Do the means matter more than the end?

Sometimes the means (or methods) matter and sometimes not. In economics, we see that elasticity of demand (how willing people are to give up buying something) is almost never zero. That means that when the price of a product goes up, people almost always reduce how much they purchase. The reduction in the amount purchased happens as they substitute; they replace that product with something else. In that sense people have some goal (a healthy diet, vacation, etc.) but they don't see one particular product as completely necessary to achieving that goal; they're willing to buy something that comes at a lower price.

One situation that involves substitution is when your family has the goal of doing wholesome recreational activities to maintain healthy relationships. So say you really like hiking in the mountains while your family lives in Utah. If your family moves to Miami then hiking in the mountains becomes excessively costly; it takes too much time to get to any mountains. The time, love for each other, and desire to be together continues and the mountains weren't ever really the important part of the recreational activity, as awesome as mountains are.

Another example of substituting one method for another is with sharing the gospel; time and resources can be used in an organizationally focused way, or more individually with small acts of kindness. A faith promoting website has the cost of lacking a personal feeling, whereas sitting down to chat with a friend costs more time per person. Both ways of using our limited resources have benefits, and I think it's worth it to strive for the most productive balance.

Of course, we don't want to go crazy with means that are inherently wrong, or when the cost of using those means exceeds the benefit.

Martin Luther King Jr. said: "We will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from the means, because the means represent the idea in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you cannot reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree."¹

Substituting is something that we do when it allows us to achieve our goals in a less costly way. So I suppose that within our standards, substituting is wise : )

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1  MLK, "A Christmas Sermon on Peace". You can also look at an interesting explanation of good fruit implying a good seed in Alma 32:28-36 from the Book of Mormon or Matthew 7:15-20. ^↩