, that all people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect — make it wrong both to wantonly endanger others and to wish suffering and death upon any individual. We appeal to these principles in objecting to the glee and schadenfreude that engulfed Twitter in the wake of Mr. Trump’s diagnosis. From this perspective, it does not matter how morally corrupt he may be, nor the harms he has inflicted on others, wittingly or unwittingly, directly or indirectly.
This is all beside the point when we consider that the president is a person with dignity or, as columnists more often put it, “a man with a family.” According to this line of thought, we should not wish to see Mr. Trump fighting for his life on a ventilator, no matter what he has done, and we are right to be concerned by attitudes that seem to contravene this principle.
Sasha Mudd, New York Times, October 9, 2020
So, though the president does not treat others with respect, do we have to respect him and wish him well?
That is what this argument comes down to in Trump’s case.
The conservative belief that actions must have consequences
In our Judeo-Christian beliefs and in the American legal system there is a belief that is the bedrock of this principle: Everyone must be accountable for his or her actions.
Dr. Mudd considers that issue,
The moral complexity becomes greater still when we consider that from a purely consequentialist point of view, there are reasons to view Mr. Trump’s potential incapacity as the best moral outcome. Most famously associated with the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, consequentialism is the philosophical position that affirms that what is morally right is whatever makes the world best in the future. If one believes that Mr. Trump has unleashed a tremendous amount of suffering and death through his mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and that he is likely to continue causing harm on this scale, a consequentialist argument can be made that his speedy recovery from Covid-19 would not be the best moral outcome.
The consequentialist argument, while repugnant from the perspective of human dignity, tells us that a world in which Mr. Trump is unable to commit harm would be morally better than a world in which he continues to harm freely. This philosophical approach to weighing moral outcomes conflicts with the principle of individual human dignity and offers no easy guideline for reconciling these powerful yet opposing ways of thinking about what is best.
Sasha Mudd, New York Times, October 9, 2020
What to tell a child
I started this with Dr. Mudd’s quandary with her child. How does she reconcile the opposing tensions with this issue?
The moral complexity becomes greater still when we consider that from a purely consequentialist point of view, there are reasons to view Mr. Trump’s potential incapacity as the best moral outcome. Most famously associated with the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, consequentialism is the philosophical position that affirms that what is morally right is whatever makes the world best in the future.
If one believes that Mr. Trump has unleashed a tremendous amount of suffering and death through his mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and that he is likely to continue causing harm on this scale, a consequentialist argument can be made that his speedy recovery from Covid-19 would not be the best moral outcome.
The consequentialist argument, while repugnant from the perspective of human dignity, tells us that a world in which Mr. Trump is unable to commit harm would be morally better than a world in which he continues to harm freely. This philosophical approach to weighing moral outcomes conflicts with the principle of individual human dignity and offers no easy guideline for reconciling these powerful yet opposing ways of thinking about what is best.
Sasha Mudd, New York Times, October 9, 2020
The answer?
Here’s how I explained the moral quandary to my 7-year-old: I am sad that Mr. Trump got sick because in general suffering is bad, and I don’t want anyone to suffer, but on the other hand I think he should suffer consequences for the harm he has done. This answer seemed satisfying enough at the time, but it left out an important distinction.
What I did not try to explain is that the punishment that Mr. Trump’s bout of Covid-19 represents is merely symbolic, a stand-in for the real punishment he deserves, which is necessarily social in character. Mr. Trump deserves to be punished at the ballot box and to be held accountable for any possible criminal wrongdoing in a court of law.
I hope that after experiencing firsthand the illness that has killed so many people and devastated the lives of so many others, the president will think better of his cavalier attitude.
It seems, so far, that he hasn’t. Nevertheless, I hope Mr. Trump returns to good health. I hope this both because Donald Trump is a human being with dignity, and also because the world needs this president to get his real just desserts.
Sasha Mudd, New York Times, October 9, 2020
How would Jesus view this answer?
To ascertain this, remember that Jesus was very clear about how much he despised the Scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy. So, passionate responses were common with him at times.
However, the theoretical Jesus made clear what God expects, that we have to love our neighbors and forgive them for what they have done to us.
I chuckle because I was presented with a question that I wrestled with over the past week: Would you be happy if Sen. Mitch McConnell were assassinated.
In sooth, as Shakespeare said, I would be, but I realized that I should not wish for that to happen. That would not be loving my neighbor, but it sort of combines that Dr. Mudd said and what Jesus propounded. Yes, we have to love one another, but when evil happens to a person whom we consider to be evil — and I do consider him to be evil — then we have to look at the answer in a social consequence.
I, too, hoped Trump recovered but for a similar reason: I want to see him defeated and have to stand trial for all of his transgressions. I know what Jesus would say about that -- he discussed vengeance -- but that is where I am right now despite knowing what Jesus propounds about it.
In essence, this is another challenging lesson from the Book of Matthew.
Dr. Mudd's URL
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/opinion/trump-covid-schadenfreude-ethics.html
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