A Daughter's Lament
by Edna Hong
May, a grown-up daughter who loves her mother very much be permitted to share some concerns with her siblings, all children of the same Mother – namely Mother Church, or more specifically, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)? – I suppose it's futile to wish that Mother had a simpler name, for example, ALMA or ELLA!But so strangely, it was Soren Kierkegaard who in a journal entry in 1851 collected and summarized my vague uneasiness about Mother Church.The definition of Church found in the Augsburg Confession, that it is the communion of saints where the word is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly administered, this quite correctly (that is, not correctly) grasped only the two points about doctrine and sacraments and has overlooked the first, the communion of saints (in which there is the qualification in the direction of the existential). Thus the Church is made into a communion of indifferent existences (or where the existential is a matter of indifference – but the "doctrine" is correct and the sacraments are rightly administered. This is really paganism. (Soren Kierkegnard's Journals and Papers, Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, 1957)Yes, indeed, the doctrines that Mother Church teaches us are correct, the sacraments are rightly administer~but where is what Kierkegaard calls ~ the urgent call to exist in the truths that are so rightly taught and the sacraments are so rightly administered? In that beautiful Year of Our Lord, the Church year that the great-grandfathers of the Church so magnificently devised, what has happened to what they called the Trinity Season, that great, green becoming-season when we grow to become what God has made us in his son Jesus Christ?Oh, the Word of Grace comes through strongly in all its truth and purity from Mother Church until Pentecost, but in the long, long season that follows Pentecost the Word of Response, the Word that calls me to the response in my existential life, my daily existence, calls me to respond in gratitude for the wonder of that grace – that Word from Mother Church has become weak and wobbly. Mother Church, who is so sure about the WHY seems to have become very unsure about the How. And that is what the season after Pentecost is all about! Saint-becoming! How to become the saints of God has made us in Christ! Its goal, now that it ahs proclaimed the Christ is to make us Christ-like, to reproduce the Gospel in our souls, in our lives. Its task is to teach you and me, who live in a world sapped of Christian ideals – indeed, mocks them – to believe in them, honor them, love them, and teach them to our children.The Pentecost Season ends with a triumphant crescendo – All Saint’s Day. Not at all strangely, Mother Church’s indifference to that season results in All Sant’s Day being the most indifferently celebrated festival day in the Church Year! Indeed, I have attended worship services on that day when the only reference to it was a necrology list in the church bulletin. (Incidently, have you heard about the faithful church member who was furious because her name was not on the necrology list?)"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting," said G. KL. Chesterton, "it has been found difficult and left undone." If G. K. Chesterton lived today, perhaps he would say, "It has been found difficult and not proclaimed."Why? Why are Christian ideals not proclaimed? Has Mother Church forgotten that she not only has the authority but also the obligation to proclaim the Christian ideals? Has she forgotten that Croci is not a Greek god who indulges in "meaningful relationships" with mortals, male and female-a god who winks at sin? Has she forgotten that JesusChrist, who forgave without limit, also said, '~o and sin no more"? Has she forgotten that sanctification is the special work of the Holy Spirit, who came with tongues of fire and inaugurated the Church~ut He neeels our cooperation? (Blessed be God, who created us with the freedom of thc will! We are not forced into sanctification!)Has Mother Church ceased to proclaim the Christian ideals because it's such a difficult task to preach the call to be holy without meaning to he "holier-than-thou"? To teach Christian ideals without berating and haranguing? Because she is scared to death of "works righteousness"-to the death of good works? Because in her lust for numbers she is caving in to the social milieu? Because Luther is the Apostle of "Faith Alone"?Ah, but Luther was also a messenger of sanctification! Hear him in his exposition of I Peter it 1:14-16 "And as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct, since it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.' The little word 'holy' means that you are 'consecrated'. Thus St. Peter says: 'You have consecrated yourselves to God, therefore take heed that you are not once more led astray into worldly lusts, but let God alone rule, and work, and live within you, so are you holy as lie is holy."' (Day by Day We Magnify, Thee, Reachings from Martin Luther, Fortress, Philadelphia, 1952, p.265.)A song comes to mind: 'Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my Bonnie to me, to me!" In my sometimes irruptive mind the words change (but not the tune): "bring back, bring back, oh bring back 'You shall’ and ‘You shall not' to Mother Church!"
Yes, bring back a fructiferous, fruit-bearing Pentecost season!
Edna Hong, renowned Kierkegaard scholar and with her husband', the translator of Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, has authored many books. Among them are the classics: Turn over any Stone, and Bright Valley' of Love.
Death-Cult Rides Again!
Proposidon 161, soothingly entitled the "right to die" initiative, will be on the California ballot, November 3rd. It lets doctors dispatch their patients in a "painless", humane and dignified manner, upon their signed and witnessed consent. If voted, this state will be first in the world to legalize physician aid in dying. In mid-Jule the Cult of Death began its media blitz, intending to build up quick and unreflective agitation to hurry along this repudiation of the Creator and his most precious gift of Life.Assume the social sensitivity of our ELCA as well as the propensity for naive clergy and church leaders to support every effort to wipe out any form of suffering whatsoever – never mind the enlightening 12th chapter of Hebrews or the 9th chapter of John, in that good old book, the Bible. Then we can expect our people again to be stormed by advocates of this initiative. For did not even our ELCA Church Council succumb already to the intrigues of this Cult when it allowed itself to be signed on as a supporter before the Supreme Court for the killing of Nancy Cruzan two years ago? Ans she wasn’t even terminally ill!This initiative speaks of "voluntary assisted suicide." But the next step will surely follow as it has in the Netherlands, where today one-half the 12,000 physician killings are non-voluntary.
Hence, we devote much of this FOCL-POINT to alerting our readers to the theological, ethical and biblical considerations that should accompany them into their November voting booth.
Always to Cam - Never to Kill
Thirteen Jewish and Christian theologians, philosophers and legal scholars, under the auspices of the Ramsey' Colloquium of the Institute on Religion and Public life, collaborated on a declaration on euthanasia. Here are excerpts as reported in the Wall Street Journal, 11/27/1991.
We are grateful that the citizens of Washington state have turned back a measure (Initiative 119; narrowly defeated in the last election) that would have extended the permission to kill, but we know that this is not the end of the matter. The American people must now prepare themselves to meet similar proposals [ as in Calif. Prop 161] for legally sanctioned euthanasia. Toward that end we offer this explanation of why euthanasia is contrary to our faith as Jews and Christians, is based upon a grave moral error, does violence to our political tradition, and undermines the integrity of the medical profession.In relating to the sick, the suffering, the incompetent, the disabled and the dying, we must relearn the wisdom that teaches us always to care, never to kill. Although it may sometimes appear to be an act (if compassion, killing is never earing.The well-organized campaign for legalized euthanasia cruelly exploits the fear of suffering and the frustration felt when we cannot restore to health those whom we love. Such fear and frustration is genuine and deeply felt, especially with respect to the aging. But to deal with suffering by eliminating those who suffer is an evasion of moral duty and a great wrong.Deeply embedded in our moral and medical traditions is the distinction between allowt'ng to die, on the one hand, and killing, on the other. That distinction is now under attack and must be defended with all the force available to us.Medical treatments can be refused or withheld if they are either useless or excessively burdensome. No one should be subjected to useless treatment; no one need accept any and all lifesaving treatments, no matter how burdensome. When we ask if a treatment is useless, the question is: "Win this treatment be useful for this patient; will it benefit the life he or she has?" When we ask if a treatment is burdensome, the question is: "Is this treatment excessively burdensome to the life of this patient?" The question is not whether this life is useless or burdensome. We can and should allow the dying to die; we must never intend the death of the living. We may reject a treatment', we must never reject a life.Once we cross the boundary between killing and allowing to die, there will be no turning back. Current proposals would legalize euthanasia only for the terminally ill. But the logic of the argument-and its practical consequences-will inevitably push us further.Arguments for euthanasia usually appeal to our supposed right of self-determination and to the desirability of relieving suffering. If a right to euthanasia is grounded in self-determination, it cannot reasonably be limited to the terminally ill. If people have a right to die, why must they wait until they are actually dying before they are permitted to exercise that right? Similarly, if the warrant for euthanasia is to relieve suffering, why should we be able to relieve the suffering only of those who are self-determining and competent to give their consent? Why not euthanasia for the suffering who can no longer speak for themselves?Once we have transgressed and blurred the line between killing and allowing to die, it will be exceedingly difficult-in logic, law, and practice-to limit the license to kill. Once the judgment is not about the worth of specific treatments but about the worth of specific lives, our nursing homes and other institutions will present us with countless candidates for elimination who would "be better off dead".
