Between Life and Death…
BreakPoint has a good commentary today…
On Good Friday Jesus died as a substitutionary atonement for the sins of mankind. This is what Christians commemorate. In dying, Jesus established, as a defining mark of a Christian society, the principle of human dignity and the sacredness of life. Fallen sinners-all made in the image of God-are so precious in God’s sight that He would sacrifice His only begotten Son for them.
What an irony this presents this year. Jesus died so that we could be free and saved. It was a noble death, if there ever was one. But another death occupies the headlines today, one that mocks the death of Jesus. It is Terri Schiavo who is being killed by judicial fiat. For what reason?
She is being killed so that society can get rid of a nuisance. She is being killed so her husband can be free to marry the woman he has lived with for years and who has borne his children. Her husband, allegedly, profited from the damages paid because of the medical injury to Terri. She is being killed so that medical funds can be saved.
Good Friday marks a day on which God established the principle of the sanctity of life once and for all. One man died so that all men could be free. The Terri Schiavo case marks the triumph of utilitarianism over that Christian view of life. It is victory for the likes of Peter Singer, the ethicist at Princeton, who favors infanticide and euthanasia and who argues that the governing ethical principle in life has to create the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
But no life is safe in a utilitarian society. I am seventy-three. One of these days a committee of doctors could say that I am too inconvenient or cost too much to keep alive. “It is time,” as former Governor Lamb once provocatively said in Colorado, “to do my duty and die and get out of the way of the younger generation, like leaves swept up off the streets.”
You can read the rest of the commentary here…
Between Life and Death - Lives in the Balance
There’s also another noteworthy commentary on their site regarding the same topic…
Toby and Terri - Save the Bunny? Save the Human.
And there is something particularly sinister about Terri dehydrating and starving to death—an evil we can’t not recognize. It conjures up images of the starvation bunker at Auschwitz. In the basement of Barracks 11 condemned prisoners were locked up without food or water to dehydrate and starve to death. Men were driven mad, shrieking like animals and clawing the walls and each other as their bodies shut down a little bit at a time. Terri will probably be so drugged that she wouldn’t notice even if she was more conscious than she apparently is. Strange giving her drugs, but not food and water.
Part of what makes the conflict over Terri’s fate so harsh is that it is yet another clash of rights. Terri’s parents and her pro-life supporters claim that Terri has “a right to life.” Michael Schiavo and his editorial defenders claim her “right to die” and “a right to privacy.” Thus an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.
The questions we should ask are not questions of rights, but questions of justice and character. Is it ever just to kill an innocent and helpless person? What kind of people decrees that a woman in need must starve to death? Do we really have laws that allow us to turn a hospice into the starvation bunker under Barracks 11? If so how did we come by such laws and how do we change them? These questions are more complex and troubling than questions of rights. They force us to ask what it means to be human and why, if ever, someone should be excluded from our company.
The underlying assumption in Terri’s case is that some should be excluded, that there are lives that are not worthy of life and that may be—must be—disposed of. But consider a reflection on the aging and suffering Pope John Paul II. “Does suffering mean anything, or is it simply an absurdity? Does suffering contribute anything to the rest of us?” asks George Weigel. The answer in the life of John Paul, Weigel affirms, is, “Yes, that suffering can teach the rest of us: It reminds us that we cannot control our lives, and it elicits a compassion that ennobles us.”
I know this is not as palatable and pleasant sounding as the soundbytes we see about this case on TV but can we honestly tell ourselves that it isn’t true?
Tags: Theology
