> I just posted a BIG thread about lots of contriversies on my forum. Some of them we've talked about on here, and some I don't think we have. I thought maybe some of you might be interested. So far these are all the topics:
>
> Abortion
> Assisted Suicide

I was just poking around in the contents of my hard drive and found this draft of a response that I had intended to post as soon as I found time to go back over it, clean it up, and get rid of stuff that, on second thought, I don't *really* think. But since I'm pretty clearly not going to do that at this point, I'll just go ahead and post it. Then I'll enjoy my five-day vacation in California and see what devastation it has wreaked when I come back. :-)

Iss "bombs away!" achar

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> Abortion

Part of this is easy to answer, and part is more difficult. The easy part is, "does an unborn infant fully qualify as a human being?" YES. A fetus is not just part of the mother's body. The unborn child has its own blood type, gender, genetic sequence, etc., different from those of the mother. It's not just a piece of her own tissue; it's a separate, though dependent, human being. I have yet to hear a definition of human life as "beginning" at a particular stage of development that did not seem quite arbitrary.

Now, the hard part. Many pro-life (or "anti-abortion", take your pick) people consider the debate over as soon as it is established that a fetus is a "real" human life. But another question follows that one: "granting that an unborn infant fully qualifies as a human being, are there degrees in the rights that we grant to different human beings?" This could be rephrased as "when weighing one human life against another, do we (and should we) weigh some more heavily than others?"

This question usually accompanies the hypothetical situation in which a mother is informed that she has little or no medical chance of surviving childbirth, and is counseled to destroy the fetus for her own survival. As a society, we recognize several circumstances in which it is appropriate to take the life of a human being. Is this one of them? I can understand why many people would suggest that it is, and that the mother's life essentially outweighs that of her unborn child.

I cannot myself judge between the value of the two lives, so I fall back on other considerations, such as the responsibility that motherhood in se carries with it. I argue that it is the responsibility of the mother (and father, if he finds himself in a similar quandary) to give up her life for her child's. This responsibility, like the child itself, may be unwanted by the mother, but we cannot choose all the responsibilities we bear. We can only choose whether or not to faithfully carry them out.

In sum: I can think of no ordinary circumstance at all in which the demands of moral responsibility would fall on the side of aborting a pregnancy.

> Assisted Suicide

This issue hangs on the same question as abortion: "where does human life fall on the scale of our values?" In some societies, honor has historically been a higher value than life, and a man who had dishonored himself might choose death rather than continued existence in shame. I'm hesitant to criticize that value system too harshly, because the principle that undergirds it resonates with me: "only some kinds of life are worth living."

As a Christian, it is a simple Biblical matter for me to say that a sinner forfeits his life. It is right that a person should die who forsakes God for evil; I myself should die for that reason. Thankfully, God deals in grace as well as justice, but the fact remains that *life is intrinsically valuable only so long as it is lived rightly*.

These days, we seem to mostly talk about suicide in the context of ending a painful existence -- perhaps someone in the last, untreatable stages of cancer, for example. The thing that bothers me about many who argue against suicide in such a situation is that I do not see the urgency in clinging to the last tatters of a life which must end, which in fact we should *wish* to end, if we hope for the life in Christ to come.

Speaking again as a Christian (of a particular stripe), my feeling is that this earthly life is a precious gift to us, but it is not the only gift, nor is it the most precious. There is a sense in which a follower of God is free to end her life and yet have a peace about it, knowing that death is a foe already beaten and it is not needful for her to do battle with death merely by postponing the moment of her expiration as long as possible. Prolonging one's existence in this world is not always a worthwhile pursuit, if one has confidence in Christ who gives eternal life.

The other argument against suicide is that "only God has the right to determine the time of a person's death." I have respect for this argument, but I also ask what is meant by it? Usually it seems to mean, or imply, that we should make the effort to prolong a person's "natural" lifespan as much as is reasonably possible, and upon the occasion of that person's death, pronounce with confidence that "it was his time to go".

The problem is that this is "God of the gaps" theology: we don't fully understand all the minute causes of the body's "natural" degeneration into death, nor can we fight against them, so at the point when our best efforts fail, we ascribe the death to an exercise of divine will. Four hundred years ago, according to the popular belief of the time, God was calling people home on average after only thirty or forty years of earthly life. A hundred years from now, when medicine may permit lifespans averaging 100+ years, God will be alleged to will that people die at that age.

We *say* that we must leave the decision up to God as to when a person should die, but in our actions we consistently take matters into our own hands. By our own will, we do our best to extend the period of natural life, and then we pronounce that those newly-achieved limits are also God's will. Is it really God who desires that the person dying of cancer hang on through all the suffering for every possible moment, or is it our will masquerading as God's, and also our frustration at being unable to overcome natural death, seeking a scapegoat and finding one in the will of God?

I do not see any essential difference between succumbing to a "natural" death and being slain by an "unnatural" cause such as a knife wound. I don't assume that God *wants* a murderer's victim to die at that particular time (still less in that particular way), and I also do not assume that God *wants* that person to live somewhat longer and die of a heart attack instead -- or even of that still-undefined malady that we refer to as the aging process. The bottom line is that death in any form is evil and Scripture makes it clear that it is not part of God's plan for humankind. God does not "want" me to die, although my sin has condemned me to die in the flesh. What God *does* want me to do is to "overcome evil with good" -- to live in such a way as to show that death is a defeated enemy and not to be feared by those who put their faith in Christ. What matters most is not how I choose to die, but how I choose to live.

Notice that in all this I do not counsel a suffering person to commit suicide in order to end the suffering. I *do* suggest that our debates about suicide be guided by more than one principle (that prolonging natural life to its utmost is an unqualified good). Life is precious, even when it is not enjoyed. I have no difficulty judging suicide to be the wrong decision in just about every instance I've ever read about -- but not on the grounds that it is God's will that we stave off death as long as possible and at all cost.

Iss "Where is thy sting, O Death?" achar