In the face of such danger, we would direct public attention to four sources of wisdom that can teach us again always to care, never to kill.
Religious Wisdom - As Christians and Jews, we are not authorized to make comparative judgments about the worth of lives or to cut short the years that God gives to us or others,
We are to relieve suffering when we can, and to hear with those who suffer, helping them to hear their suffering, when we cannot. We are never to "solve" the problem of suffering by eliminating those who suffer. Euthanasia would inevitably tempt us to abandon those who ~ffer. This is especially the case when we permit ourselves to be persuaded that their lives are a burden to us or to them. We may think we care when we kill, but killing is the rejection of God's command to care, and of his help in caring.
Moral Wisdom - We can, if we wish, renounce many goods or g~ve them into the control of another. Life, however, is not simply a "good" that we possess. Our life is our person. To treat our life as a "thing" that we can authorize another to terminate is profoundly dehumanizing. Euthanasia, even when requested by the competent, attacks the distinctiveness and limitations of being human. Person~ ourselves and others-are not things to be discarded when they are no longer deemed useful.We can give our life for another, but we cannot give ultimate authority over our life to another. To turn one's life into an object that is at the final disposition of another, is to become less than human, while it places the other in a position of being more than human-a lord of life and death, a possessor of the personhood of others.
Human community and the entirety of civilization is premised upon a relationship of moral claims and duties between persons. Personhood has no meaning apart from life. If life is a thing that can be renounced or taken at will, the moral structure of human community, understood as a community of persons, is shattered. The result is a brave new world in which killing is defined as caring, life is viewed as the enemy, and death is counted as a benefit to be bestowed.
Political Wisdom - "We hold these truths," the founders of our political community declared, and among the truths that our community has held is that the right to life is "unalienable." All human beings have an equal right to life bestowed by "Nature and Nature's God." Government is to respect that right; it does not bestow that fight.
This unalienable right places a clear limit on the power of the state. Except when government exercises its duty to protect citizens against force and injustice, or when it punishes evildoers, it may not presume for itself an authority over human life. To claim that-apart from these exceptions-the state may authorize the killing even of consenting persons is to give state authority an ultimacy it has never had in our political tradition. In that tradition it is recognized that government cannot authorize the alienation of a right it did not for it to bestow.
Institutional Wisdom - Legalized euthanasia would inevitably require the complicity of physicians. In a time when the medical profession is subjected to increasing criticism, when many people feel vulnerable before medical technology and practice, it would be fool-hardy for our society to authorize physicians to kill. Euthanasia is not the way to respond to legitimate fears about medical technology and practice. It is unconscionable that the proponents of euthanasia exploit such fears. Such fears can be met and overcome by strongly reaffirming the distinction between killing and allowing to die~y making clear that useless and excessively burdensome treatment can be refused, while at the same time leaving no doubt that this society will neither authorize physicians to kill nor look the other way if they do.
Conclusion - This fourfold wisdom is rejected at our moral peril. By attending to these sources of wisdom, we can find our way back to an understanding of the limits of human responsibility, and of the imperative to embrace compassionately those who suffer from illness and the fears associated with the end of life. Guided by this wisdom, we will not presume to eliminate a fellow human being, nor need we fear being abandoned in our suffering. The compact of rights, duties, and mutual trust that makes human community possible depends upon our continuing adherence to the precept, Always to care, never to kilt
THE THREAT OF LETHAL INJECTIONby the Editors of AUL FORUMWhile pro-life Americans have directed their energies to the abortion battle, another trend has gathered the steam of public support, viz., euthanasia. Polls indicate that the majority of Americans want the option of being killed by a physician, despite warnings from prominent ethicists, religious leaders and physicians that such freedom would invite widespread abuse.Active euthanasia – the intentional taking of a person's life out of motives of mercy – is illegal in every state. Laws prohibiting euthanasia are baeed on the ancient Hippocratic Oath that doctors must not "administer a poison to you when asked to do so nor . . . suggest such a course. Yet just as the oath's opposition to abortion has been dismissedby contemporary abortion advocates, the prohibition against physician-assisted killing has been discounted by those who see individual "choice" as the highest value.Euthanasia organizations have promoted legal and goal support for the right to be killed for more than 50 years. But during the past year they have made their most visible inroads.When pathologist Dr. Jack Kevorkian helped 54 yearold Janet Acikins kill herself in 1990 by infusing a lethal dose of barbiwrates and sodium pentothal into her vein, he was labeled a quack. Homicide charges were dismissed because it was found that Mrs. Adkins, not Dr. Kevorcian, had delivered the poison. Circuit Judge Alice Gilbert permanently barred Dr. Kevorkian from further use of his ‘suicide machine’, but in fall 1991 Kevorkian again surfaced in the national media when he assisted two women in killing themselves in a remote Michigan cabin.This time both the medical community and euthanasia advocates spoke out against his actions. The man is out of control. He's much more like a serial killer than he is a physician," medical ethicist Dr. George Annas charged in an interview with writer Andrea Kott. A spokeswoman for the Hemlock Society, which advocates euthanasia' told reporters Kevorkian's action did not fall within the Society's guidelines that euthanasia only be practiced on those who are terminally ill.The tone changed in April 1991 when another physician helped his patient kill herself. No longer was the subject in question a retired pathologist using a crude intravenous device. Dr. Timothy Quill was acceptable, compassionate. Writing in the respected New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Quill told how he provided his tern'na11y ill patient, Diane, with a prescription for enough sleeping pills to kill herself and an explanation of how to go about it. While Quill's article stirred debate on both sides of the euthanasia issue, his action appeared to engender more support from both physicians and the public than did Kevorkian's.Indeed, growing numbers of physicians indicate support for the legal right to kill patients who request it. Marcia Angell, executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, tentatively endorsed euthanasia when she said' "I think perhaps we're ready to consider euthanasia that is very, very strictly controlled." Other physicians agree. In a Colorado survey, 60 percent of doctors questioned said they have had patients for whom they think euthanasia would have been justified, and 59 percent said they would be willing to give such patients a lethal drug if it were legal. A San Francisco Medical Society poll found that 70 percent of doctors surveyed thought incurable patients should be able to request euthanasia; 45 percent said they would be willing to carry it outIn this context of apparent public support, Initiative 119 in Washington state was placed on the ballot. It would have made Washington the first jurisdiction to permit physicians to kill their consenting terminally ill patients by lethal injection. Voters narrowly rejected the initiative in November 1991, but it came close enough to success to rattle the medical and pr~life communities that opposed it.The defeat of Initiative 119 did not quiet the pro-euthanasia community. They are continuing similar initiative drives in other states [as with Prop. 151 on the California ballot in November]. And those who support legalized physician-assisted killing are. waging an intense public relations campaign. Derek Humphry's Final Exit, a how-to suicide manual, reached the top of the New York Times best-seller list. A made-for-television movie, "Last Wish", detailed Betty Rollin's search for a compassionate physician-assisted death for her ill mother.
