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Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Ethics, etc. > Is Euthanasia Ever Justified?

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graygirl
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 78

Posted 12/23/2002 2:29 AM (GMT -6)

Amen Greg, Amen.

I'm so glad that you stopped caring about meeting the religious meter long ago. it's a losing battle, somebody will ALWAYS be upset.

Follow your heart as the Lord leads you.

GG

Electra
Registered Member

Date Joined Feb 2002
Total Posts : 611

Posted 12/23/2002 5:30 AM (GMT -6)

This is a difficult issue. I encourage everyone to write your own living will, to help your family if they must ever make this difficult decision.

I read a book by a doctor who spent a year in Haiti during the 1980s. His primitive clinic lacked the resources to treat all the symptoms that develop in AIDS patients. But when he diagnosed a patient with AIDS, he would make them comfortable until they died within a few months. He said that in America, a patient with AIDS in the 1980s might live for a year. But that year would be spent mostly in the hospital, with all kinds of invasive procedures performed to treat the myriad symptoms that develop as the immune system fails. He actually felt that the Haitian patients received more humane treatment.

My aunt had breast cancer and she fought it very courageously for a couple years. She lost all her hair from chemotherapy, she had a mastectomy, and she had numerous surgies to drain fluid that collected in her heart and lungs. But there came a point when she refused further treatment. She gathered her whole family together, and we were with her when she died. She is a hero of mine.

I don’t consider this post an “argument” one way or the other. These are just some things that inform my perspective on the issue.

Doc, I pray the Lord grant you peace.

Electra

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Matt. 10:8

Edited by - Electra on 12/23/2002 10:34:53 AM

churchmouse522
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 163

Posted 12/23/2002 1:42 PM (GMT -6)

Greg,

I appreciate the fact that you have invited us all to your father's bedside and wondered out loud about the decisions you are agonizing over. I know you don't do that lightly, although it may seem that way to some.

I think in a very important sense that we only approach the answers to these questions when we ask them about people we desperately love who are suffering beside us right now. I am not convinced that there is a "made-to-order" solution. I have very rarely met someone who has walked through suffering like this and offered up pat answers to anyone else. The complexity of the question demands grace and mercy.

I know I will be accused of moral relativism, but I really don't care. I don't want an ethicist by my side if my husband or mother or child is suffering. I will only listen to those who are suffering with me. You don't get to speak with any authority outside of this holy place.

You have blessed my life and my family so much, Greg. I pray those blessings will be returned to you.

Mouse

GregBoyd
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 12/23/2002 3:25 PM (GMT -6)

Trosie: When do we allow God to be God and not try to assist him?

Doc: Well said Trosie. But, of course, the flip side of this question is, "When do we allow God to be God and not try to RESIST him?"

Mouse: I appreciate the fact that you have invited us all to your father's bedside and wondered out loud about the decisions you are agonizing over. I know you don't do that lightly, although it may seem that way to some.

Doc: No, I did not do it lightly. I just believe it intrinsically valuable to live and think somewhat out loud (within limits). Wisdom often comes from communal processing. And I often find the participants in this board to be helpful communal processors. Its good for me to think and live out loud, but I also think its good for everyone when we think and live out loud.

Neitzsche once said that he only respected what a person wrote in blood. There's a profound point in this. We often assume that issues need to be talked about IN THE ABSTRACT. But the most authentic reflections come when one is IN BLOOD.

There are limits to this, of course. There’s a space that must be kept to oneself. And there’s a time for talk to cease while people enter what you called "the holy place" of decision-making in love.

Mouse: I think in a very important sense that we only approach the answers to these questions when we ask them about people we desperately love who are suffering beside us right now. I am not convinced that there is a "made-to-order" solution. I have very rarely met someone who has walked through suffering like this and offered up pat answers to anyone else. The complexity of the question demands grace and mercy.

I don't want an ethicist by my side if my husband or mother or child is suffering. I will only listen to those who are suffering with me. You don't get to speak with any authority outside of this holy place.

Doc: Like Semeia said so eloquently, we can (and must) hold to principles, but do so while acknowledging that real life always outruns our principles. I think its good and necessary to discuss principles such as we are doing on this thread. Its helpful. But when all is said and done, I think you (and Semeia) are absolutely correct: only love, not ethical principles, can fully enter into the radical particularity and concreteness of a particular situation. So only those who are IN the situation because of their LOVE should be able to decide.

And THAT is perhaps the most important principle. (Yet, even THIS is not without controversy. How do we balance the convictions of those "on the inside" of a situation with the moral sensibilities of the larger public. The abortion issue is all about this.)

