An atheist blogger once posed a moral question once to all of us Christians out there. Basically the scenario is as follows: there is a severe famine in the land and you and your family are all dying. Now, a rich man offers you food in exchange for sexual liberties with your child. What do you do? The atheist blogger responded by stating that it’s OK to prostitute your child because at least you’ll be alive.
I’ve been thinking about that issue off and on. For one thing, I personally have never been desperately hungry in my life and God-willing, I’ll never be that desperate. But I cannot sit here and say that I wouldn’t do such a thing merely because I know it is wrong with 100% certainty.
The main problem that I have with that scenario is that it is very black and white and very hypothetical. It’s a simple thought experiment that has no basis in reality. Believe me, even in hard times there are plenty of people who are wealthy enough to support you in return for your labor that doesn’t involve destroying your child.
Morally, such actions are wrong, even if the end outcome is for the common good. Whoring out your children is actually explicitly spelled out in the Old Testament as a sin and I think it was punishable by death. This is actually a big deal since the ancient Israelites were allowed to marry their cousins and men were allowed more than one wife, if they could afford it (and I’m not exactly talking about money either).
The trouble about doing what is right, no matter what the cost, is that the final outcome may be bad for you. In fact, sometimes the best things you do in life require sacrifice. Personally, I have faced some bad consequences in my own life for doing the right thing, though this doesn’t happen often because I usually don’t make a huge ass of myself when I’m around other people. In fact, I usually don’t interact with people at all because I’m a bit of a coward.
But that’s just me. As it stands anyway, I don’t have any children with which I could whore out to a child molester in exchange for food and I doubt I would even if I did and was starving to death. You see when I die, I have to face God (or not, if you don’t believe in it) and He tends to frown on such things. Not that works get me into Heaven, just that my heart isn’t right with Him if I did do that terrible sin.
And even if there wasn’t a God and the atheists were right, I’d rather die with a clear conscious rather than my last thoughts in life be, “I wish I hadn’t done that to my child,” as my child pulls the trigger to the gun pointed at my head.