Despite the outpouring of pro-euthanasia support by several professional factions, many medical ethicists and organizations, such as the American Medical Association, oppose active euthanasia 'People favorable to physician-assisted death have not thought it through," Daniel Callahan, director of the Hastings Center, told the Boston Globe. "They're captured by the argument of self-determination and have not begun to think about what are the implications for the medical profession or the potential for abuses."
"The Roe V. Wade case back in 1973 opened the door to euthanasia in principle if not in legal fact. The declaration in Roe V. Wade that a woman has the right to control what is happening to her body applies in principle in the right-to-die issue. It is an opening of freedom's door."
-Derek Humpitry, Hemlock Society, and author of the notorious best-seller: Final Exit
Sound familiar? Since "choice" in the beginning-of-life debate led to legalized abortion, America has seen the resultant abuses of women and unborn children. Now, as proponents of "choice" push for the right to be killed, a Pandora' box of new abuses will result What can we expect if physicians are legally permitted to kill their consenting patients?1. Legalized euthanasia would become a substitute for active caring and curing. With an easy "out', clinicians would not have to seek ways to relieve pain, treat symptoms, or even find cures to the diseases that plague u~such as cancer and AIDS. Medical ethicist Dr. Mark Siegler has pointed out that euthanasia "dives attention from the real issues in the care of dying patients." Among these are improved pain control, better communication between doctors and patients, heightened respect for the patient's right to choose whether to accept life-sustaining trealnient, and improved management of the dying process, as in hospice care.2. Legalized euthanasia would bring the law into the sickroom. Inthepast, courts have kept theirdistance from thebedside. They trusted physicians, patients and their families to determine the outcome ofmedical decision making. But if one of the options is active euthanasia, thecourts would need tobecome more active in reviewing bedside decisions in order to prevent abuses.3. Legalized euthanasia would seriously undermine the physician-patient relationship. Patients could no longer trust aleir physicians to treat and heal. Nor would there be room for patient or fanlily to express an understandable desire for dead~without the accompanying fear that one's physician might actively carry out the ambivalent wish. Attorney-physician David Orentlicher says that society now recognizes the right of hopelessly ill patients to decline life-sustaining treatments. But he explains, "Treatment designed to bring on death, by defmition, does not heal and is therefore fundamentally inconsistent with the physician's role in the physician-patient relationship."4. Legalized euthanasia would lead to the killing of patients who do rot wish to die. Patients enfeebled by disease and laden with medical billsmay bepressu'edto "choose"a lethal injection to spare their family andsociety financial andemotional strain. Others with no viable option~e poor. the elderly, the disabled, wome~ may find themselves coerced into "requesting" euthanasia. And surrogates will have the legal right to choose eutaaaasia for an incompetent (even conscious) patient who cannot personally naake the decision.An aging population, spiraling health care costs and an unwary public will increase the pressure to legalize euthanasia. This pressure mustberesistedby pro-lifers who understand that the "right" to killby lethal ~jection will not enhance personal choice, but will lead to the unwilling deaths of manyLeon Kass notes, "Futhrasia, once legalized, will not rernain confmed to those who freely and knowingly elect it-and the most energetic backers of euthanasia do not really want it thus restricted. Why? Because the vast majority of candidates who merit mercy killing cannot request it for themselves: adults with persistent vegetative state or severe depression or senility or aphasia or mental illness or Alzheirner's disease; infants who are deformed, and children who are retaraled or dying." Jf active euthanasia is legalized, no one wifl be safe from the lethal injection.
This article is reprinted by permission from A UL FORUM, the quarterly newsleaer ofAmericans Unitedfor life. Copyright 1992, AUL FORUM, Americans for life, 343 S. Dearborn St, Suite 1804, Chicago, IL 60604.
Old and New-Head-on Collision
by Maggie McGuire, R.N.
These days I am uneasy in my role as a professional nurse. While it has never been easy, the past held no questions about the ultimate goal in patient care – save lives and restore people to health. But things have changed. The familiar is becoming unfamiliar. The new goal is illusive.Looking into my patient's eyes, I often see a kind of fear. What questions are behind the searching eyes that maae me want to reach out and gather them into my arms, sheltering them from the uI'known? CIrist, working through me, has alerted me to a vigilance I have never sensed in my work before.I have begun to understand why the phrase quality of life nags away at my mind, raising havoc with a Judeo-Christian value system that has always been the foundation upon which I base my ethical treatment of patients. I see codes stopped abrupily and treatments heing withheld when someone judges that the quality of life may be under par on humanity's scale.In contrast, my faith tells me that on God's scale, every human being is "wonderfully and feclaully made", thereby allowing for no quality points to be ascribed for such things as ambulation skills, hearing and eyesight abilities, keenness of mind, acuity of reasoning. Clinging to the sanctity of life mind-set enables us to love each patient in the status that he or she occupies, wheteer bedfast, crippled, immobilized by contractures, blind, deaf, incapacitated by MVA trauma or stroke, old or young, pre-born or mid-life. As God's people and as His appointed care-givers, we are able to love human beings whether they are soaked in urine, bleeding from devastating wounds, reekingofpurulentdrainage, or violently abusive and flailing outatall attempts to help them.It would seemthat the secular world seeks to mislead patients into thiniting that their quality of life is a variable that can bejudged by another person, using factors of age, disability, and helplessness as criteria for making that judgement. Clinging to the sanctity of life mind-set allows us to know and grrciously to believe that all human beings are God's creation, that life is His gift from the moment of conception when He gives it, until theday we ditto this life andjoyously enter' into that new life with Him. Only when human life is deemed sacred, His gift to be cherished and protected; only when we believe that we are created in His image and uniquely gifted according to Ilis plan for us, is the care-giver role tolerable.Because He first loved us, we are able to love those hurting, deformed, bleeding, infectious human beings inourcharge. When we forsake the Judeo-Christian value system that assigns the same quality for everyone and instead begin to look at quality from he humanistic standpoint that places people on a scale of one to ten aoeording to their capability and longevity, I don't think anyone will survive. The medical arena will become a "survival of the fittesC' environment that offers, as its ultnnate escape, death. Surely, we in the medical field have more to offer our patients than this hopeless lack of creativity.There can be no more clear instruction for us in the medical field than Deuteronomy 30:19, where we are admonished to "choose life". Only by keeping God's naandate for "choosing life" wilt we, as nurscs, be able to decipher clarity in the confusion of colliding values systems. We must fervently pray for His wisdom to guide every decision.A head-on collision is inevitable between the old ethic (Christianity) and the new ethic (humanism). There is not room for both. One cannot partiatly abort a pre-born child, just as one cannot partially kill an elderly patient. Either we work to protect and preserve life, or we walk away and let Satan blind our eyes and desensitize peoples' rninds with his ultimate offer of death as the cherished gift of the new ethic, thus dethroning God in the rninds of society.The nurse who says, "I don't think we should be doing all that lab work on the patient in room 212" (an 82 yearold patient with multiple health problerns) is falling directly into Satan's trap. The master deceiver gleefully hardens the hearts of many care-givers in the medical field. How else would it be possible that, in one part of the hospital, pre-born babies are mercilessly killed for the sake of someone's convenience while, in another Parr of the same hospital, premature babies are being saved in critical care units?
