This is an old essay that I never got around to finishing the draft of. This isn't my post for the week, but maybe you'll find it interesting.
Jessica Beebe
Mr. Littlefield
English 11
19 October 2008
Nuclear Giants and Ethical Infants
In the fourth century B.C., doctors were expected to pledge these words: “I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but I will never use it to injure or wrong them. I will not give poison to anyone though asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a plan… But in purity and in holiness I will guard my life and my art” (Hippocrates). Why is this not the noble badge of humanity today? Why instead, has the social order made it acceptable, nay, admirable, to end the life of another human being? Society has strayed much. Rather than guarding life, it is questioned whether causing or allowing death is really the higher moral calling. The blatant relativity of “mercy killing” goes against absolute truths of Christianity: the sanctity of life, man’s inability to judge right and wrong, and God’s explicit commandment that “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). Drunken ethics cannot dictate whether a life is worth defending and protecting.
The holding of life as sacred and precious is an “absolute and reasonable ethic” (Schweitzer 1936). Ethics can only exist when desire and life are inextricably enmeshed. Our will to live must power our hearts. As a Nobel Peace Prize winner explained, “Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil” (Schweitzer xviii).
Truly, we brought into the world with the God-given instinct to breathe. This is so small an observation that we often miss the profundity of it. Forget not that the Lord Himself is the fountainhead of all goodness; stainless and holy in His glorious existence. Because of this, He wastes not. He does not sketch drafts of a life only to disregard it and crumple it away. It is so very crucial to found our theology on the knowledge of God’s purposefulness. Each day of creation had its place., the Lord looked over the expanses of the earth’s terrain, the forces of nature, the textures, the abstracts, and He finally looked upon the breath of man and said, “It is good” (Genesis 1:31). Because of this, we have an obligation to protect “God's precious gift of life… in law and nurtured in love” (Ashcroft qtd. in Mother Jones). Euthanasia cheapens the sacrosanctity of life and ultimately, God’s sovereignty, when man impatiently decides that God’s timing is far less than perfect.
Further, it must be said that though designed flawlessly, humanity has chosen to be corrupted. Though man has built systems of ethics in the hopes for a truly firm foundation on how life must be managed, the tragic truth is that the source of such systems is hopelessly skewed. One cannot hope to draw a straight line with both eyes closed. Nothing is as threatening to morality as an ethical system fragmented by ambivalence: what one intends to do is not always what one does. Even more dangerous is the fact that the “most decisive actions of our life ... are most often unconsidered actions” (Gide qtd. in “Wisdom Quotes”). How then can we even dare to trust ourselves with something as precious as life? How can we eliminate subjectivity from the practice of mercy killing? If we practice euthanasia when we believe it best and when we think that a person’s time has expired, what is to say that our judgments are safe from all kinds of greed, selfishness, carelessness, anger, etcetera? The truth is that we cannot. Even from a secular view, our subjectivity on this matter is disturbing. The UK Association for Palliative Medicine & the National Council for Hospice and Specialist Palliative Care Services released a statement warning that “euthanasia, once accepted, is uncontrollable for philosophical, logical and practical reasons. Patients will certainly die without and against their wishes if any such legislation is introduced” (PAS 2003). Where a conclusion cannot be drawn with God-given certainty, then it is best that one errs on the side of caution rather than practice the murder of the helpless.
And lastly, God’s Word makes it quite clear that so called “mercy killing” is a savage twisting of biblical morals. First and foremost, our orders are to support the weak, the ill, and the oppressed. How is the dying hospital patient any different? Why do we desperately try to save the lost teenager but then turn away from the lethally depressed man who is at the end of his life? Secondly, we see evidence against suicide throughout the Bible as in the case of Job. As one website explained, Job seemed hopelessly sick and dying. His wife was in favor of self-euthanasia. She told her husband, ‘Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God, and die’ (Job 2:9). How did Job receive that advice? In the next verse he said, ‘But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.’ Job admitted that whether we suffer with pain in life, or whether we do not, is in the hands of God to decide (Liberty Gospel Tracts).
Even more contradiction to the practice of euthanasia can be found in the account of Saul’s suicide. When Saul asked the Amalekite, “Stand beside me and kill me; for agony has seized me because my life still lingers in me” (2 Samuel 1:9), the Amalekite obliged. The Amalekite then came to David, believing that that he aught to be rewarded for this noble gesture. But when King David, a man after God’s own heart, heard this, he declared, “Your blood is on your head, for your mouth has testified against you, saying, 'I have killed the Lord’s anointed’” (2 Samuel 1:16). Further, David condemns the Amalekite to death for his crime. The destruction of life is clearly evident throughout the God’s holy word. It is sheer blasphemy to ignore this because we feel compelled to “end suffering”. The truth must be said: suffering does not necessarily end with death.
In the Netherlands, more than two thousand involuntary mercy killings were reported in 2000 (Cohen-Almagor 162). Physicians administered the drug without specific request or consent. The rate of assisted suicides committed because the patient believes that they are a burden has increased incredibly in Oregon (Sullivan 605-607). These statistics are both heartbreaking and undeniably tragic. Omar N. Bradley explained it well when he observed, “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.” It is not too late. This despicable practice can be reversed. As one man once put it, “Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency” (Aesop qtd. in “QuoteWorld”). To be a spectator is also to be a participant.
Works Cited
"Aesop." QuoteWorld.org. 2008. QuoteWorld. 24 Oct. 2008.
Cohen-Almagor, Raphael. Euthanasia in the Netherlands : The Policy and Practice of Mercy Killing. New York: Springer, 2004. 162. Google Books. Google. .
Edelstein, Ludwig, trans. The Hippocratic Oath: Text, Translation, and Interpretation. Baltimore, MA: John Hopkins P, 1943. NOVA Online. Mar. 2001. PBS. 15 Oct. 2008 .
"Euthanasia: What Does It Really Mean?" Promoting the Respect for Human Life. Queensland Right to Life. 15 Oct. 2008 .
Lewis, Jone J. "Life Quotes." Wisdom Quotes. 1995. 15 Oct. 2008 .
The NIV Study Bible. Exod. 20.13. 4th ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan House, 1995. 115.
Reagan, David F. "Four Arguments Against Euthanasia or Mercy Killing." Learn the Bible. 2006. Antioch Baptist Church. 15 Oct. 2008 .
Saletan, William. "Reagan Redux." Mother Jones: Smart, Fearless Journalism (1998). Mother Jones: Smart, Fearless Journalism. 24 Oct. 2008 .
Schweitzer, Albert. "The Ethics of Reverence for Life." Christendom 1936.
Schwietzer, Albert. "Preface." Preface. Civilization and Ethics. By Albert Schwietzer, Charles T. Campion, Charles E. Russell and Lilian M. Russell. 3rd ed. London: A. & C. Black, 1949. Xviii.
Sullivan AD et al. Legalized physician-assisted suicide in Oregon, 1998-2000. New England Journal of Medicine 2001; 344: 605-607
UK Association for Palliative Medicine & the National Council for Hospice and Specialist Palliative Care Services. "PAS." Press release. Oct. 2005. LifeSiteNews.com. 24 Oct. 2008 .
"What Does the Bible Teach About Euthanasia?" Liberty Gospel Tracts. Liberty Baptist Church. 15 Oct. 2008 .
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