| How precious is life? The Great Euthanasia debate. |
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Are we the people most to be pitied? Do we believe in something ridiculous, something preposterous? Do we believe in life after death when no such a reality exists? Do we? Do you?
This is the question that Paul is posing to us today and this is the question that rocks the heart of the believer, the agnostic and the atheist alike. What happens when we die? Where do we go? What is it all about?
Recently in our cultural consciousness, the question about whether or not there is life after death has once again been raised. This time in the context of the great euthanasia debate.
The life and death question is, of course, only one of the many questions that comes spinning out towards us when this great Pandora’s box of conflict is periodically opened, but it is a question that lies at the heart of the debate.
Because if there is no resurrection, no life after death, then, some would argue, there is no meaning or reason or point to any kind of suffering or decline and that life is only worthwhile, is only ‘LIFE!’ if we are in full control of mind and body.
Whereas on the other side of the debate there are those who believe with great passion that all life is precious and should be protected, no matter what the physical or mental realities.
For some such folk life is seen as one stage on a journey of growth and development that leads us through into the next reality, the one that exists beyond this physical plane, the one that sees us gathered in glory, held in hope, surrounded in light.
For Paul, as he preached to the Corinthians, the concept of resurrection was not a widespread notion in the world at this time. As theologian Professor Paul Samply writes ‘Greek and Roman views of resurrection ranged from assumptions that it was impossible to the reckoning that it might happen in the occasional isolated miraculous event’ Certainly no one imagined that they too could rise in resurrected transformation after their bodies had died. And yet, this was the message that Paul came to bring.
Theologian Alistair Mc Grath picks up on Paul’s question of whether or not Christians should be pitied for our beliefs when he writes:
‘If the Christian hope of heaven is an illusion, if it is based on lies, then it must be abandoned, but if it is true then it must be embraced and allowed to transfigure our entire understanding of the place of suffering in life.’
By this we can take him to mean that, if we believe in life after death then everything about our life must be lived out in the light of this belief including the reality of pain and illness and the agony of grief.
And instead of hiding from these things and trying to make them go away we need to revision them as yet another way of growing in our connection with each other and with God. Which is not to say that we do not get frightened. Which is not to say we do not weep.
But it does mean that we do not live our life in a constant denial of death, because we fear that once we succumb to mortal failing we will no longer exist. The Christian writer Phillip Yancey, when reflecting on how the belief in life after death impacts on our everyday imagines a culture where no one believes in life after death.
This is what he sees: ‘A place where youth is valued above all else, where Sports are national obsessions, where magazine covers present wrinkle free faces and pubescent bodies.
A place where old age is not valued because it is a frightening reminder that life must end. A place where ‘religion’ focuses exclusively on what you can achieve in the here and now and prosperity doctrine rules. And a place where death ideally takes place in sealed off areas in the presence of trained professional and bodies are disposed of before the grieving can bathe or caress or sing.’
Sound familiar?
In a recent Age article by Odette Spruyt, a palliative care doctor at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, she writes about how the focus on pain and suffering by those supporting Euthanasia reinforces negative stereotypes about the possibility of people dying in excruciating pain. Given the impressive increase in the range of pain management drugs in Australia over the past ten years why, she asks do we have such a fear of dying in unrelieved agony. Could it be that what drives the Euthanasia debate is not fear of pain but fear of death. She then goes on to write that ‘the fear of death may be greater than ever in our youth orientated culture and perhaps we need to slow down, for in our race to get to the finishing line we are failing to see:
‘The children doing puzzles on the floor of their grandmother’s hospice room. The exquisite intimacy and tenderness of a mother as she cares for her dying twenty-year-old daughter. The friendship and love that grows between staff and patience in the midst of adversity. The daily courage and dignity of the dying in the midst of incontinence, tears and grief: The way that life renews in the face of death. We may crave a way to circumnavigate the pain of dying, the loss and the seeming uselessness of it all. However, we risk anaesthetising ourselves from life and losing…richness and beauty and soul’
‘Can we’ Odette asks ‘embrace those who are dying within the community of the living and ensure that they are a vital part of life until their last breath?’
Can we? What do you think? What do you feel? What do you believe?
Do not be afraid I am with you. I have called you by your name you are mine. I have called you by your name, you are mine. Comments (1)
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