Today we make our grand rounds, ascribing label "code" or "no code", life or death. Tomorrow will we be asked to make those same rounds, following orders to kill patients by injecting lethal medications? And someday, when we become the patients, will our eyes gaze into those of our care-givers in confidence....or in fear?
Maggie McGuire is president of Atlantic Lutherans for Life in Iowa This article is reprinted from Living A Family Life Companion, winter 1991.
Reader Responses
Dear Editor:I surely appreciate what you are doing with your group there. I have heard naany reports about the situation this year in the Sierra Pacific Synod from the bishop as well as from a number of pastors. It is really important that those of us who see things from the traditional angle, representing the historic consensus of Lutheranism, speak a word of witness in this context and speak it faithfully. I know you will always do that and appreciate you for it.
Prof. James A Nestigen, Luther-Northwestern Seminary
Final Exit: A DEAD END
by James Bachman
Final Exit, a book of recipes for suicide, should have been titled Dead End, Nonetheless, this ill-conceived work is a best-seller, with sales exceeding 500,000 in the United States alone.Perhaps those who have bought this book thought that author Derek Humphry could help them ponder the profoundly disturbing temptation to commit suicide in the face of severe or ternninal illness. But Humpbry lacks both the insight and the compassion needetl for a careful study of the temptation to self-destruct.Humphry first encountered the temptation of suicide for the tenninally ill in 1975, when his wife, Jean, was losing her battle with breasteancer. InJean'sWay (1978) Humphry recounts her illness and suicide. The book shows a rootless man's panic and flight in the face of his wife's misfortune. He reports that he could barely stand to be confined in the carwith his wife as she struggled with her illness. "The horror of it all began to hit me in such a way that parts of me started to go out of control" page 41).Humphry fled to an affair with an old acquaintance because he "was riddled with anxiety and doubt over whether I could ever be attractive to another female" (74). The affair "did wonders for my ego, and I no longer felt condemned to a life of utter desolation and solitude" (80).Humphry was tempted to kill Jean in her sleep without even consulting her. "I debated whether I should slip the overdose to Jean that night..but I realized that I could not administer it without her knowing" (104). In the end, she drank the poison he gave heron the Saturuay before Easter in 1975Jean's Way should more appropriately be called Humphry's Way. Humphry's way is a path not of thoughtful reflection on the suffering of the terminally ill, but a way of selfish preparation of a final exit for himself from the challenge of caring for his wife.Humphry's way reasserted itself in his second wife's suicide in October1991. In 1989 Ann Humphry learned that she, like Jean before her, had breast cancer. Within a month of learning that Ann had cancer, Humphry left a message on their phone answering machine saying he was filing for divorce. Even though Ann's cancer was being successfully treated, her despair over Humphry's abandonment brought her to suicide at age 49Today, Humphry offers Final Exit to entice many more people to follow his bankrupt way. In none of his books has Humphry, a journalist, ever engaged in careful reflection on the temptations and possibilities facing the terminally ill. Instead, he mostly tells stories about people who have committed suicide; he assumes that somehow their actions demonstrate suicide to be a worthy choice. Incredibly, though consistently, he tells several stories about women who, though healthy, committed suicide along with their ailing husbands. Evidently, he thinks it especially wonderful that women would commit suicide for or with their mates.Humphry realizes that pain isn't the issue. For the most part, physical pain can be properly managed (126). What especially bothers him are those aspects of dying that force a person "even more into the intimate care of others." He says that "dependence on others degrades" a person and creates "unbearable suffering" that can justify suicide (127).We who are Christians know that we 'are always dependent, on one another in the church, which in turn depends on God. Intimate care, given and received. is for us not a degradation but an opportunity to be "little Christs" for one another. God often calls us to be care givers, but lie also at times calls each of us to be care receivers. When we are seriously or terminally ill, we ought not reject God's call to be one of Christ's sisters or brothers providing opportunities for others to sene God in caring for us.
Derek Humphry, an avowed atheist, is fleeing from God. In fleeing from God' we flee from each other too. So Humphry has fled from those who needed his care. He is a troubled, lost man, neither thoughtful nor compassionate. He has irresponsibly put lethal information into the hands of troubled people. Christians owe to our society a readiness to witness against the hopeless message of this book and the man who wrote it – and to witness for our Lord, who died and rose so that we may have abundant life.
Final Exit offers no exit – only a dead end.
Dr James Bachman is Professor of Religion and the Healing Arts at Valparaiso University. His article is reprinted with permission from the Lutheran Witness, May 1992.
THINKING ABOUT PASTORS
by Martin De HaanWhat if our pastor were our son, or our husband, or our dad'? Would we be slower to repeat a critical comment about his weaknesses in the pulpit, in visitation, or in personal style? Would he get more benefit of the doubt and more encouragement if he were someone we were related to?I remember asking myself such questions when my own brothers were studying for the ministry. I remember king concerned about whether their churches would provide for their needs. Would the demands and expectations put enormous and unreasonable burdens on their wives and children?It's easy to focus on pastoral weaknesses. It's harder to give them the kind of treatment we would want for our own ‘little brother'. Maybe it's because we're intimidated by their me&sages. Maybe we feel criticized by them, and are only 'returning the favor'. Whatever the reason, the fact is that too many pastors are under enormous criticism from members who have been Christians long enough to know they shouldn't treat their pastor that way. Most of us know that pastors and fellow servants are merely different parts of the same body. The difference is that most of us have one employer. A pastor, on the other hand, preaches to a whole congregation of people who are inclined to think of themselves as his employer.
There is no excuse for pastoral negligence. Pastors, like everyone else, must be accountable not only to the Lord but also to their congregations and boards. But that being talc, are we treating our pastor and his family in the way we would want our brother to be treated? After all, isn't he?
Martn De Haan edits Times of Discovery, Radio Bible Class, 3000 Kraft Ave. SE, Grant/Rapids ML 49555. This article from June1992 issue.
MUSINGS ON EVANGELISM
by Moishe RosenAs a Jewish person, I learned early in life the necessity of making it known at the outset of any potential friendship that I was Jewish. My obvious purpose for that was honesty! Sadly, some prejudiced people just do not want to be friends with any Jewish person. By making it known at the outset that I was Jewish, anyone who did not want to be friends with a Jew would not get involved with me.For reasons of their own, others may not want to befriend evangelical Christians. They may disagree with what they consider our "straightlaced" lifestyle. or they may want to avoid the subject of Christ. Because of this potential rejection. some believers who crave acceptance content themselves with a fuzzy definition of what it means to be a Christian.When believers in Jesus allow unbelievers to think that they (the Christians) will not witness to them, it does not make a statement about the Christians or the value of their relationship with the unbelievers. It makes a statement about the quality of that believer's relationship with Jesus Christ.I would rather be thought of as a friendly fanatic who will seek every opportunity to bring Christ into a conversation than a friendly person who just happens to be a believer in Jesus, You might think that my eagerness to tell others about Jesus would have the effect of isolating me from unbelievers. Not so. More often than not, it draws those unbelievers to me. Sometimes they come out of curiosity, and at other times they come out of heartfelt concerns which they sense only faith in God can answer.
I have not tried this method yet, but maybe I will. I could wear a T-shirt or carry a placard that says, "I want to talk about Jesus to anyone who wants to knew Him, or wants to know Him better." I would not go so far as to have that tattooed on my forehead, but maybe I ought to.
