Not a Mercy but a Sin

Fiber is the tough substance that gives texture and body to plants and trees. From it cloth is spun or woven. And it is fiber that makes trees useful for lumber and other products.In man, character is the fiber that determines behavior and reaction to the strains and stresses of life. It has been said that a man’s real character is shown by what he does when he is alone, but that is only part of the picture. Whenever temptations come, pressures rise, and decisions have to be made, character or its lack is very evident.There is a form of good character that is not necessarily based on the Christian ethic. Until the Red take-over in China, there was evident (and there still is, in Chinese communities abroad) a praiseworthy character rooted in respect for family and a sense of family responsibility. No doubt this is why there is so little crime and delinquency in Chinese communities. Obedience to and honor for parents results in law-abiding character.When the Communists took over China, one of their first objectives was to destroy the age-long sense of family loyalty, and the day came when children’s denunciation of parents was commonplace.America, which was founded on the Christian ethic, has also experienced a marked decline in character. Now expediency often triumphs over right, and immediate gain is thought by many to justify almost any act. Even among some religious leaders, “situational ethics” has supplanted the absolute of God’s moral law. Never has there been greater need for Christian character than now.We do not have to look far to find what has largely led to the moral and spiritual decline of American life (which is, of course, a reflection of individual lives). The biblical concept of good and evil has been dimmed or lost, and men no longer have the moral fiber necessary to stand up against the multiplied temptations of today. The faith and conviction that form the basis of character have deteriorated. And the values that make men and nations great are under external attack everywhere. On every hand evil is called good and good evil.If one has no inner standard of values, why should he oppose what is wrong? If one’s source of reference is no higher than the behavior of others, he can travel to disaster without ever sensing the danger ahead. Without a God-oriented sense of values, there can be no Christian conscience.Years ago, when I was a medical student in Richmond, I had the privilege of helping in the Seventeenth Street Mission on Sunday afternoons. One day a young Negro boy was arrested and brought into court. When he was asked, “Did you steal that box?,” the little fellow replied: “No sir, Judge, that would be sin.”The bemused judge asked, “What is sin?” He received the immediate answer, “Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.” Needless to say, this case was investigated and the honesty of the little boy proved beyond doubt. He had character developed by Christian teaching and a loyalty to what he had been taught.How tragic that so few young people are learning the foundation of Christian character today! Even in many Sunday schools, the development of a strong sense of right and wrong, of man’s responsibility to God and the teaching of Scripture, is slighted in favor of development of “social consciousness.” The result: anti-social behavior on every hand.Why are so many people unwilling to “get involved” when others are in trouble, even before their eyes? Because character has been supplanted by selfishness.Why is there so little righteous indignation against those who are actively destroying the values that made our nation great? Why is there no firm reaction against those who have lost all patriotism and who actively engage in sedition and acts of treason?Recently a well-known folk-singer was refused the use of an auditorium in Washington because of her encouragement of draftcard-burners and draft-dodgers. The news media made a heroine of her while those who refused the use of their auditorium were held up to ridicule. Could this have been possible without the undermining of the foundations of national conscience by an insidious propaganda that rejects all restraint? “Freedom” has become license, and in that grievous perversion conscienceless men are spelling the doom of a nation.But there is hope. That hope lies in people who have consciences controlled by the living Christ. One develops such a conscience by becoming thoroughly saturated with the Word of God, by learning to look at the world in the light of God’s holy laws.Let young people read and reread the Book of Proverbs, for there they will learn the basis for right behavior. Let them receive Christ into their hearts and they will, through the help of the indwelling Spirit, know how to react to temptations and the insidious propaganda of Satan, to which they are constantly subjected.Young people need to learn of Daniel, whose strong character was reflected in his resolve “not [to] defile himself with the king’s rich food, or with the wine which he drank” (Dan. 1:8); of Timothy, to whom Paul wrote, “Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:3); and of Isaiah, who could say, “The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been confounded; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame” (Isa. 50:7).One step toward developing a God-oriented conscience in America would be to institute the reading of the Ten Commandments each day in all public schools. God’s moral law, common to the heritage of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants, read without comment, would be a blessing and help to all, particularly those who have never learned the meaning of right and wrong. If attendance at this reading were made optional, even the mouths of avowed atheists would be stopped.The American heritage is saturated with the recognition of God and our responsibility to him. How can we continue to permit the frittering away of our most precious possession in the name of a “freedom” that is actually bondage to evil?If we are to regain the character that once made us great, we must have a source of reference—God’s holy law, which enables us to distinguish good from evil. When character is founded on Christ and his Word, men see through the blandishments through which we are being led down the path to oblivion.Christian character, the fiber that makes men and nations great, is desperately needed today. For a generation there has been a growing tendency to let men set the standards, with disastrous results. We have forgotten that “righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Prov. 14:34).Character makes the difference.L. NELSON BELL

The case of Terri Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged Florida woman who has been on life support for over a decade, has reopened debate by secular and church authorities alike on questions surrounding euthanasia or "mercy killing."

The matter is admittedly not simple. But the Christian church has, at least until recent decades, spoken on it with a fairly unified voice.

Here as in other issues related to human life and sexuality, the Roman Catholic Church has done a good job of defining and sticking by its official position. On the other hand, at the grassroots, more conservative Protestants than Catholics or any other group of Christians have taken an uncompromising position against euthanasia—to put it in the language of the Catholic Catechism, "an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering."

