If there is a moral obligation to keep one's word, particularly through vows, then what are people obligated to do when their vows require them to perform some evil act? And what of when one benevolent vow forces one to contradict another benevolent vow? First, one must realize that moral dilemmas can only exist if two legitimate moral goods or obligations come into conflict. Second, one must realize that according to Christian ethics some sins are more evil than others and thus should be avoided at greater costs than others (although all sin is to be avoided wherever possible). I will use two examples to help explore the answers to these questions, one from the book of Judges in the Bible and one from the spectacularly well-written and philosophically rich show Game of Thrones. First, I will examine the one from the Bible.
Judges 11:29-40 tells of how a man named Jephthah made a vow to God that if he received military victory over the Ammonites he would sacrifice whatever exited his house upon his return as a burnt offering. His daughter came out. Now, there is some potentially legitimate dispute among theologians as to whether Jephthah's daughter was merely consigned to life as a virgin, with some thinking verses 37-40 support this, or was killed as a burnt offering, as verse 31 strongly suggests. But either way Jephthah kept his vow (verse 39). Since the human sacrifice interpretation is the more popular one in my experience, and since verse 31 at the very least does strongly support it, the rest of this post will speak as if Jephthah did indeed burn his daughter. It is also worth noting that in Genesis 22 God did not actually require that Abraham sacrifice Isaac, despite God telling him to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering in Genesis 22:2--and in fact an angel directly told Abraham not to when he prepared to kill Isaac (22:10-12).
The dilemma in Jephthah's case surfaces because Deuteronomy 23:21-23 specifically commands all who make vows to God to uphold them. And yet Exodus 21:12-14 prohibits all murder, and Leviticus 20:1-5, Deuteronomy 12:31, and Deuteronomy 18:10 explicitly condemn human sacrifice. Both breaking a vow to God and human sacrifice are intrinsic wrongs. And what if one made a vow to God that he or she would torture someone in a Biblically-condemned way (Deuteronomy 25:1-3), engage in the slave trade (Exodus 21:16), or serve someone who acts contrarily to God's revelations about the nature of justice in his Law? All of these other aforementioned acts are intrinsically evil as well. Is someone who vows to enact these sins obligated to carry them out?
Since I have in the past two weeks been binge watching Game of Thrones, I'll bring in an additional example of morally ambiguity in upholding vows from the series. A swordsman named Jaime Lannister, known as the Kingslayer for his killing of King Aerys Targaryen (called the Mad King for his obsession with pyromancy and burning people) describes to Lady Stark how his multiple vows could only work together under very select circumstances (season two, episode seven). He explains himself: "So many vows. They make you swear and swear. Defend the king, obey the king, obey your father, protect the innocent, defend the weak. But what if your father despises the king? What if the king massacres the innocent? It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or another."
Later, showing great vulnerability, he tells the lady knight Brienne of Tarth how he killed the Mad King he had sworn to serve in order to prevent the burning of his own father Tywin and of civilians (season three, episode five). He had been instructed by the king to burn his father, and the king had also demanded the death, by fire, of many men, women, and children. In Jaime's case it was objectively impossible for him to uphold all of his vows at once--just as it was impossible for Jephthah to act righteously by sacrificing his daughter--and even if it were not he would have had to do evil in order to serve the Mad King. It is impossible for one to have an obligation to do something that is sinful. Saying otherwise is to suggest something that cannot be, for it cannot be right and obligatory for someone to do what is wrong.
There are many situations that one can imagine which pit Biblical commands against each other. For instance, if a murderous person demands to know where a potential victim is, unless one remains silent or attacks the aggressor one must take a course of action that in some way involves a lie (Leviticus 19:11) or endangers the innocent (Leviticus 19:16). Which would you choose? One can conjure up other such scenarios that pose moral dilemmas. Yet moral truths remain constant and do not change to suit our circumstances. Lying, like murder or aiding murder, like other sins, is wrong intrinsically and can never itself be good. How should a person react to events that demand one sin or another?
Not all moral obligations are equally important because not all sins are equally evil [1]. Jesus himself calls some sins worse than others (John 19:11) and some moral goods better than others (Matthew 23:23), and Mosaic Law demands very different punishments for different sins, with some sins not legally punishable at all because they do not have the metaphysical status of crimes. If all sins are equal God would have prescribed capital punishment for all of them or not prescribed capital punishment for any of them. Human sacrifice, like rape, sorcery, or physically assaulting one's parents, is a capital crime in Scripture, yet breaking a vow is not one. It is always wrong to break vows to God, but it is worse to uphold a vow to do something atrocious in his name.
Yes, if something is wrong it is wrong regardless of the consequences. An immoral thing does not and cannot become morally good. But not all evils are equal in severity and depravity. And not all moral dilemmas allow for abstaining from sin by inaction--Jephthah would have broken his vow to God if he did nothing and would have committed a capital offense if he kept his vow by sacrificing his daughter. But the right thing for Jephthah to do was for him to not sacrifice a human being in the name of Yahweh (if that was what his vow required), and the right thing for Jaime to do was to kill the Mad King, ending the life of a malevolent tyrant before he could ensure an illicit localized genocide. Moral dilemmas can only exist if genuine moral obligations come into conflict--breaking a vow to God is inherently wrong, but so is human sacrifice.
The story of Jephthah in particular reminds us to not make careless promises, for we may pay for our lack of foresight by forcing ourselves into hellacious situations. It also reminds us what the cost of reacting wrongly in a true moral dilemma can be: our decisions in such dilemmas can deeply affect the lives of others, or even end them entirely.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-alleged-equality-of-sins.html
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