(This article is reprinted from Jews for Jesus Newsletter, VoL9:5752)
A Daughter's Lament
by Edna HongMay a grown-up daughter who loves her mother very much be permitted to share some concerns with her siblings, all children of the same Mother – namely Mother Church, or more specifically, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)? – I suppose it's futile to wish that Mother had a simpler name, for example, ALMA or ELLA!But so strangely, it was Soren Kierkegaard who in a journal entry in 1851 collected and summarized my vague uneasiness about Mother Church.The definition of Church found in the Augsburg Confession, that it is the communion of saints where the word is rightly taught and the sacraments rightly administered, this quite correctly (that is, not correctly) grasped only the two points about doctrine and sacraments and has overlooked the first, the communion of saints (in which there is the qualification in the direction of the existential). Thus the Church is made into a communion of indifferent existences (or where the existential is a matter of indifference – but the "doctrine" is correct and the sacraments are rightly administered. This is really paganism. (Soren Kierkegnard's Journals and Papers, Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, 1957)Yes, indeed, the doctrines that Mother Church teaches us are correct, the sacraments are rightly administer~but where is what Kierkegaard calls ~ the urgent call to exist in the truths that are so rightly taught and the sacraments are so rightly administered? In that beautiful Year of Our Lord, the Church year that the great-grandfathers of the Church so magnificently devised, what has happened to what they called the Trinity Season, that great, green becoming-season when we grow to become what God has made us in his son Jesus Christ?Oh, the Word of Grace comes through strongly in all its truth and purity from Mother Church until Pentecost, but in the long, long season that follows Pentecost the Word of Response, the Word that calls me to the response in my existential life, my daily existence, calls me to respond in gratitude for the wonder of that grace – that Word from Mother Church has become weak and wobbly. Mother Church, who is so sure about the WHY seems to have become very unsure about the How. And that is what the season after Pentecost is all about! Saint-becoming! How to become the saints of God has made us in Christ! Its goal, now that it ahs proclaimed the Christ is to make us Christ-like, to reproduce the Gospel in our souls, in our lives. Its task is to teach you and me, who live in a world sapped of Christian ideals – indeed, mocks them – to believe in them, honor them, love them, and teach them to our children.The Pentecost Season ends with a triumphant crescendo – All Saint’s Day. Not at all strangely, Mother Church’s indifference to that season results in All Sant’s Day being the most indifferently celebrated festival day in the Church Year! Indeed, I have attended worship services on that day when the only reference to it was a necrology list in the church bulletin. (Incidently, have you heard about the faithful church member who was furious because her name was not on the necrology list?)"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting," said G. KL. Chesterton, "it has been found difficult and left undone." If G. K. Chesterton lived today, perhaps he would say, "It has been found difficult and not proclaimed."Why? Why are Christian ideals not proclaimed? Has Mother Church forgotten that she not only has the authority but also the obligation to proclaim the Christian ideals? Has she forgotten that Croci is not a Greek god who indulges in "meaningful relationships" with mortals, male and female-a god who winks at sin? Has she forgotten that JesusChrist, who forgave without limit, also said, '~o and sin no more"? Has she forgotten that sanctification is the special work of the Holy Spirit, who came with tongues of fire and inaugurated the Church~ut He neeels our cooperation? (Blessed be God, who created us with the freedom of thc will! We are not forced into sanctification!)Has Mother Church ceased to proclaim the Christian ideals because it's such a difficult task to preach the call to be holy without meaning to he "holier-than-thou"? To teach Christian ideals without berating and haranguing? Because she is scared to death of "works righteousness"-to the death of good works? Because in her lust for numbers she is caving in to the social milieu? Because Luther is the Apostle of "Faith Alone"?Ah, but Luther was also a messenger of sanctification! Hear him in his exposition of I Peter it 1:14-16 "And as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct, since it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.' The little word 'holy' means that you are 'consecrated'. Thus St. Peter says: 'You have consecrated yourselves to God, therefore take heed that you are not once more led astray into worldly lusts, but let God alone rule, and work, and live within you, so are you holy as lie is holy."' (Day by Day We Magnify, Thee, Reachings from Martin Luther, Fortress, Philadelphia, 1952, p.265.)A song comes to mind: 'Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my Bonnie to me, to me!" In my sometimes irruptive mind the words change (but not the tune): "bring back, bring back, oh bring back 'You shall’ and ‘You shall not' to Mother Church!"
Yes, bring back a fructiferous, fruit-bearing Pentecost season!
Edna Hong, renowned Kierkegaard scholar and with her husband', the translator of Soren Kierkegaard's Journals and Papers, has authored many books. Among them are the classics: Turn over any Stone, and Bright Valley' of Love.
Death-Cult Rides Again!
Proposidon 161, soothingly entitled the "right to die" initiative, will be on the California ballot, November 3rd. It lets doctors dispatch their patients in a "painless", humane and dignified manner, upon their signed and witnessed consent. If voted, this state will be first in the world to legalize physician aid in dying. In mid-Jule the Cult of Death began its media blitz, intending to build up quick and unreflective agitation to hurry along this repudiation of the Creator and his most precious gift of Life.Assume the social sensitivity of our ELCA as well as the propensity for naive clergy and church leaders to support every effort to wipe out any form of suffering whatsoever – never mind the enlightening 12th chapter of Hebrews or the 9th chapter of John, in that good old book, the Bible. Then we can expect our people again to be stormed by advocates of this initiative. For did not even our ELCA Church Council succumb already to the intrigues of this Cult when it allowed itself to be signed on as a supporter before the Supreme Court for the killing of Nancy Cruzan two years ago? Ans she wasn’t even terminally ill!This initiative speaks of "voluntary assisted suicide." But the next step will surely follow as it has in the Netherlands, where today one-half the 12,000 physician killings are non-voluntary.
Hence, we devote much of this FOCL-POINT to alerting our readers to the theological, ethical and biblical considerations that should accompany them into their November voting booth.
Always to Cam - Never to Kill
Thirteen Jewish and Christian theologians, philosophers and legal scholars, under the auspices of the Ramsey' Colloquium of the Institute on Religion and Public life, collaborated on a declaration on euthanasia. Here are excerpts as reported in the Wall Street Journal, 11/27/1991.
We are grateful that the citizens of Washington state have turned back a measure (Initiative 119; narrowly defeated in the last election) that would have extended the permission to kill, but we know that this is not the end of the matter. The American people must now prepare themselves to meet similar proposals [ as in Calif. Prop 161] for legally sanctioned euthanasia. Toward that end we offer this explanation of why euthanasia is contrary to our faith as Jews and Christians, is based upon a grave moral error, does violence to our political tradition, and undermines the integrity of the medical profession.In relating to the sick, the suffering, the incompetent, the disabled and the dying, we must relearn the wisdom that teaches us always to care, never to kill. Although it may sometimes appear to be an act (if compassion, killing is never earing.The well-organized campaign for legalized euthanasia cruelly exploits the fear of suffering and the frustration felt when we cannot restore to health those whom we love. Such fear and frustration is genuine and deeply felt, especially with respect to the aging. But to deal with suffering by eliminating those who suffer is an evasion of moral duty and a great wrong.Deeply embedded in our moral and medical traditions is the distinction between allowt'ng to die, on the one hand, and killing, on the other. That distinction is now under attack and must be defended with all the force available to us.Medical treatments can be refused or withheld if they are either useless or excessively burdensome. No one should be subjected to useless treatment; no one need accept any and all lifesaving treatments, no matter how burdensome. When we ask if a treatment is useless, the question is: "Win this treatment be useful for this patient; will it benefit the life he or she has?" When we ask if a treatment is burdensome, the question is: "Is this treatment excessively burdensome to the life of this patient?" The question is not whether this life is useless or burdensome. We can and should allow the dying to die; we must never intend the death of the living. We may reject a treatment', we must never reject a life.Once we cross the boundary between killing and allowing to die, there will be no turning back. Current proposals would legalize euthanasia only for the terminally ill. But the logic of the argument-and its practical consequences-will inevitably push us further.Arguments for euthanasia usually appeal to our supposed right of self-determination and to the desirability of relieving suffering. If a right to euthanasia is grounded in self-determination, it cannot reasonably be limited to the terminally ill. If people have a right to die, why must they wait until they are actually dying before they are permitted to exercise that right? Similarly, if the warrant for euthanasia is to relieve suffering, why should we be able to relieve the suffering only of those who are self-determining and competent to give their consent? Why not euthanasia for the suffering who can no longer speak for themselves?Once we have transgressed and blurred the line between killing and allowing to die, it will be exceedingly difficult-in logic, law, and practice-to limit the license to kill. Once the judgment is not about the worth of specific treatments but about the worth of specific lives, our nursing homes and other institutions will present us with countless candidates for elimination who would "be better off dead".
