Mac Callum said:
Personally, I believe that channeling the powers of un-life, of Negative Energy is always evil. You can have 'good' reasons for using it - but it is an absolute evil. You have brought something into the world which should not be.
Let's say two twin brothers are born to a pair of happy parents. Those parents lived in a small town that valued magic and honored dead ancestors, and were natural followers of Wee Jas. The two brothers grew up, almost exactly the same, except that one of them believed that everyone should be especially compassionate, and fight for the weak. The other had almost the entirely same views, except that he believed that justice was slightly more important than compassion, although both were important. The first brother was, of course, Lawful Good, and the other was Lawful Neutral. Aside from that, their personalities were nearly identical. They both grew up in the church, and became Clerics of their deity to honor their parents. However, when the two of them finally finish their acolyte training, they get out into the field, and brandish their holy symbols.
One of these two twin brothers holds out his Holy Symbol and calls out the name of his deity, performing an inherently good act. The other holds out his Holy Symbol and calls out the name of his deity, performing an inherently evil act. Every single time. Make sense?
Basically, it's a load of crap to force neutral clerics of certain deities (the deities themselves being Lawful Neutral as well) to perform duties that are "ALWAYS evil". A Lawful Neutral cleric of Wee Jas, regardless of how much he's shifting towards good, performs inherently evil acts all the time, according to the PHB. If he's in a group with a Paladin, what should he do? Refrain from helping out in a fight against zombies by performing his deity's wishes because some book says that it's evil?
I'm aware that there are quite a few instances where Rebuling and Commanding undead can be used to further evil plots (specifically, anytime an evil cleric does it) but the fact that it's not ALWAYS done by evil clerics defeats the rule. Take a sword, for instance- a sword can be used for evil. You can use it to kill, you can use it to steal, you can use it to torture. It, itself, is unnatural- hence the fact that druids aren't proficient with them. Depending on your point of view, one might even say that swords are abominations of existence, and if you had an especially radical nature-aligned mentality, one could say that swords are evil. They definitely perform as much evil as they do good in the long run. And yet, nowhere in any of the rulebooks will you find it said that using swords is evil.
Swords can be used for good and bad, and therefore it is not inherently good or inherently evil to use one. Rebuking and Turning should be the exact same way. True, they're commonly used to do specific good or evil acts, but sometime they aren't, and sometimes there's no choice (as in the Lawful Neutral cleric of Wee Jas example). Nobody should be restricted to only being able to do evil just because the makers of the game wanted people to always prefer good over evil.
