Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pacifist, wrestled with an ethical dilemma. Is it moral to kill someone responsible for mass murder?
He was thinking of Hitler and whether he should participate in the plot to assassinate him, which would have been an act of tyrannicide. While contemplating the proper ethical response, he wrote his seminal unfinished book, “Ethics.”
He believed that in a fallen world where the ambiguity of right and wrong reigns, we may sometimes need to disobey laws, even God’s laws. He suggested that we may need to get our hands dirty by doing what is wrong.
Bonhoeffer never said it was morally right to kill Hitler, but rather that this wrong action was the right thing to do. On behalf of others, he was willing to assume guilt as Jesus did and take responsibility for engaging in a wrong act.
For Bonhoeffer, this was a guilt void of sin.
I was thinking of Bonhoeffer as I read the news of the assassination of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson in midtown New York, wondering if Bonhoeffer’s justification for engaging in murder applied to this situation.
Obviously, Thompson is not a Hitler by any stretch of the imagination. There is a significant difference between tyrannicide and homicide. And yet, an argument can be made that Thompson participated in a postmodern act of mass murder.
Last year, six in ten insured adults reported experiencing difficulties with insurance companies. Most of these concerned the words written with a sharpie on the shell casings found at the murder scene: “Delay” and “Deny.” Those who were insured had a one in five probability of being denied emergency services. Under CEO Thompson’s leadership, UnitedHealth denied the most claims, at a rate of one in three.
Life-giving routine medical tests are delayed due to byzantine bureaucratic processes. Critical medical procedures are denied due to complex “prior authorization” procedures. Delayed and denied coverage contributed to UnitedHealth’s $281 billion in revenues last year.
Delayed and denied coverage contributed to medically induced bankruptcies for families unable to pay medical expenses. Delayed and denied coverage contributed to needless deaths for the sake of profits. For Thompson, that came to $10.2 million in earnings last year.
Insurance executives need not be inconvenienced with wiping the blood off their wingtip shoes. They do not engage in the gore of physical violence. Instead, they participate in sterile institutional violence.
The results, though, are the same: death.
Death caused by physical violence is usually instantaneous, as in the case of Thompson. The death caused by institutionalized violence of the U.S. health system, usually based on a discriminatory algorithm, can linger for years as bodies succumb to the ravages of disease.
There is so much justified rage against the healthcare machine. Is it any wonder that Thompson’s assassin has been transformed into some kind of folk hero or saint?
Since the killing, social media has expressed wide sympathy, if not gleeful support, for the man who allegedly pulled the trigger. No doubt the murderer tapped into a powerful undercurrent of wrath among the insured who have suffered physical and monetary loss.
So, is Thompson’s killer some modern-day Bonhoeffer, killing the one responsible for so much death? Such a conclusion is not only too simplistic, it is wrong. Vigilanteism based on personal convictions is highly problematic.
How is this violence directed at the health insurance industry different from the violence directed at abortion providers? Those who murder abortion providers or bomb their clinics believe that they, too, are saving the lives of fetuses who, according to them, these medical professionals were killing.
Violence was chosen in both cases to stop–in the minds of the assailants–mass murder. Both are celebrated as folk heroes by those who share their convictions.
Does a shared ideology make a wrong act right? Is killing Thompson right if I agree that the unchecked greed of health insurance providers is deadly to the insured? Is killing abortion doctors right if I agree that their procedures are deadly to the unborn?
A study examining the rise of domestic terrorism in the U.S. from 1990 to 2020 showed how the current political schism has led to far-right ideologically motivated fatal violence. While such terrorist acts outweigh far-left ideologically motivated fatal violence in quantity and intensity, from 2015 through 2020, far-left violence has been increasing dramatically.
Violence from the far-left and the far-right extremists are equally evil. And yet, we find ourselves at a moment where such violence is not only celebrated but becoming normative and legitimate. Even our new incoming political administration advocates revenge and violence.
Our society is so divided that some even salivate for a civil war. We sit on a powder keg with cigars in our mouths. Those who believe in God, especially white Christian nationalists, are quick to light our cigars while singing “Onward Christians soldiers.”
Contrary to this, St. Francis prayed:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.
Will conservative and liberal Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, humanists and atheists be willing to hold hands and commit to becoming an instrument of peace?
Doctrinal beliefs, or lack thereof, are unimportant. Political leanings do not matter. For such a time as this, only peacemaking matters.
St. Francis’ prayer is my prayer. This is how I commit to live my life. Will you join me?
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Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
