The Christian Answer to the Trolley Problem

This is the second, shortened/better version of my blog post giving the Christian answer to the trolley problem.  The reason that I wrote a first version, over five years ago, was because I found the answers that I was coming across unsatisfactory; I was searching for an objective answer to the moral quandary, but none seemed to fit.

I now see that the reason I had been trying to find/give an answer was because I was I was stuck in a trap that I believe all Christians fall into in varying degrees.

It’s easiest to see what that trap is when we start to show how Christians should approach decision making in general.

Let’s start with the basics.  We as Christians have accepted the fact that we are sinners, and that God sent us His Son Jesus to rescue us from our sins (Romans 5:8).  This salvation has not only freed us from having to face the full force of the punishment of our sins (Romans 6:23), but it has gifted to us the ability to have a relationship with God (Romans 5:10-11).  It’s out of this love relationship with God and our gratitude for what He has done for us that we are to make decisions of what to do next.

We are called to imitate God (Ephesians 5:1) through looking to Christ.  Ideally, we are to be doing things the same way that Jesus did, doing nothing of our own accord (John 5:19), but only doing the works that God has given us to accomplish (John 5:36; Ephesians 2:10).

None of us are perfect, and quite often what God is asking us to do things that require trusting in Him (Romans 1:16-17), and not doing the things that we feel like doing (James 1:14; Galatians 5:17).  Trusting God is something that is impossible to do on our own accord (Ephesians 2:8-9), and so we require the help of His Spirit to go about doing the right thing (Romans 8:12-13).

Apart from the help of the Spirit, we don’t naturally wish to attempt impossible things.  So, we as Christians often try to make things easier on ourselves and live a good Christian life on our own terms.  We have a book that has clearly marked out what some bad things are, and what some good things are, and so as long as we can justify our actions as “good” and “not bad,” we can more or less go about living the life our own way, treating God as more of a provider/final judge/high king than a shepherd/leader/best friend.

What we need to take in consideration is Romans 7:6, which says that the way we are to go about doing things isn’t about following the law (ie. a list of rules), but by following the Spirit.  Take in consideration also how we are called to be holy (1 Peter 1:15-16).

God promises to lead us (Proverbs 3:6; Romans 8:14).

The trap that I had fallen into when desiring to know the Christian answer to the trolley problem was that I was wanting to know the answers to the toughest moral quandaries ahead of time so that I could face the future fearlessly.  I hadn’t yet accepted God’s promise that I would never be in a situation where I would have to sin (1 Corinthians 10:13).  There’s wisdom in using time wisely (Ephesians 5:15-16) to be as prepared as we can (Proverbs 6:6-8), but that preparation must come through/with peace, or else it’s not something that we are doing by the power of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22).

Now, to the trolley problem.

Suppose there is a trolley on a crash collision course with a group of five people who are stuck on its track and unable to move out of its way.  The collision would undoubtedly kill the five people.  The only way to save these people is to hit a switch, which would cause the trolley to go down a different track, where a single person is stuck and would be killed in the process.  The question is, should you involve yourself and flip the switch?

Here's an alternate question.  Suppose you are on a bridge over the track that the trolley is on, and there is no switch to send the trolley away from its path towards the five people.  However, next to you on the bridge is a fat person, and you know for a fact that if you push the fat person onto the track, that would kill the fat person but be sufficient to stop the trolley.  Should you push the fat person onto the track to save more lives?

It may come as little surprise to you that the majority of people presented with this question said that they would flip the switch in response to the first question, but the vast minority of people said that they would push the fat person in the path of the trolley in the second question.

So what’s the “right” answer?

We read in James 1:5-6 that God promises to give us wisdom when we ask for it.  But then it goes on to say that we need to ask for wisdom with no doubting.  There is plenty that could be said regarding how to ask with no doubting, but the answer largely shows up in Romans 12:2 that says that we can know the will of God through the renewal of our minds.

Essentially, what we are reading in the Scriptures is that (1) if we need to know how to answer the trolley problem, we need only to ask God for wisdom and (2) we will be able to know the will of God.

