Jesse M. Heines and Scott D. Heines
This article was written when Scott was a junior sociology major at UMass Amherst and Jesse was an associate professor of computer science at UMass Lowell. It was published in The Lowell Sun in 1996.
Dinner conversations at our house are seldom boring. As son Scott explores new ideas, father Jesse is constantly challenged to rethink his own. The elder often finds himself relating strongly to the situation in The King and I when the King sings, “Sometimes I am not sure of what I absolutely, positively know.”
A recent conversation focused on the question, “Is it ever right to kill?” Dad quickly said, “Of course,” yet Son was not so sure. Son acknowledged that he certainly might kill in self-defense, but he didn’t think that this situation necessarily justified the act on moral grounds. Dad countered with the scenario where someone was threatening his son’s life and the father absolutely believed that person would kill his son if he did not kill the perpetrator first. Yet even here the son was not convinced.
The question was not resolved, and a few days later Dad went on a business trip to Washington, D.C. There he was privileged to make time to visit the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum. As he moved through the exhibits, watched the films, viewed the photographs, and read the memorials, Dad thought, “Clearly here is a convincing argument that murder can be justified. If my son were here in this museum he would surely agree that were he able to stop the slaughter of so many millions of innocent people by killing some lesser number of Nazis, certainly such killing would be morally justified.”
With this thought foremost in mind, Dad sat down at the last exhibit, a small theater showing a film of interviews with Holocaust survivors. Their stories brought tears to his eyes, but even here one story challenged the idea that it is ever right to kill. An Auschwitz survivor told of one day overhearing another internee praying. He asked the man, “Why are you praying? God has forgotten us and hears us not.” The man continued to pray and even began praising the Lord and His holy name. The story teller became incensed and said, “How can you possibly praise and thank Him when He has forsaken us in this hell?” The devotee turned to his accuser and replied, “I am thanking Him for not making me one of these killers.”
So the question is not an easy one to answer. We raised it once again with Haim Levkowitz, a man who had served in the Israeli Army and had grown up under the threat of hostilities from neighboring countries. His contribution to the discussion: “If one takes the life of a person who is about to take someone else’s life, thus saving that other person’s life, such an act can be morally justified. But once a murder is committed, what’s the justification for yet another murder?”
Is it ever right to kill? The question will be debated for
generations. But surely the types of killings we see in the paper every day