Final Word: I’ve appreciated the feedback. Thank you. Its now time for me to withdraw from the discussion and enter "the holy place" with my father and family. I enter it with some basic principles, but no "made-to-order" solution. We in the family all talked today, and God’s peace and direction is with us. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

Doc

"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 12/25/2002 9:22 AM (GMT -6)

1st, I appreciate Greg's recognition (twice) of my good intentions of concern.

2nd, where Greg questioned me about "only those...", THAT was not in my post. I did contrast myself (of whom I see no virtue to act as "witness") with that of the artist/witness/martyr (Remember, "martyr" means "witness."). I presented that "witness" because it seemed unrepresented or underrepresented on the thread. And I did so hoping to avoid words. (To bad.) It does not rise to "only" though.

That done...

I'd like to return just once more to another issue that I pointed out this time of life to riase: Suffering.

Now, we must admit that the CVM Board raises and discussed LOTS of topics. And some of them consider Hell and Purgatory. Let me say from the top that there is more than one view of "pergatory." Our Orthodox brothers consider it QUITE DIFFERENTLY from our Latin Catholic (RCC) brothers. I've even heard the guy from HollywooDJesus.com (something like that) preach Pergatory from the back of a CRC SundaySchool room--as an Evangelical Protestant. If we talk about these subjects one day, we can not just duck them the next.

Our Easter brothers have a tradition of considering suffereing to have the postential of helping in purifying the soul. (I learned that at my 55112 Evangelical College.) Our Easter brothers are VERY CLEAR in differentiating suffering that purifies from any heretical view that perports that purgarory is a punishment. (Remember the "River of Fire" article?) C. S. Lewis's "The Great Divorce" echos that as he portrays people newly arived in heaven suffering on the bottom of their feet during the initial interval where their weightiness is insufficient to bend the point of the grass blades over. Ouch! We have these traditions.

What I think that we CAN NOT and SHOULD NOT duck it the possibility that 'necessary suffering' that is post death (boadly afirmed -- but perhaps not very well knowable for sure) might be prevented by the manner of our dying.

There is the term "play God" with respect to bodily dying. Perhaps we should -- especially those of you who use the words "Warefare" -- also follow the lead of the Eastern (and perhaps RCC) Church in praying for the dead. THEY PRAY FOR US! (If you can accept anything that John Calvin says -- and he does.)

WE SHOULD STOP THINKING OF DEATH AND DYING AS JUST ONE INSTANT. (Isnt' that Gnostic or something? Aren't there views that are annihilationalist/restorist or something; that are realy wacked?)

At the very least, we should CONSIDER the aspect of what can go on in the saving of the person from more suffering if we let God and his angels work, and bolster them through prayer. Rather than thinking it is a matter of just a switch.

I think that honesty requires this to be considered. its all part of the continuum.

Fred

Edited by - fred on 12/25/2002 2:26:10 PM

GregBoyd
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 12/25/2002 7:28 PM (GMT -6)

I agree with Fred that the issue of "purgatory" is one that needs to be discussed. Perhaps Protestants threw the baby out with the bathwater when they reacted against abuses of this doctrine (e.g. through indulgences). I have elsewhere argued that the biblical concept of "refining by fire" and "the judgment seat of Christ" can be understood to encompass all activity required to "make us fit for heaven." This isn't about PAYING FOR SIN but REFINING OF CHARACTER.

Now, if I understand Fred, he is saying that all suffering, which includes suffering at death, can be used to refine our character. We should pray for people in suffering that God will use it to this end. (Am I right Fred?). Thus far I don't have any problems with the view.

But I don't clearly see how this would significantly affect a decision about if and when one should decide to let a person die. There's a natural time to live, and a natural time to die ("natural GIVEN our fallen condition). And this "naturalness" has become blurred with modern medical capabilities of extending life beyond "natural" limits. The question we are really asking (whether it can be answered with any objectivity) is: When is it natural to die? When is it GOD'S WILL for a person to die? We have the power to resist God's will, and it seems clear that we can do it by resisting death when HE wants it to occur.

Blessings
Doc

"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6

Springs
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 636

Posted 12/27/2002 6:56 AM (GMT -6)

Semeia,
Thanks so much for sharing your story with us. I can see you put a lot of thought into it. I respect the fact that you are willing to be vulnerable. I have missed your input around here.

Springs

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if were so, it would be; but as it isn't , it ain't. That's logic."

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