But we must make a quick distinction: Almost all Christians have set aside as a special category cases of terminal illness in which treatment is ended in the face of inevitable death. The United Methodist Church's Book of Discipline states, "The use of medical technologies to prolong terminal illnesses requires responsible judgment about when life-sustaining treatments truly support the goals of life, and when they have reached their limits. There is no moral or religious obligation to use these when they impose undue burdens or only extend the process of dying."

In "Allowing Death and Taking Life: Withholding or Withdrawing Artificially Administered Nutrition and Hydration," the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America classes artificial nutrition and hydration as "medical treatment," not basic care. In cases where such treatment becomes futile and burdensome, says the document, "it may be morally responsible to withhold or withdraw them and allow death to occur."

United States law has agreed with these positions, allowing for the cessation of "heroic measures" in cases where these measures only postpone inevitable death.

But such decisions about the artificial extension of life through medical means are not really about killing, only letting die. In cases where, as the Catholic catechism puts it, hydration or feeding amount to "disproportionate means" to sustain the life of someone who already lacks cognitive function, to omit such treatment may well not amount to a direct act of killing, but rather an acknowledgement of our "inability to impede" imminent death.

Indeed, in such cases, Christians have recognized that they are in a unique position to "let go" of God's gift of life because they understand physical death as their road to another, greater life.

However, on cases marked not by the indirect or passive allowing of natural dying processes to take their course but the direct or active ending of life, the church has, at least officially, remained unified: Christians have usually insisted that any intentional, active termination of life rejects the truth affirmed in the Catholic document Evangelium Vitae (1995), that "God alone has sovereignty over life and death." Such acts of killing, whether "merciful" or not, unacceptably dispose of God's gift of life—over which we are not masters but only stewards.

Further, both Catholic and Protestant leaders have recognized that if we legalize such active measures to end life, we not only condone individual acts that are sinful, but we also poison the care of future patients, destroying their ability to trust their own medical and emotional support network. Any logic condoning "mercy killing," however pure or honorable in its inception, is subject to future abuse, as medical practitioners and family members become tempted to end the lives of those whose care is taking uncomfortably high amounts of effort, time, and resources.

Even without such selfish motives, Christian critics of euthanasia point out, what happens once the door has been opened to allow criteria (say, degree of pain and suffering) by which a person may be judged justified in actively ending their own life? Those same criteria must, logically speaking, be allowed to rule similar decisions of whether to end the life of a person incapable of deciding for him or herself—as in the current case of Terry Schiavo.

The question of whether to allow active measures by which a patient could decide whether or not to end their own life is not, as we might expect, a new one brought on by advances in technology. In the classical world, suicide was considered an honorable option. Consider the decision of the founder of stoicism, Zeno (c. 263 B.C.), to drink poison in order to avoid the suffering caused by a severe foot injury.

The Hippocratic School took a different position—one decidedly in the minority, but one that eventually, in the Christian West, won the day. The Hippocratics opposed both euthanasia and abortion. Their oath states, "I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor make a suggestion to this effect."

From the beginning, Christians have approached questions of suicide or mercy killing from the standpoint of life's sanctity as a gift from God. To end a life under any circumstance is to violate that gift, not to mention the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." It is, as the Catholic catechism says, "a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the Living God, His Creator."

The Biblical basis for this "sanctity of life" position draws from the understanding of human life as gift expressed in Acts 17:25, the understanding of man created in the image of God found in Genesis 1:26-27, and the understanding of covenant in Genesis 9:5-6 and Exodus 20:13. The duty to respect human life appears in Genesis 9:5; 4:8-10, 15, and our responsibility for the life of fellow humans is taught in Genesis 4:9 and Deuteronomy 21:1-9.

This Christian position was not publicly questioned even in cases of severe suffering (though individual Christians, faced by such suffering, no doubt made decisions counter to this position) until the nineteenth century, when new anesthetic options made mercy killing more attractive in severe cases. The conversation started in the Victorian period swiftly ended at the middle of the twentieth century, however, in the face of revelations of the Nazis' programmatic eugenic killings.

It heated up again in America in the 1970s, when a young woman who went into a coma, Karen Ann Quinlan, survived for nearly a decade in what was called a "vegetative state." The New Jersey Supreme Court intervened to allow Quinlan to be removed from a respirator, and concerned observers began searching for a definition of a life no longer worth living, to justify mercy killing at least in cases where the patient could make their own decision.

In the face of Christian teachings on sanctity of life, it is hard not to see this trend towards legitimizing euthanasia or mercy killing as a strong sign that we are indeed living in a post-Christian world.

—Helpful articles on the history of Christian positions on euthanasia are available in both the New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology, ed. David J. Atkinson et al. (InterVarsity, 1995) and the New Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Bernard L. Marthaler et al. (Thomson Gale, 2003). Much more information on the current discussion is provided on the website of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, whose stated goal is to "make certain that a patient's right to receive care and compassion is not replaced by a doctor's right to prescribe poison or administer a lethal injection."

Chris Armstrong is managing editor of Christian History magazine. More Christian history, including a list of events that occurred this week in the church's past, is available at ChristianHistory.net. Subscriptions to the quarterly print magazine are also available.