In the face of such danger, we would direct public attention to four sources of wisdom that can teach us again always to care, never to kill.
Religious Wisdom - As Christians and Jews, we are not authorized to make comparative judgments about the worth of lives or to cut short the years that God gives to us or others,
We are to relieve suffering when we can, and to hear with those who suffer, helping them to hear their suffering, when we cannot. We are never to "solve" the problem of suffering by eliminating those who suffer. Euthanasia would inevitably tempt us to abandon those who ~ffer. This is especially the case when we permit ourselves to be persuaded that their lives are a burden to us or to them. We may think we care when we kill, but killing is the rejection of God's command to care, and of his help in caring.
Moral Wisdom - We can, if we wish, renounce many goods or g~ve them into the control of another. Life, however, is not simply a "good" that we possess. Our life is our person. To treat our life as a "thing" that we can authorize another to terminate is profoundly dehumanizing. Euthanasia, even when requested by the competent, attacks the distinctiveness and limitations of being human. Person~ ourselves and others-are not things to be discarded when they are no longer deemed useful.We can give our life for another, but we cannot give ultimate authority over our life to another. To turn one's life into an object that is at the final disposition of another, is to become less than human, while it places the other in a position of being more than human-a lord of life and death, a possessor of the personhood of others.
Human community and the entirety of civilization is premised upon a relationship of moral claims and duties between persons. Personhood has no meaning apart from life. If life is a thing that can be renounced or taken at will, the moral structure of human community, understood as a community of persons, is shattered. The result is a brave new world in which killing is defined as caring, life is viewed as the enemy, and death is counted as a benefit to be bestowed.
Political Wisdom - "We hold these truths," the founders of our political community declared, and among the truths that our community has held is that the right to life is "unalienable." All human beings have an equal right to life bestowed by "Nature and Nature's God." Government is to respect that right; it does not bestow that fight.
This unalienable right places a clear limit on the power of the state. Except when government exercises its duty to protect citizens against force and injustice, or when it punishes evildoers, it may not presume for itself an authority over human life. To claim that-apart from these exceptions-the state may authorize the killing even of consenting persons is to give state authority an ultimacy it has never had in our political tradition. In that tradition it is recognized that government cannot authorize the alienation of a right it did not for it to bestow.
Institutional Wisdom - Legalized euthanasia would inevitably require the complicity of physicians. In a time when the medical profession is subjected to increasing criticism, when many people feel vulnerable before medical technology and practice, it would be fool-hardy for our society to authorize physicians to kill. Euthanasia is not the way to respond to legitimate fears about medical technology and practice. It is unconscionable that the proponents of euthanasia exploit such fears. Such fears can be met and overcome by strongly reaffirming the distinction between killing and allowing to die~y making clear that useless and excessively burdensome treatment can be refused, while at the same time leaving no doubt that this society will neither authorize physicians to kill nor look the other way if they do.
Conclusion - This fourfold wisdom is rejected at our moral peril. By attending to these sources of wisdom, we can find our way back to an understanding of the limits of human responsibility, and of the imperative to embrace compassionately those who suffer from illness and the fears associated with the end of life. Guided by this wisdom, we will not presume to eliminate a fellow human being, nor need we fear being abandoned in our suffering. The compact of rights, duties, and mutual trust that makes human community possible depends upon our continuing adherence to the precept, Always to care, never to kilt
THE THREAT OF LETHAL INJECTIONby the Editors of AUL FORUMWhile pro-life Americans have directed their energies to the abortion battle, another trend has gathered the steam of public support, viz., euthanasia. Polls indicate that the majority of Americans want the option of being killed by a physician, despite warnings from prominent ethicists, religious leaders and physicians that such freedom would invite widespread abuse.Active euthanasia – the intentional taking of a person's life out of motives of mercy – is illegal in every state. Laws prohibiting euthanasia are baeed on the ancient Hippocratic Oath that doctors must not "administer a poison to you when asked to do so nor . . . suggest such a course. Yet just as the oath's opposition to abortion has been dismissedby contemporary abortion advocates, the prohibition against physician-assisted killing has been discounted by those who see individual "choice" as the highest value.Euthanasia organizations have promoted legal and goal support for the right to be killed for more than 50 years. But during the past year they have made their most visible inroads.When pathologist Dr. Jack Kevorkian helped 54 yearold Janet Acikins kill herself in 1990 by infusing a lethal dose of barbiwrates and sodium pentothal into her vein, he was labeled a quack. Homicide charges were dismissed because it was found that Mrs. Adkins, not Dr. Kevorcian, had delivered the poison. Circuit Judge Alice Gilbert permanently barred Dr. Kevorkian from further use of his ‘suicide machine’, but in fall 1991 Kevorkian again surfaced in the national media when he assisted two women in killing themselves in a remote Michigan cabin.This time both the medical community and euthanasia advocates spoke out against his actions. The man is out of control. He's much more like a serial killer than he is a physician," medical ethicist Dr. George Annas charged in an interview with writer Andrea Kott. A spokeswoman for the Hemlock Society, which advocates euthanasia' told reporters Kevorkian's action did not fall within the Society's guidelines that euthanasia only be practiced on those who are terminally ill.The tone changed in April 1991 when another physician helped his patient kill herself. No longer was the subject in question a retired pathologist using a crude intravenous device. Dr. Timothy Quill was acceptable, compassionate. Writing in the respected New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Quill told how he provided his tern'na11y ill patient, Diane, with a prescription for enough sleeping pills to kill herself and an explanation of how to go about it. While Quill's article stirred debate on both sides of the euthanasia issue, his action appeared to engender more support from both physicians and the public than did Kevorkian's.Indeed, growing numbers of physicians indicate support for the legal right to kill patients who request it. Marcia Angell, executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, tentatively endorsed euthanasia when she said' "I think perhaps we're ready to consider euthanasia that is very, very strictly controlled." Other physicians agree. In a Colorado survey, 60 percent of doctors questioned said they have had patients for whom they think euthanasia would have been justified, and 59 percent said they would be willing to give such patients a lethal drug if it were legal. A San Francisco Medical Society poll found that 70 percent of doctors surveyed thought incurable patients should be able to request euthanasia; 45 percent said they would be willing to carry it outIn this context of apparent public support, Initiative 119 in Washington state was placed on the ballot. It would have made Washington the first jurisdiction to permit physicians to kill their consenting terminally ill patients by lethal injection. Voters narrowly rejected the initiative in November 1991, but it came close enough to success to rattle the medical and pr~life communities that opposed it.The defeat of Initiative 119 did not quiet the pro-euthanasia community. They are continuing similar initiative drives in other states [as with Prop. 151 on the California ballot in November]. And those who support legalized physician-assisted killing are. waging an intense public relations campaign. Derek Humphry's Final Exit, a how-to suicide manual, reached the top of the New York Times best-seller list. A made-for-television movie, "Last Wish", detailed Betty Rollin's search for a compassionate physician-assisted death for her ill mother.
