Novels about divine command, suicide bombers

[fcuknu]

I am writing a paper for my ethics class and I have to evaluate moral decisions made in a novel. I need to find a novel that deals with divine command (where the characters do something because god tells them). Does anybody have a good recommendation? I am thinking a book about suicide bombers would be easy to find, but I cant find one. The book doesnt have to deal with suicide bombing, I thought that would be the easiest to find. Any book where a character makes a decision because god told them to do it would work.

Does anybody have any ideas? Thanks.

 

[KitAkira]

The bible

 

[fcuknu]

Haha, that was my first choice, but my professor shot it down. The Binding of Issac is the most obvious answer. He said that the debate on weather the bible was fiction or non fiction was a valid one, but he wanted something written more contemporary and with more substance.

 

[ms244]

Originally Posted by fcuknu

Haha, that was my first choice, but my professor shot it down. The Binding of Issac is the most obvious answer. He said that the debate on weather the bible was fiction or non fiction was a valid one, but he wanted something written more contemporary and with more substance.




More then the old testament?

 

[fcuknu]

Well by that I think he meant something longer and more concrete, not a passage or collection of passages.

 

[emptym]

Silence by Shusaku Endo. Or anything by Graham Greene. Maybe The End of the Affair. Both have very interesting moral decisions motivated by what characters take to be God's will. But in neither of them does God speak like we speak to each other.

 

[CDFS]

God speaks to a lot of people, I seem to recal, in God Knows by Joseph Heller. Another book in which god interacts with the people (and the devil) is The Old Man and Mr Smith by Peter Ustinuv though I suspect this may be to light a novel for your professors taste.

A good movie about suicidebombers is Paradise Now by Hany Abu-Assad. It tells the story about two Palestinian friends in the last 24 hours before the deed. Quite intense. No direct intervention from god though and, as I said, a movie.

Good luck,

CDFS

 

[Journeyman]

"A Prayer for Owen Meany", by John Irving.

It's about an unusual boy/man who believes that he is an instrument of God.
A very quirky, interesting, enjoyable book.

 

[countdemoney]

The obvious example from the bible is actually samson. He prays to god to grant him strength to kill his enemies after samson has betrayed god's gift.

Samson is one of the examples from John Donne in Biathanatos - Donne's legal, moral and ethical defense of suicide.

I don't know if there's a requirement that you use god - using the devil may yield something far more interesting for you:

There is a sandman collection, I believe, "season of mists" where the devil pulls an atlas shrugged and walks away from the stewardship of hell. the sandman, aka, Morpheus, the king of dreams receives the stewardship of hell. He doesn't want it and numerous parties come forward to ask for it. The sandman doesn't like his choices. At the end, two angels receive a message from god and ask to fulfill the role of the devil in order to serve god. The angels, and others, have had dialog about the role of hell previously in the novel.

http://www.amazon.com/Season-Mists-S...8132533&sr=8-7