Shalom Aleichem...
Reflections is a weekly Christian Teaching Ministry. Each week we will talk about the Bible and lessons we can put to use in our daily life. We will try to, on a weekly basis, provide to you stories, thoughts, and just easy ways to live your life on a straight path.
THIS WEEK'S TEACHING....October 7, 2019
Today we begin a series about a very serious and important subject. We are beginning a series about end-of-life issues. What is ethical at the end of life? People have struggled with this question and sought God’s guidance. This is a serious issue because we are talking about life and death and probably the last decision you will ever make and the last act you will ever perform in this life before you go before the throne of God.
With what posture do you want to enter into his throne room–having been faithful to God the whole way, or having fumbled the ball on the last yardline, not taking it all the way into the end zone?
All of us want to be able to say what Paul did in II Timothy 4: 6-7: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
When it comes to end-of-life decisions, how do we keep the faith, even to the very end? What is God’s guidance concerning the issue of “pulling the plug.” Is there a time to “pull the plug” or should hope burn eternal? Is “pulling the plug” murder, or is it allowing death to come naturally?
How about the withholding of treatment–is that ethical? Can I refuse treatment? How about living wills and advanced directives and the powers-of-attorney for medical purposes? What do I say, what do I fill in, and what do I tell my attorney concerning these issues? Perhaps some of these questions are facing you right now or perhaps you have already faced them.
As Americans we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. As part of that understanding, do we also have the right to die or not? As Christians, do we have the right to die? What if, during natural death, I experience intractable pain or face the possibility of losing my dignity–is that a concern? Or is that something that’s more of a secular thought? Is this really not my main concern as a Christian? Is my own personal dignity a real priority in my life?
We are going to address these issues over the next several weeks. Again, this is serious because the discussion involves eternal issues as well as the welfare of our loved ones. It involves our own welfare, as well. We want the best for our loved ones and we want the best for ourselves as well. Some of you have had profound life-shaking experiences that are incredibly personal that have already formed your thoughts and the basis for how you make a decision. They are so potent and so vibrant that it is hard to listen to anything else.
I experienced the death of my Mother, and my grandparents and watched highly competent people become woefully incompetent. I looked into the face of my grandfather and didn’t recognize him anymore. How do we deal with that?
Two movies affected me as a young person. One in 1973 was called “Soylent Green” starring Charlton Heston. This depicted how horrible life would be in the future. The other movie was “Rollerball” in which a person dies and is in a vegetative state. As a young person, I imagined what it would be like to be a vegetable. I remember lying in my bed, trying not to breathe, and trying to imagine what that life experience must be like.
There are dozens of times when I am given the privilege to escort people from this life into the next. As a hospice chaplain I see the process of dying over and over again. It is a profound and intense experience. If you have gone through that, you know exactly what I am talking about.
Our call is to take all the information we have and all our pre-judgments and set them aside for a little while and seek God’s wisdom, hear what God has to say to us, allow God to touch our lives on this very critical issue. Does his word give us light? Yes, it does.
This is an issue we must face and there are decisions we must make because they are forced upon us in our modern day. Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to the good old days when a person’s heart stopped and they stopped breathing, there was nothing that could be done. They were simply given into the hands of God. In this modern day, we have the ability to keep a person alive almost indefinitely. As a result of that, we have been forced to make some very critical decisions. Just because we can do it, should we do it? What is humane, what is merciful, and what is suicide? What is keeping the faith on these issues?
Probably the best text is M. Scott Peck’s The Denial of the Soul. This really captures every issue surrounding this question. It is written by a person who spent his entire life dealing with people who are facing life’s end, both as a psychologist and as a hospital worker.
Today, we are simply going to define terms. What do the terms mean that we are going to face.
First, what is euthanasia? It goes by other euphemisms such as death with dignity, mercy killing, initiative 119, the right to die, exiting peacefully, taking control of one’s life, etc. The word itself comes from the Greek word “eu” and “thenos” and means “good death.” It came to mean dying pain-free. The definition accepted today comes from the 1938 Euthanasia Society which defines a good death in this way: “The termination of human life by painless means for the purpose of ending someone’s suffering.”
Now, that’s a good goal and one that we can embrace as Christians. It is not bad to help people not suffer. But what does it mean to terminate life and how do we do that? That term has come to mean four different things.
One it has come to literally mean to die pain-free. This would include things like giving oxygen to a patient who is in respiratory distress, or a moderate dose of painkillers to keep a person comfortable. This would include IV antibiotics for a patient who is dying but has developed an infection like pneumonia, or it could include a feeding tube to keep a patient from starving to death.
