And the moment you all have been waiting for. The end of my five part series has arrived.
**
“I like to think that there are always possibilities.” - Spock
“There is always a way out.” – The Doctor
Is it right to torture someone for information, even if thousands of lives are at stake?
Is it right to walk away and let someone die for the sake of a far more important mission?
Is it right to kill innocent or mislead people for the sake of a goal that will ultimately result in good?
These are the questions I have brought to you over the past two months. These are questions I have struggled with for nearly two years. To bring you the answer I must ask one more question, what do they all amount to? What do all these scenarios have in common?
I believe the answer to that question is risk.
Can you risk letting someone die because of your morals? Can you risk letting an important mission fail just to do a good deed? Can you stake the lives of thousands of innocent people against a few of the villain's henchmen's survival?
It's a question of sacrifice, the age-old moral dilemma of saving the many or the few. If you choose to save the few you run the risk of losing the lives of many, many more. By taking a more risky path to avoid killing you're effecting the same scenario. If you take the path around, rather than through, you may save your villain’s army, but then they may come at you another day. Who cares if they survive? Why give them a chance if it means dooming your own mission to failure?
Human life is sacred, even a misled, miserable, and failing one. You are not one who can judge who has the right to live and who to die.
“No, there’s one more thing. I have to give them a chance.”
*Doctor Who: The Parting of Ways
In “The Von Trapp Family Singers”, Maria tells a story about her husband in his days as a U-boat captain. Sent to sink a ship, he did not immediately torpedo them. Instead he surfaced alongside and announced to the captain that he had orders to sink him, and recommended he abandoned ship. The enemy captain fired on him. Even then Captain Von Trapp resurfaced on the other side of the ship and ordered that they abandon ship before he sank them. Again the captain fired on him. Only then did Captain Von Trapp carry out his orders and sink the ship.
He gave the enemy not one, but two chances. He took considerable risk in doing so, and I’m sure his superiors would not have been happy to hear of his actions. He risked failing his mission to give them a chance to abandon ship; to live and fight another day.
It's about options. Sometimes kill or be killed isn't always the only options. Sometimes we don’t think past the obvious. When we plan a mission we tend to take the most efficient route to achieve our goals. The goals are noble and worthy and important, often the world is in the balance, and we’ll make our characters do whatever it takes to achieve that goal, even blowing up things, resultantly killing thousands of innocent unknowns.
And they never look back. We stage enormous wars and battles, and shock our readers with the number of dead, blame it on the villains, and never speak of those losses again.
Never think that death is inconsequential. Never forget the price with which the world is saved.
What are your other options, you ask? Diplomacy? Warnings? Giving the bad guys a chance? But the risk involved is phenomenal. You’re taking the risk of the mission failing in order to choose a route that will cost as few lives as possible. It's an important mission! Failure will usually result in everyone dying, since we’re so often in the business of saving the world from disaster.
Taking that risk, however, demonstrates faith in the bigger picture. Even if the character doesn't specifically believe in God it's likely he believes in something greater than himself, whether that be justice or destiny or whatnot. To take a risk like that you have to believe that someone out there will give you the time you need to save the many as well as the few, that something will hold back the oncoming forces long enough for you to save as many as possible.
Job 13:15
Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.
We, especially as Christians, should believe in that. We can choose, and our characters can choose, to take the riskiest path if it means we can save as many lives as possible, even if those are enemy lives. Rather than blowing up the base you can infiltrate it. Rather than killing you can run.
Sometimes that's not an option. I'll say it so you don't have to; I'm not talking about those times. I'm talking about the times that you can choose.
"Then we learned why this man who had fought with gods and demons had run and hidden from us. He was being kind."
*Doctor Who: Family of Blood
So I challenge you with one final question. Do you respect the sanctity of human life? Not just the lives on your side, but every life? Do you respect the sovereignty of God and his ability to see his plans carried out? Are you willing to trust him to protect you when you risk everything to do the right thing?
ou noticed that in my comments, huh? 
