The Prime Directive

You can't change the past, though we might speculate what we would do if we could.

Many of the Jews who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death. - John 11:45–53

If you could go back in time, would you kill Klara Pozl?

In 1885, Klara would marry an older man, her second cousin, Alois Hitler, and she would give birth to Adolph on April 20, 1889.

If we follow the logic of Caiaphas and the Romans, we might think it would be better for one person to die, even someone quite innocent, for the sake of the nation and the people.

But how was anyone to know back in 1889 what the baby boy in Austria near the German border would grow up to become?

In the old Star Trek TV show, the Primer Directive.  As stated in an article from 2015 on the ethical nature of the directive, "The Prime Directive (officially Starfleet Order 1) is a prohibition on interference with the other cultures and civilizations representatives of Starfleet encounter in their exploration of the universe."

Now, this directive was the source of conflict for Captain James T. Kirk, who often found himself challenged by it.  If it wasn't for his actions to break it, interfering in the course of society in eleven episodes, there would have been no story.  

So, this idea of changing the course of history to save people from evil is a thread that we find ourselves questioning over and over again, even in our entertainment media.

But who in our time would accuse Jesus of insurrection?  And if we did, would we feel it justified, given the cruelty of the Roman Empire?

Kirk was not a representation of Jesus.  He was a caricature of us.  We are the ones struggling with this idea of not interfering yet finding ourselves in situations that plead for us to get involved.

If a small act could change the world for the better, even if it is illegal, would we do it?

Jesus would make a parable out of this concept, and we would read it thinking, there but for the grace of God, go I.

More to come...