It has also come to mean enabling a person to die by permitting them to do so by means of withholding treatment that most people would consider the prolonging of the dying process. An example would be withholding a blood transfusion from a person dying of stomach cancer who is hemorrhaging, the fore-going of the fourth or fifth round of chemotherapy when it is having no effect, or withholding further treatment from a child who is suffering from neuroblastoma.. I will let you decide which is more ethical.
The history of this disease is that the child will live six weeks with treatment. However, they will experience intense, relentless pain and will go blind and deaf in the last three weeks. Without treat-ment, the child will die in three weeks. However, they will avoid all three of these side-effects. Again, what is ethical, what is Christian, and what is humane?
The third definition for the termination of life could mean to enable a person to die through a medical act, the intention of which is to alleviate the pain of another with the secondary effect of causing premature death. An example of this would be a very high dosage of morphine to a cancer patient with the intent to alleviate pain but in the process the patient may die.
The fourth definition is the deliberate act to end the life of another to avoid suffering. This would include things like intentionally giving a person a very high dose of morphine in order to take away their life rather than to alleviate their pain. This would include strapping a person to a machine like that of Dr. Kevorkian. It would include mercy killing such as death by gunshot or by carbon monoxide poisoning.
Of these, the first three definitions are also called “passive euthanasia” or “indirect euthanasia.” The fourth definition is called “direct or active euthanasia.” Which of these are consistent with the Christian faith?
Throughout the ages, which of these has the Church agreed are natural deaths? The first three have always been considered by the church, theologians and scripture to be consistent with natural death. Whether you read literature from the first century, the fourth century, the sixteenth century or the modern century, the record of interpretation on this issue is very consistent. The first three are considered natural deaths.
We see this with Jesus himself as he is going through the process of dying on the cross. They offer him a sponge of wine mixed with a certain group of herbs that would cause a loss of consciousness, thereby being a painkiller. Jesus refused this initially because he wanted to remain conscious. In John 19, we also find that he took it near the end of his life. In his day, both for Jewish and Christian believers, this was considered to be absolutely ethical. It was an act of kindness to the dying.
Only the fourth has been considered outside of the faith, suicide or homicide. You will not find a single verse of scripture that permits or advocates taking the life of another or a person’s own life. There are many verses on the giving of life but not the taking of your own life or the life of another.
Genesis 1-2 tells us that we were created in God’s image. It was God who gave to us the breath of life. If God owned the gift of life, who but God can take it away? If a person belonged to God and realized that God gave them the gift of life, it was consistent to realize that only God could take it away. It is this understanding that is at the heart of Job 1:21, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised!” Job is simply saying that he recognizes that he belongs to God. Everything he had belonged to God, and God can do whatever he wants to do with what belongs to him. Our lives belong to God, and he can do whatever he desires with our lives.
This is the same faith reflected by Jesus on the cross when he said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Jesus relinquished himself to God. Notice the wonderful thing that God does here. How long did Jesus suffer on the cross, especially after that statement? Not long. God graciously and mercifully took him.
Contrast this with many doctors who have allowed their patients to suffer very cruel and inhumane deaths, all because they feared that the painkillers would mask certain diseases or would cause addiction. The absurdity is worrying about causing addiction in the dying. They won’t be alive long enough to become addicted.
Deuteronomy 32:39 says, “It is I who bring death and life, says the Lord.” Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do it all as unto the Lord and not unto men.” This not only includes our lives–everything we do is given to God. This also includes our dying. Can we give God our dying? Can we die as unto the Lord? Can we trust the promise of Psalm 23:4, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for Thou art with me.” Can we trust God to hold true to his promises?
NEXT WEEK...We continue to look at End of Life situations and what to do in times of death.
DID YOU EVER WONDER???
Growing up I would always llisten to Paul Harvey on the radio. I ran across this by Mr. Harvey last year and want to share it with you.
Dirt Roads
-- By Paul Harvey
What's mainly wrong with society today is that too many Dirt Roads have been paved.
There's not a problem in America today, crime, drugs, education, divorce, delinquency that wouldn't be remedied, if we just had more Dirt Roads, because Dirt Roads give character.
People that live at the end of Dirt Roads learn early on that life is a bumpy ride.
That it can jar you right down to your teeth sometimes, but it's worth it, if at the end is home...a loving spouse, happy kids and a dog.
We wouldn't have near the trouble with our educational system if our kids got their exercise walking a Dirt Road with other kids, from whom they learn how to get along.
There was less crime in our streets before they were paved.
Criminals didn't walk two dusty miles to rob or rape, if they knew they'd be welcomed by 5 barking dogs and a double barrel shotgun.
