Tricksters

The concept of “the trickster” was a very interesting one to me. I have always agreed that there are one hundred percent justifiable reasons for lying in life as long as they are for good moral reasons, but I have never really considered biblical reasons that justify such lying as we did in the readings this week. The example of the women lying to the pharaoh about why they didn’t kill the newly born sons of the Hebrew slaves is the perfect example of situations that I believe lying is totally acceptable. However, the example of Rebekah and Jacob using deceit to get Jacob the birthright is a little bit more morally questionable in my opinion. The trickster can be a very complex issue though. There are definitely some situations where using deceit to better your cause can be the only option and be very helpful in furthering the cause of the oppressed. Using deceit in the way that tricksters do is a fine moral line to walk though. It can be very hard for someone to use deceit and remain one hundred percent moral and honest in their cause. If someone uses deceit to redistribute power in society and they are successful in distributing power to themselves, what is to stop them from continuing to use deceit and potentially becoming the oppressor themselves? For example, following World War 1 the Germans were being heavily oppressed by the treaty of Versailles that was forced on them by the winning nations of the war. During this time of oppression, Adolf Hitler rose to power by using deceit and making promises he knew he did not plan to uphold to once he had the power. Once he had the power, he used more deceit to further his cause and took Germany from being oppressed by the treaty of Versailles to being the oppressor themselves of thousands of innocent Europeans. This is the type of thing I fear of when deciding that deceit is totally acceptable to further your cause if you are an oppressed group. On the other hand, using deceit in the manner that the Methodist pastor we discussed in class did to further the cause of homosexuals within the Methodist church is completely and totally acceptable in my mind.