The Ends Justify the Means

When we talked about Machiavelli the last day of class, I remembered one of his most important quotes: “the ends justify the means.” In his work, The Prince, he proposes a theory that is based on ends and means. He believed that the ultimate end of politics is the power. So, every action, no matter if it was good or bad from ethical or moral points of view, can be justified if it aims towards the end of getting the power.
This quote has caused a lot of disagreements. From a Christian point of view, this statement should be completely invalid. It should be the opposite, if the means are bad from an ethical view, then there is no way the end would be good. From the points of view of many other people, this statement is a complete dilemma. Well people say: it is impossible if a wrong way gets you to the right goal, but there are many cases that it is quite difficult to maintain this thought.
I come from a third world country, where half of the population lives in extreme poverty. I am not talking about the people who can not satisfy their wants, but I am talking about the people that can not justify their needs at all. If you come to some parts of my city, Bogota, you will find so many people on the streets that have no place to sleep, or food to eat. They usually have a lot of children and since they live on the streets they are vulnerable to get more diseases. So, what about this story? There is a man that has a family; one of his kids is dying because they do not have the money for buying the drugs that he needs. The government can not supply it, and he does not have anyone to recur. He steals a lady’s purse to get the money for the drug of his kid. His kid is safe. So, the end was good, but the means are totally wrong, it is stealing. I am not justifying this act, but it is just something difficult that I have seen my whole life that makes me think a lot.