And there were no drive by shootings.
Our values were better when our roads were worse!
People did not worship their cars more than their kids, and motorists were more courteous, they didn't tailgate by riding the bumper or the guy in front would choke you with dust & bust your windshield with rocks.
Dirt Roads taught patience.
Dirt Roads were environmentally friendly, you didn't hop in your car for a quart of milk you walked to the barn for your milk.
For your mail, you walked to the mail box.
What if it rained and the Dirt Road got washed out? That was the best part, then you stayed home and had some family time, roasted marshmallows and popped popcorn and pony rode on Daddy's shoulders and learned how to make prettier quilts than anybody.
At the end of Dirt Roads, you soon learned that bad words tasted like soap.
Most paved roads lead to trouble, Dirt Roads more likely lead to a fishing creek or a swimming hole.
At the end of a Dirt Road, the only time we even locked our car was in August, because if we didn't some neighbor would fill it with too much zucchini.
At the end of a Dirt Road, there was always extra springtime income, from when city dudes would get stuck, you'd have to hitch up a team and pull them out.
Usually you got a dollar...always you got a new friend...at the end of a Dirt Road!
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE...A TEACHING
This week we look at the Book of Jude...
Who wrote the book?
Like most of the other general epistles, the title of this little book takes its name from its author. Most scholars identify the writer as Jude the half-brother of Jesus for at least two reasons. First, he identified himself as the “brother of James” (Jude 1:1), meaning he was probably not the apostle named Jude, a man who was called “the son of James” (Luke 6:16). That the author of the book of Jude identified himself as the brother of James likely aligns him with the family of Jesus. Second, Matthew 13:55 records the names of the brothers of Jesus as James and Judas. Whereas the gospels record his name as Judas, English translations shorten it to Jude—probably for the same reason no one in the present day wants to name a child Judas, because of the association it has with Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus.
Like his older brother James, Jude did not place his faith in Jesus while the Lord was still alive. Only after the crucifixion and resurrection did the scales fall from Jude’s eyes and he become a follower of his half-brother, Jesus. First Corinthians 9:5 offers a tantalizing piece of information, noting that the Lord’s brothers and their wives took missionary journeys. From this scant portrait, we begin to picture Jude as a man who lived in skepticism for a time but eventually came to a powerful faith in Jesus. And as he traveled on behalf of the gospel—telling the story in city after city with his name Judas butting up against that of Judas Iscariot—he would stand as a living example of faithfulness, a stark contrast to the betrayer.
Where are we?
The book of Jude is notoriously difficult to date, primarily because the Bible and tradition reveal so little about the personal details of its author while the book itself refrains from naming any particular individuals or places. The one clue available to present-day readers is the striking similarity between the books of Jude and 2 Peter. Assuming Peter wrote his letter first (AD 64–66), Jude probably wrote his epistle sometime between AD 67 and 80.
Why is Jude so important?
Jude’s edgy brevity communicates the urgency of his notion that false teachers needed to be condemned and removed from the church. Few words meant that Jude would not waste space dancing around the issue. He saw within the church people and practices that were worthy of condemnation, including rejecting authority and seeking to please themselves. In response to these errors, Jude marshaled much biblical imagery to make clear what he thought of it all—anything from Cain killing his brother Abel to the punishment of the sinful people who populated Sodom and Gomorrah (Jude 1:7, 11).
What's the big idea?
Jude’s purpose in his letter was twofold: he wanted to expose the false teachers that had infiltrated the Christian community, and he wanted to encourage Christians to stand firm in the faith and fight for the truth. Jude recognized that false teachers often peddled their wares unnoticed by the faithful, so he worked to heighten the awareness of the believers by describing in vivid detail how terrible dissenters actually were. But more than simply raising awareness, Jude thought it important that believers stand against those working against Jesus Christ. Believers were to do this by remembering the teaching of the apostles, building each other up in the faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, and keeping themselves in the love of God (Jude 1:17, 20–21).
How do I apply this?
Fight for the truth! Stand up against error! The book of Jude is the very definition of punchy and pithy proclamations—with its short commands and statements popping off the page like machine-gun fire. But in our day and age, punchy has become rude or unacceptable. In many circles the forcefulness of Jude will not be tolerated, the crowds preferring a softer and gentler side of the Christian faith. But Jude reminds us that there is a time and a place for the aggressive protection of the truth from those who would seek to tear it down.
How can you participate in defending the truth from error?
HAVE A SAFE AND BLESSED WEEK:)
Ho'omaikaʻi ka Pua iā kākou