Blacksmith slave to an evil Lord: a parable for here-and-now

Assume you are a blacksmith and slave to an evil Lord...

(If it helps, you might imagine yourself a Saxon under the Norman yoke.) 

The Lord is evil in the sense that he organizes his entire estate to provide-for a gang dedicated to theft, arson, rape, torture and (just plain) murder. 

(Pretty much your standard Norman, in other words.) 

As a slave you are dispensable to the Lord, and your two options in life are therefore: 

1. To do what you are told - or 

2. Be killed. 

In other words, your freedom of moral action is restricted to refusing an order and getting killed for it. 

It can further be understood that if you do not do what you are told, there will be another who shall take your place and do it instead. So your refusal to do an evil act is purely moral (i.e between you and God) - it does not have any material effect. 

And let us further assume that you have a beloved wife and children, and if you are killed then they will die of starvation. 

The above scenario is not terribly far fetched, and there must have been many millions of people throughout history who lived in a way that approximates to the above. 

Furthermore, to anticipate; I would like you to draw out the moral analogies between the above situation; and the conditions under which you and I live. 

As a blacksmith, much of what you do is of general value: you make ploughs and sickles and the like. 

Yet anything and everything you make is ultimately (even if indirectly) used to sustain the evil Lord and his purpose. Much of the food grown goes to sustain his murderous gang, and so forth. 

But let's say, you feel morally OK so long as you are making ploughs and household goods, because they have at least a dual usage - good as well as evil... 

Then the Lord instructs you to make nothing but weapons - swords, halberds, spears... These are only going to be used for intimidation and violence. 

(But they also have some kind of defensive role - keeping away the other evil Lords who would slaughter you, and your family.) 

Then the Lord says that you must make iron instruments of torture, of various types. 

(These devices have no use but to inflict pain: they are for evil and evil only.) 

Then the Lord requires you to use your expertise in metals to assist in the process of torture - you will in fact become the Lord's expert torturer. 

(Now you are personally required to take an active role in the evil Lord's evil work.) 

The question is: at what point in this escalation, if any, is it right and necessary to refuse, and to be-killed, and your family also be-killed?

And, however you answer this; the moral point of this parable I ask you to grasp; is that these are all points on a quantitative scale - because whatever you do, you are materially assisting the work of evil. 

To close the loop: in this global totalitarian world that you and I inhabit; although the situation is less extreme and clear-cut: we are all the blacksmith slave. 

And I suggest we all ought, at some level, to acknowledge the moral facts and take personal responsibility; not in order to change the world for the better - but in order that we may repent.