Imagine you are trapped. There is a lever you can pull, but you can do nothing else. While it is not your doing, you notice the lever attached to rail tracks. A train is coming down the tracks at high speed and will be unable to stop. On the current track, five people are tied, but if you pull the lever, the train will be diverted to a track where only one person is tied. What do you do? What if the one person is someone for which you care deeply? This grizzly scenario is called the “trolly problem” and is part of a series of thought experiments used in psychological study. One question which comes from this scenario is whether the trapped person who has control of the lever is guilty of the deaths of the five people if they do nothing. The majority of philosophers will argue that the life of the individual should be sacrificed for the lives of the many, but that thought of doing nothing seems attractive as it gives a feeling of absolution of guilt.
Today, both the religious and secular worlds tell individuals to have a seat and just look away as the train speeds down the tracks. Do nothing, and that is the better way to live.
The secular world would tell us to ignore the fairy tale that is “God.” Romans 1:20-23 says, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”
Those who ignore Him do just that: they ignore Him. “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (Romans 1:28). They follow their own worldly passions and lust and choose to be stupid when it comes to knowledge of what is true.
Too many in the religious world are equally lost in the same idea. The saying cannot be broken that, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Sitting next to the switch I can have immense faith, and believe with all my heart that the train will harm nobody. Unfortunately, no logical person can refute that is foolish and out-of-touch with reality. “Believe” in John 3:16 has such a deeper meaning not explored in this passage, but spoken of by James 2:14: “What good is it, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?”
The rhetorical answer is a sobering no. That faith alone is insufficient. We must do something. Jesus commands us to do something. The apostles command us to go and do something. We may not be able to save everyone, but we must do all that we can to fulfill our command to go and do something.
It starts with us, though. We must first do what we are commanded. If our choice is to simply not pull the lever and absolve ourselves of all guilt having never done anything for that absolution, what we may find in the end is that it is our own self tied to the tracks, praying that someone does something, when we could have been saved all along.
Lance Byers