After winning a fierce battle a king had a difficult problem on his hands. The kingdom had lost most of its young men in war. There were lots of young widows. These widows could not remarry because to the men of those days the idea of marrying a woman who had slept with someone else was repulsive. In any case there were not enough men. Widows could not be expected to spend the rest of their lives without getting married since they depended on men for financial and physical security.
The obvious solution was to let every married man marry a widow or two. But the religion did not permit that.
The king came up with a bright idea. He made up a story telling his subjects that he saw God in his dream who told him that it is okay for a man to have multiple wives. Also that God would be pleased with any man who married a widow. The king was respected by the subjects and no one suspected that he was telling a lie. The lie worked. So much misery was avoided.
The king was a politicians and in politics lying is a necessary evil and in this case I do not even see where the evil is. Even if people found out later that the king was lying, no one would care since the end justifies the means.
But what if this story had been told by Jesus and someone found out from his diary that he made it up. Would Jesus be Jesus then?
Is 'Jesus' your way of avoiding to say the name of the prophet who really said this?
ReplyDeleteAlthough there may be a problem w/ lying, even if it's for a good cause, I think the real problem is when that lie is propogated through generations and becomes doctrine, in turn losing the understanding of why the doctrine was instated in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI believe you agree that in a sad situation where there were widows that needed to be taken care of due to the war, the king's lie did good for society and those women. Yet, was it the nature of the lie, which allowed men to have many wives (which I'm sure they enjoyed), or was it just that the nature of religion is such that change and adaptation is impossible which let this lie become a tenet for the religion?
Antara,
ReplyDeleteI guess your question was for " The Contrarian"!
Vaishali,
ReplyDeleteThat is a problem not only with religion but with anything that is based on a book that cannot evolve and that includes the constitution which is also almost impossible to change. The right to bear arms was for the guns of those days and for the society of those days and not today's society and today's AK 47's.
It makes no sense to force people to live by the rules of a generation long gone.
In my motherland 1 out of a 100 thousand people have met god : some have even smoked marijuana with him. Now they could have gotten the sequence wrong : as in they smoked marijuana and then god came and hung out with them.
ReplyDeleteNeedless to mention that once god hangs out with you or smokes MJ : you suddenly posses cult status : because only then do the upper middle class and the rich flock to you for spiritual upliftment. Now you may choose to call this a cult but some of these enlightened fellows in the past have managed to author essays on ways of life which may well become the tenets of a newer religion 100 years from now.
but in their lifetimes they do wield significant political clout and have a strong sense of opinion 6 months before any general election : and it can waiver on an annual basis depending on how much you have chosen to contribute to charity.