Utilitarianism In The Bible

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Indeed, the Bible does require a certain amount of impartiality. James 2:1-26 instructs “show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘You stand over there,’ or ‘Sit down at my feet,’ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” (Favoritism). Further, in Galatians 3:28, it says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in …show more content…

The utilitarian would say that any action can be deemed moral if the outcomes are what is best for the most amount of people. However, the Bible, even in regard to poverty, has certain limits for what is moral or not, regardless of their outcomes. Consider the following scenario. A wealthy man is in the hospital with dire health problems. He can be saved if the doctor gives him an expensive drug, but if he is not given it, he will surely die. He has no surviving family and, as a workaholic, no friends who will truly miss him. If he were to die, his organs would be donated to those who desperately need them, and his wealth donated to charity, in accordance with his will, as he has no family to inherit it. In this case, according to utilitarian theory, surely it would be morally sound for the doctor to refrain from administering the drug. The people who received his organs, as well as the poor who received money to afford their basic necessities, will surely have their lives extremely affected and their happiness maximized. In fact, by saving this one man, the doctor is letting many other innocent people die. Yet no Christian could possibly think it is morally right to let the man die, even for the sake of the poor. Apparent in the Bible is that all humans are made in God’s likeness, and therefore, life is valuable. …show more content…

Pogge critiques Singer’s view on helping the global crisis because Singer has “the tacit assumption that we are not contributing to the distress we are able to alleviate” (Mieth 20). He says this specifically of the example of the child drowning that Singer gives. Despite the fact that Pogge and Singer would agree that the bystander is morally responsible for trying to save the child, Pogge points out one specific difference between this case and the case of world poverty. Unlike the bystanders, those living in affluent societies are at least partially responsible for the poverty of those around the world. The global systems created with a Washington consensus, as well as years of colonialism, have effectively assured the poverty of developing nations. As such, not only is it a violation of rights not to help the poor, giving to the poor is actually compensation for years of the poor’s rights to non-poverty being

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