O.M.M. - Kristi's Response

I just finished reading Of Mice and Men less than five minutes ago. I already knew the general plot: I knew Lennie would kill Curley’s wife, and I knew that George would kill Lennie in the end. Knowing what to expect from the end of the book, I did not expect to feel as emotional about it as I do. If a month ago anyone had told me that in the next book I would read about how a man shot another man in the back of the head, I would have expected to feel disgust. Instead, I thought it was a beautiful act of compassion.

Although I enjoyed this story of an unlikely friendship that depicts the human need to find value through relationships, I found that my secondary response to the story has overshadowed my primary response. My primary response to the book was to feel a sense of respect for the friendship of George and Lennie, and to feel sad over the fact that their relationship could not last in the world in which they lived. My secondary response, however, was to be surprised as I evaluated my own reaction to the final scene of the story.

As long as I can remember, I’ve always had a very strong sense of right and wrong. Wrong things included lying, stealing and killing. Right things, then, were honesty, generosity and preserving the sanctity of life. Being raised in a staunchly pro-life family, I have generally seen value in all human life—infant and adult, regardless of the challenges these individuals may face presently or in the future.

Yet over the years as I have read and heard about many stories of individuals in very tough situations, I have begun to see the world that I once viewed through a black and white lens of morality as a fallen world full of less-than-ideal situations that bring all shades of gray to our lives.

We’ve all heard the story of a young Christian girl, whose family had a hidden compartment under the rug in their dining room for Jews during Hitler’s reign. When the Nazi’s asked here where the Jews were, the truthful girl answered “They’re under the table,” and then began to laugh at the nazi guards as they began to peer below the family’s dining table. The guard ended up leaving, thinking she was playing with him. I have a lot of respect for such a girl, and it’s wonderful that in obeying her conscience, she was still able to save the Jewish families hiding in her house. But what if the Nazi’s had found the hiding place, would her truth-telling still have been the best thing to do? I’m reminded of the midwives in Exodus 1, who disobeyed the Pharaoh’s command and then lied to him about what was happening. In this situation, the women were blessed by GOD for their actions. It appears that untruthful words themselves may not be the issue as much as the heart behind the lie—whether one’s lie is motivated by love or by hate.

I also remember hearing stories about how during times of intense Roman persecution, as Christian families sat in prison cells awaiting their fate of being fed to ravenous lions in the arena the next day, some of these God-fearing parents would lovingly smother their children while they slept in order to spare them the terror and torturous death that the next day would bring. Ten years ago I would have said t these parents were sinning by murdering their children instead of entrusting their fates to God. Now, though, I look upon such acts much differently. The children were already sentenced and their death was imminent, the parents actions were ones of love and compassion. Whether or not God will judge those actions as murderous, I cannot say, but I somehow doubt.

Even as I’m writing this, I’m cringing at the slippery slope that what I’m saying builds. If God can consider some seemingly sinful actions as righteous because of the motive and situation, am I saying that a deluded mass murderer will be seen as right because he thought he was doing what was best? Well….not exactly. I guess what I’m saying is that in a fallen world where our sin and the sin of others has put us in situations that we were never created to be in the first place, sometimes something that seems wrong in other situations just might be the best of several bad choices.

Thus, while in a perfect and sinless world, Lennie’s innocence may not have brought forth such serious consequences, in the world in which he lived he was facing an ugly, hateful fate. While George’s solution makes me sad, the way he went about it was so gentle and loving that I believe Lennie was better off because of them.

How does this transfer to my ethical stance on the topic of euthanasia? I’m not sure. But I do think that in this sinful, fallen world families and individuals may get into very hard situations that we weren’t necessarily created to be in, and that I am going to choose to extend grace to others when they are in those situations, since this world contains all sorts of moral shades of gray.