Despite the outpouring of pro-euthanasia support by several professional factions, many medical ethicists and organizations, such as the American Medical Association, oppose active euthanasia 'People favorable to physician-assisted death have not thought it through," Daniel Callahan, director of the Hastings Center, told the Boston Globe. "They're captured by the argument of self-determination and have not begun to think about what are the implications for the medical profession or the potential for abuses."
"The Roe V. Wade case back in 1973 opened the door to euthanasia in principle if not in legal fact. The declaration in Roe V. Wade that a woman has the right to control what is happening to her body applies in principle in the right-to-die issue. It is an opening of freedom's door."
-Derek Humpitry, Hemlock Society, and author of the notorious best-seller: Final Exit
Sound familiar? Since "choice" in the beginning-of-life debate led to legalized abortion, America has seen the resultant abuses of women and unborn children. Now, as proponents of "choice" push for the right to be killed, a Pandora' box of new abuses will result What can we expect if physicians are legally permitted to kill their consenting patients?1. Legalized euthanasia would become a substitute for active caring and curing. With an easy "out', clinicians would not have to seek ways to relieve pain, treat symptoms, or even find cures to the diseases that plague u~such as cancer and AIDS. Medical ethicist Dr. Mark Siegler has pointed out that euthanasia "dives attention from the real issues in the care of dying patients." Among these are improved pain control, better communication between doctors and patients, heightened respect for the patient's right to choose whether to accept life-sustaining trealnient, and improved management of the dying process, as in hospice care.2. Legalized euthanasia would bring the law into the sickroom. Inthepast, courts have kept theirdistance from thebedside. They trusted physicians, patients and their families to determine the outcome ofmedical decision making. But if one of the options is active euthanasia, thecourts would need tobecome more active in reviewing bedside decisions in order to prevent abuses.3. Legalized euthanasia would seriously undermine the physician-patient relationship. Patients could no longer trust aleir physicians to treat and heal. Nor would there be room for patient or fanlily to express an understandable desire for dead~without the accompanying fear that one's physician might actively carry out the ambivalent wish. Attorney-physician David Orentlicher says that society now recognizes the right of hopelessly ill patients to decline life-sustaining treatments. But he explains, "Treatment designed to bring on death, by defmition, does not heal and is therefore fundamentally inconsistent with the physician's role in the physician-patient relationship."4. Legalized euthanasia would lead to the killing of patients who do rot wish to die. Patients enfeebled by disease and laden with medical billsmay bepressu'edto "choose"a lethal injection to spare their family andsociety financial andemotional strain. Others with no viable option~e poor. the elderly, the disabled, wome~ may find themselves coerced into "requesting" euthanasia. And surrogates will have the legal right to choose eutaaaasia for an incompetent (even conscious) patient who cannot personally naake the decision.An aging population, spiraling health care costs and an unwary public will increase the pressure to legalize euthanasia. This pressure mustberesistedby pro-lifers who understand that the "right" to killby lethal ~jection will not enhance personal choice, but will lead to the unwilling deaths of manyLeon Kass notes, "Futhrasia, once legalized, will not rernain confmed to those who freely and knowingly elect it-and the most energetic backers of euthanasia do not really want it thus restricted. Why? Because the vast majority of candidates who merit mercy killing cannot request it for themselves: adults with persistent vegetative state or severe depression or senility or aphasia or mental illness or Alzheirner's disease; infants who are deformed, and children who are retaraled or dying." Jf active euthanasia is legalized, no one wifl be safe from the lethal injection.
This article is reprinted by permission from A UL FORUM, the quarterly newsleaer ofAmericans Unitedfor life. Copyright 1992, AUL FORUM, Americans for life, 343 S. Dearborn St, Suite 1804, Chicago, IL 60604.
Old and New-Head-on Collision
by Maggie McGuire, R.N.These days I am uneasy in my role as a professional nurse. While it has never been easy, the past held no questions about the ultimate goal in patient care – save lives and restore people to health. But things have changed. The familiar is becoming unfamiliar. The new goal is illusive.Looking into my patient's eyes, I often see a kind of fear. What questions are behind the searching eyes that maae me want to reach out and gather them into my arms, sheltering them from the uI'known? CIrist, working through me, has alerted me to a vigilance I have never sensed in my work before.I have begun to understand why the phrase quality of life nags away at my mind, raising havoc with a Judeo-Christian value system that has always been the foundation upon which I base my ethical treatment of patients. I see codes stopped abrupily and treatments heing withheld when someone judges that the quality of life may be under par on humanity's scale.In contrast, my faith tells me that on God's scale, every human being is "wonderfully and feclaully made", thereby allowing for no quality points to be ascribed for such things as ambulation skills, hearing and eyesight abilities, keenness of mind, acuity of reasoning. Clinging to the sanctity of life mind-set enables us to love each patient in the status that he or she occupies, wheteer bedfast, crippled, immobilized by contractures, blind, deaf, incapacitated by MVA trauma or stroke, old or young, pre-born or mid-life. As God's people and as His appointed care-givers, we are able to love human beings whether they are soaked in urine, bleeding from devastating wounds, reekingofpurulentdrainage, or violently abusive and flailing outatall attempts to help them.It would seemthat the secular world seeks to mislead patients into thiniting that their quality of life is a variable that can bejudged by another person, using factors of age, disability, and helplessness as criteria for making that judgement. Clinging to the sanctity of life mind-set allows us to know and grrciously to believe that all human beings are God's creation, that life is His gift from the moment of conception when He gives it, until theday we ditto this life andjoyously enter' into that new life with Him. Only when human life is deemed sacred, His gift to be cherished and protected; only when we believe that we are created in His image and uniquely gifted according to Ilis plan for us, is the care-giver role tolerable.Because He first loved us, we are able to love those hurting, deformed, bleeding, infectious human beings inourcharge. When we forsake the Judeo-Christian value system that assigns the same quality for everyone and instead begin to look at quality from he humanistic standpoint that places people on a scale of one to ten aoeording to their capability and longevity, I don't think anyone will survive. The medical arena will become a "survival of the fittesC' environment that offers, as its ultnnate escape, death. Surely, we in the medical field have more to offer our patients than this hopeless lack of creativity.There can be no more clear instruction for us in the medical field than Deuteronomy 30:19, where we are admonished to "choose life". Only by keeping God's naandate for "choosing life" wilt we, as nurscs, be able to decipher clarity in the confusion of colliding values systems. We must fervently pray for His wisdom to guide every decision.A head-on collision is inevitable between the old ethic (Christianity) and the new ethic (humanism). There is not room for both. One cannot partiatly abort a pre-born child, just as one cannot partially kill an elderly patient. Either we work to protect and preserve life, or we walk away and let Satan blind our eyes and desensitize peoples' rninds with his ultimate offer of death as the cherished gift of the new ethic, thus dethroning God in the rninds of society.The nurse who says, "I don't think we should be doing all that lab work on the patient in room 212" (an 82 yearold patient with multiple health problerns) is falling directly into Satan's trap. The master deceiver gleefully hardens the hearts of many care-givers in the medical field. How else would it be possible that, in one part of the hospital, pre-born babies are mercilessly killed for the sake of someone's convenience while, in another Parr of the same hospital, premature babies are being saved in critical care units?