The Christian answer to the trolley problem is to do what God leads you to do.

That answer differs from the answer that I had been hearing others say.  It may come as no surprise to hear most people say that the right answer to the problem would be to throw ourselves onto the track, sacrificing ourselves as Jesus had sacrificed himself.  I will not doubt that may be a valid approach should the hypothetical trolley problem enter the real world, but it bypasses the binary options presented in the hypothetical.

I do not wish for Christians to believe that there will always be a way for them to sacrifice themselves to save others, or that there will always be presented an option where no one gets hurt.

Death is an inevitability in this life, and our place is not to avoid death (1 Corinthians 15:55) or be surprised when it comes (1 Peter 4:12), but to present life (Romans 8:10).

Perhaps some would see the answer I gave as a cop-out.  But I have found it to be reliable in real life.  More than that: I have found the other answers that rely merely on human reasoning fall short.

Take, for instance, the approach that would save the most lives (utilitarian).  If someone is completely faithful to this approach, then not only would they steer the trolley away from the five people to hit the one person in the original trolley problem, but they would push the fat person down in front of the trolley in the alternate scenario.

If there was no God, I would have no problems with that approach.

However, since God is real, and He has instilled in us a moral code (Romans 2:14-15), we can see that there’s something inherently wrong about being the agent of harm to another human being.

One could see potentially see the trolley problem as asking us to do is to do a little evil (kill one person) in order to do even more good (save five people).  This would be like saying “the end justifies the means.”

I have three primary problems with using the end to justify the means:

1)    We have no control over the end, nor do we fully understand the means or the end.
The trolley problem gives us the same information as we generally have – that being that present choices affect the immediate present.  The trolley shows us only two sets of two dominoes – we know which domino will tumble next depending on which domino is knocked down.  The trolley problem doesn’t show us any further dominoes.  It doesn’t tell us who the five people are or who the one person is.  Perhaps the five people are terminally ill patients about to die anyway, or the one person a soon to be mass murderer.

In the same way, we are not capable of knowing the future since there are too many factors to consider.  The Christian has one additional major factor to consider, that being the option that God would choose to directly intervene.  We can’t even be completely certain that pushing over one domino will cause any further ones to fall.  We hear James say in James 4:14 that we do not know what tomorrow will bring, and then he goes on to say that if we claim to know what tomorrow will bring, we are boasting and arrogant.

We can’t even be certain about the present.  We operate through a physical body, but Ephesians 6:12 tells us that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the currently unseen.  In other words, our actions that appear on the surface to be completely physical have significance beyond our comprehension.  More than that, God is using our actions to showcase His own wisdom (Ephesians 3:10).

We are in a story in which we are not the author.  It’s best to trust the One who set everything in motion with bringing about the correct end and not taking it into our own hands.

2)    If “the end justifies the means” were itself a valid maxim to live by then one could use it to commit all sorts of atrocities so long as they were convinced in their own mind that it would lead to something greater.

3)    We are to see the means as the end.  To us, our chief goal is to glorify God.  We accomplish this by remaining obedient to Him (John 3:21; John 15:1-8; Colossians 3:1-4, 17).  Our goal is not some sort of physical outcome, but to showcase Christ through doing what is right.

The option of letting the trolley run its course by not taking action is also not ideal.  This is the course of action where one failed to recognize an opportunity to save lives.  It may appear that this was the option where one didn’t act as an agent of harm, thus taking the righteous path, but there are cases where failure to act to help others goes against what God is asking us to do (James 2:14-17, Galatians 6:2).  Consider that pursuing a life all about doing what will give God the most glory is has “doing the most good” on the forefront of the mind, and is not necessarily worried about what could be labelled as “doing bad” by others in the process (see Galatians 5:13-14, 16, 18; Mark 3:1-5).

If it appears that there’s no correct way forward, remember that I have already showcased the right answer: ask God for wisdom (James 1:5).  If God tells you that a certain option is the best way forward, then you can move forward in confidence in that option, knowing that you can do no greater good, and there is no evil in what you are doing (James 1:13).