The Moral Universe of Desmond Doss
/
Desmond Doss was born February 7, 1919, in Lynchburg, Virginia. He would have been 103 this year. Growing up, Doss was enamored with an illustration of the Ten Commandments hanging in his living room. Constantly, he would drag a kitchen chair to the spot so he could get a better look. There, he read the words, “Thou shalt not kill,” and studied the picture of Cain standing over the dead body of Abel. Doss’s wife said that while he stood in front of the picture, the young Desmond imagined Jesus saying to him, “Desmond, if you love Me, you will not kill, but save life as I would if I were in your place. Follow My Example.”[1]
Desmond Doss at “Hacksaw Ridge”
In 1942, Doss was drafted into the World War II. During his training, his convictions and resolve were incessantly tested. He was maligned and mocked. He was denied furlough because he would not train with a weapon. His commanding officers sought to dismiss him on grounds of insanity. And despite the grueling series of trials, Doss insisted that he stay at his post, saying, “I’d be a very poor Christian if I accepted a discharge implying that I was mentally unbalanced because of my religion.”[2]
Doss faced the harrowing danger of war and carried no weapon. On May 5, 1945, at the Battle of Okinawa, he saved nearly a hundred men, including even some of the enemy. Though wounded himself, he climbed a towering cliff dozens of times, into enemy mortar fire, to pull soldiers to safety. At the top of the escarpment, Doss kept praying, “Lord, help me get one more.”[3] Sometime later, he was seriously injured by a grenade and was being taken away from the fray on a litter when he crawled off and tended to the wounds of another man who was more seriously injured. Doss would be the only Conscientious Objector to earn the Medal of Honor during the war.
Doss risked his own life over and over, and not only for the sake of his friends, but even for those whom he had every reason to consider his enemies. He acted for the sake of others, and at his own expense.
From the point of view of moral apologetics, there are many lessons to be drawn from the case of Desmond T. Doss. But here I only make two observations. First about moral rationality and then about moral goodness.
Moral Rationality
Moral rationality has to do with how morality and reason are ultimately harmonized. It must be rational, in the end, to be moral, or else, as Henry Sidgwick argued, we will have competing and contradictory purposes for acting. Doss’s biography gives no evidence that he acted for the sake of his own interest, but Doss did have faith that God was just and would reward him. Doss himself said,
God wrote the Ten Commandments on tables of stone with His own finger. He said it was perfect and that nothing is to be added to it or taken away from it. We are to be judged by this law of liberty, so whether we accept or reject it is a matter of life or death.[4]
From Doss’s perspective, “life” would be the reward for his obedience to God’s command. God judges and rewards human beings, ensuring the connection between virtue and happiness. On that day in May 1945, Doss said that he remembered the promises of God and that gave him the assurance he needed to act.[5] The ultimate rationality of morality, at least in Doss’s own mind, was likely a necessary condition for the good he did.[6]
Moral Goodness
There are many competing conceptions of the good. Some think of the good as identical to utility or pleasure. Christian philosopher H. P. Owen didn’t think much of this idea. Instead, Owen argued that when we encounter the good, we know we ought to desire it, even if we don’t. Owen imagines a friend who is “honest and kind in all his dealings.” In this friend, Owen finds a goodness that confronts and compels; it demands admiration.[7]
It is difficult to explain away our sense that what Doss did was deeply good in terms of mere chemistry and evolutionary psychology, as some have attempted to do.[8] There would be a gaping chasm between what seems obvious, that the heroic deed was good, and reality, that it was only the outworking of physics. Or if goodness is pleasure, it seems incredibly odd to try to explain the goodness of saving a hundred men in terms of a particular state of mind. One must check how they feel about the events before rendering a moral judgment. If the good is total utility, then we must withhold judgment because the complete ramifications of Doss’s actions have yet to be resolved. Whether it’s good or not remains to be seen, on this view.
In Doss’s story, we find an example of goodness that, as Owen suggests, confronts us and compels our admiration. For many, the power and clarity of conscience provides the clear and unassailable apprehension “this is good.” And this is a matter of fact about objective reality, no mere trifling statement about our own feelings, a fact held with the same credulity one might believe “the sun shines.” One would be hard pressed to say that any person asserting, “What Doss did that day was good” was not a competent user of good in at least that instance.
The good that is perceived in the work of Doss on that day can be recalcitrant for some who think of the good too narrowly or reductively. But if God himself is the good, and he gave his own life as ransom for many, then the veridical nature of our perception is easily explained.
[1] Frances Doss, Desmond Doss: Conscientious Objector (Pacific Press, 2005), 7.
Doss clearly thought that following Jesus entailed limited pacificism (Doss, according to his biography, did think that one could resist with force, just not lethal force). Christians disagree about whether Christ has obliged his followers to be pacifists. The issue of pacificism is not the concern here, though. Rather, I focus only on Doss’s exemplary moral character and integrity.
[2] Doss, 78.
[3] Doss, 151.
[4] Doss, 11. (from the preface by Desmond Doss).
[5] Doss, 102.
[6] Frances Doss also records multiple accounts of God’s rewarding of Doss’s faithfulness prior to the Battle of Okinawa. One example: Doss felt convicted to pay his tithe, though that would leave him unable to pay his rent. He did so, then, unbidden, the landowner cut his rent by half and he was able to pay.
[7] H. P. Owen, The Moral Argument for Christian Theism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1965), 20.
[8] See for example the explanation of love given in terms of evolutionary psychology in Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), 214.
The Managing Editor of MoralApologetics.com, Jonathan has been a vital part of the Moral Apologetics team since its inception. Currently, he serves as adjunct instructor of philosophy for Grand Canyon University and Liberty University. He also is affiliate faculty at Colorado Christian University. Prior to these positions, he was ordained as a minister and served as spiritual life director. He is the author or co-author of several articles on metaethics, theology, and history of philosophy. With a Master’s in Global Apologetics and a graduate of Biola’s Master’s program in philosophy, he recently finished his doctoral dissertation in which he extends a four-fold moral argument from mere theism to a distinctively Christian picture of God. Jonathan, his wife Sara, and their two children presently live in Lynchburg, Virginia. You can find his personal website at JonathanRPruitt.com