Today we make our grand rounds, ascribing label "code" or "no code", life or death. Tomorrow will we be asked to make those same rounds, following orders to kill patients by injecting lethal medications? And someday, when we become the patients, will our eyes gaze into those of our care-givers in confidence....or in fear?
Maggie McGuire is president of Atlantic Lutherans for Life in Iowa This article is reprinted from Living A Family Life Companion, winter 1991.
Reader Responses
Dear Editor:I surely appreciate what you are doing with your group there. I have heard naany reports about the situation this year in the Sierra Pacific Synod from the bishop as well as from a number of pastors. It is really important that those of us who see things from the traditional angle, representing the historic consensus of Lutheranism, speak a word of witness in this context and speak it faithfully. I know you will always do that and appreciate you for it.
Prof. James A Nestigen, Luther-Northwestern Seminary
Final Exit: A DEAD END
by James BachmanFinal Exit, a book of recipes for suicide, should have been titled Dead End, Nonetheless, this ill-conceived work is a best-seller, with sales exceeding 500,000 in the United States alone.Perhaps those who have bought this book thought that author Derek Humphry could help them ponder the profoundly disturbing temptation to commit suicide in the face of severe or ternninal illness. But Humpbry lacks both the insight and the compassion needetl for a careful study of the temptation to self-destruct.Humphry first encountered the temptation of suicide for the tenninally ill in 1975, when his wife, Jean, was losing her battle with breasteancer. InJean'sWay (1978) Humphry recounts her illness and suicide. The book shows a rootless man's panic and flight in the face of his wife's misfortune. He reports that he could barely stand to be confined in the carwith his wife as she struggled with her illness. "The horror of it all began to hit me in such a way that parts of me started to go out of control" page 41).Humphry fled to an affair with an old acquaintance because he "was riddled with anxiety and doubt over whether I could ever be attractive to another female" (74). The affair "did wonders for my ego, and I no longer felt condemned to a life of utter desolation and solitude" (80).Humphry was tempted to kill Jean in her sleep without even consulting her. "I debated whether I should slip the overdose to Jean that night..but I realized that I could not administer it without her knowing" (104). In the end, she drank the poison he gave heron the Saturuay before Easter in 1975Jean's Way should more appropriately be called Humphry's Way. Humphry's way is a path not of thoughtful reflection on the suffering of the terminally ill, but a way of selfish preparation of a final exit for himself from the challenge of caring for his wife.Humphry's way reasserted itself in his second wife's suicide in October1991. In 1989 Ann Humphry learned that she, like Jean before her, had breast cancer. Within a month of learning that Ann had cancer, Humphry left a message on their phone answering machine saying he was filing for divorce. Even though Ann's cancer was being successfully treated, her despair over Humphry's abandonment brought her to suicide at age 49Today, Humphry offers Final Exit to entice many more people to follow his bankrupt way. In none of his books has Humphry, a journalist, ever engaged in careful reflection on the temptations and possibilities facing the terminally ill. Instead, he mostly tells stories about people who have committed suicide; he assumes that somehow their actions demonstrate suicide to be a worthy choice. Incredibly, though consistently, he tells several stories about women who, though healthy, committed suicide along with their ailing husbands. Evidently, he thinks it especially wonderful that women would commit suicide for or with their mates.Humphry realizes that pain isn't the issue. For the most part, physical pain can be properly managed (126). What especially bothers him are those aspects of dying that force a person "even more into the intimate care of others." He says that "dependence on others degrades" a person and creates "unbearable suffering" that can justify suicide (127).We who are Christians know that we 'are always dependent, on one another in the church, which in turn depends on God. Intimate care, given and received. is for us not a degradation but an opportunity to be "little Christs" for one another. God often calls us to be care givers, but lie also at times calls each of us to be care receivers. When we are seriously or terminally ill, we ought not reject God's call to be one of Christ's sisters or brothers providing opportunities for others to sene God in caring for us.
Derek Humphry, an avowed atheist, is fleeing from God. In fleeing from God' we flee from each other too. So Humphry has fled from those who needed his care. He is a troubled, lost man, neither thoughtful nor compassionate. He has irresponsibly put lethal information into the hands of troubled people. Christians owe to our society a readiness to witness against the hopeless message of this book and the man who wrote it – and to witness for our Lord, who died and rose so that we may have abundant life.
Final Exit offers no exit – only a dead end.
Dr James Bachman is Professor of Religion and the Healing Arts at Valparaiso University. His article is reprinted with permission from the Lutheran Witness, May 1992.
THINKING ABOUT PASTORS
by Martin De HaanWhat if our pastor were our son, or our husband, or our dad'? Would we be slower to repeat a critical comment about his weaknesses in the pulpit, in visitation, or in personal style? Would he get more benefit of the doubt and more encouragement if he were someone we were related to?I remember asking myself such questions when my own brothers were studying for the ministry. I remember king concerned about whether their churches would provide for their needs. Would the demands and expectations put enormous and unreasonable burdens on their wives and children?It's easy to focus on pastoral weaknesses. It's harder to give them the kind of treatment we would want for our own ‘little brother'. Maybe it's because we're intimidated by their me&sages. Maybe we feel criticized by them, and are only 'returning the favor'. Whatever the reason, the fact is that too many pastors are under enormous criticism from members who have been Christians long enough to know they shouldn't treat their pastor that way. Most of us know that pastors and fellow servants are merely different parts of the same body. The difference is that most of us have one employer. A pastor, on the other hand, preaches to a whole congregation of people who are inclined to think of themselves as his employer.
There is no excuse for pastoral negligence. Pastors, like everyone else, must be accountable not only to the Lord but also to their congregations and boards. But that being talc, are we treating our pastor and his family in the way we would want our brother to be treated? After all, isn't he?
Martn De Haan edits Times of Discovery, Radio Bible Class, 3000 Kraft Ave. SE, Grant/Rapids ML 49555. This article from June1992 issue.
MUSINGS ON EVANGELISM
by Moishe RosenAs a Jewish person, I learned early in life the necessity of making it known at the outset of any potential friendship that I was Jewish. My obvious purpose for that was honesty! Sadly, some prejudiced people just do not want to be friends with any Jewish person. By making it known at the outset that I was Jewish, anyone who did not want to be friends with a Jew would not get involved with me.For reasons of their own, others may not want to befriend evangelical Christians. They may disagree with what they consider our "straightlaced" lifestyle. or they may want to avoid the subject of Christ. Because of this potential rejection. some believers who crave acceptance content themselves with a fuzzy definition of what it means to be a Christian.When believers in Jesus allow unbelievers to think that they (the Christians) will not witness to them, it does not make a statement about the Christians or the value of their relationship with the unbelievers. It makes a statement about the quality of that believer's relationship with Jesus Christ.I would rather be thought of as a friendly fanatic who will seek every opportunity to bring Christ into a conversation than a friendly person who just happens to be a believer in Jesus, You might think that my eagerness to tell others about Jesus would have the effect of isolating me from unbelievers. Not so. More often than not, it draws those unbelievers to me. Sometimes they come out of curiosity, and at other times they come out of heartfelt concerns which they sense only faith in God can answer.
I have not tried this method yet, but maybe I will. I could wear a T-shirt or carry a placard that says, "I want to talk about Jesus to anyone who wants to knew Him, or wants to know Him better." I would not go so far as to have that tattooed on my forehead, but maybe I ought to.
(This article is reprinted from Jews for Jesus Newsletter, VoL9:5752)