Douglas Huneke, Lead

Q - Help us think about euthanasia, suicide for ill and disabled persons, and for rational persons.

From the cover of the New York Times Magazine Harriet Johnson, born with a degenerative muscle disorder that left her wheelchair bound, debated Peter Singer, controversial philosophy professor at Princeton and proponent of selective infanticide: "He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was, and to let other parents kill similar babies as they come along and thereby avoid the suffering that comes with lives like mine and satisfy the reasonable preferences of parents for a different kind of child."

This debate is highly personal at Westminster with those families that had to find their own hearts with their children. As one said, "I didn’t have a decision to make, I had a child ------ who faces immense challenges forever." Friends in Sacramento borrowed Jesus’ view that their son simply reflected the power and glory of God differently than other children (John 9:1-12).

If you have advance directives or an ethical will you probably struggled with the indignity, hopelessness, and economic impact of being kept in a permanent vegetative state. People regularly face the agony of lingering in terrible end-of-life pain and suffering, or of a loved one falling victim to an illness that robs them of their mind and being. They or their families face hard choices: struggle on, offer only palliative care, or hasten death.

Faced with end-of-life decisions, we seek guidance from a variety of resources. The biblical call to choose and sanctify life frames the decision process for Christians. We seek to discern if enduring pain or existing without mind or being, just holding on to life, is truly an ultimate good. Often, the weavings of intimate relationships and the emotional pain of letting someone we love go override strict adherence to any rules.

Wouldn’t it be helpful if we could just pick up the Bible or call the preacher for a definitive answer about life and death decisions? But the preacher who has "the answer" steals your personal responsibility, your journey to discernment, and your freedom to let the Holy Spirit guide your thinking and acting. Ultimately, Scripture does not offer definitive answers. It asks you, each of us, to know ourselves, to know ourselves in relationship to God, and to discern how its lessons inform us.

Most of us spend our lives somewhere between the rigidity and literalism of traditional institutional Christianity and the philosophical ethics of the ivory towers. Two things help me find my heart in all of this. The first is my sense that Ecclesiastes is right on: "there is a time to be born and a time to die, a time to sow and a time to reap, a time for every purpose under heaven." The second is the example of Jesus in Luke, "When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken to heaven he made up his mind and set his face toward Jerusalem" (9:51). I have made up my mind and carefully written my preferences, equally attentive to both faith and family. When it is my time I shall turn my face toward Jerusalem, which is to say, toward the divine light, confident that in my life, dying, and death I have sought to live into the presence and glory of God.

Ted, what response do you have to the question? How have you lived your response and see these concerns playing out in your life?

Ted Scott, response

In Ecclesiastes we read, "for everything there is a season." And Paul tells us that "nothing, neither life or death…can separate us from the love of God in Christ."

As Doug has outlined, today’s Squirmin’ sermon questions deal with difficult ethical end-of-life decisions like euthanasia, suicide, the way to treat bodies after death (cremation or normal burial).

A couple of points: First, we don’t make ethical decisions in a vacuum. They are based on how one sees the world. So, some questions: Do you view human life or life in general as sacred? What makes life worth living? Is death to be resisted, welcomed, or something in between? Do you believe there’s something after death?

I personally see human life as an extension of the divine, and hence sacred. Increasingly I see all life as sacred. And I am convinced on the basis of both faith and personal experience, such as the tangible sense of both my parents after their deaths, that something continues after life. Both death and resurrection are realities for me.

So I have experiences, and I also believe. I am joined in this by many of you, plus all of the major faith traditions. Every one affirms a belief that there is something beyond death. At the end of this life, there is more.

Second point: From the core of beliefs come ethical actions or positions. For instance, I said in a durable power of attorney for health decisions some years ago that worthwhile life is not just my beating heart or a warm body. It is awareness of this lovely and fragile world around us, the ability to interact with family and friends, the capacity for humor. A life of deepening pain, helplessness and burden to others at some point for me crosses a threshold where it is better to be released.

Another example: My Aunt Betty died of Alzheimer’s last month. For several years before her death she was unable to recognize her loved ones or speak. My cousins saw that she was well cared for in that time, even as they mourned the living shell their mother had become. They left instructions that no heroic measures should be taken if her health deteriorated. So when she stopped eating, she was allowed to slip away. Their stance, both in making sure my aunt got good care and in not taking unusual measures to prolong her life, makes a lot of sense to me. But notice this: other people with similar core convictions, perhaps some among us here, might try to keep a loved one alive longer, perhaps with a feeding tube.

Similarly, for one person, physical death may mean that the body can be disposed of through cremation (my parents did this, for them it didn’t matter); for another it should be properly be buried. For someone else the determinative is ecological impact. For my uncle as a physician, it is whether his body can provide knowledge to medical science after death.

Whatever we do, life and death are always interacting, cycling through us and our friends and loved ones and our world, always challenging us in some manner—particularly in our youth-oriented, death-denying culture.

It would be grim indeed if beneath hard ethical decisions there was only finality and emptiness. But as Paul reminds us, our spiritual tradition is founded on two fundamental experiences. First came the disciples’ painful loss of Jesus through crucifixion. But beyond that came the disciples’ surprise, joy and strength of discovered life beyond death in the presence of a risen Christ. This led to them and us having a message to share, and a contagious confidence in daily living and dealing with life’s choices.