Deception or Faithfulness:
A Review of Horizons: "Living with Death"
 March/April 2007
by
Viola Larson

 The subject of the Presbyterian Women’s magazine Horizons, March/April 2007, is “Living with Death.” Among the articles which focus on death are those which offer practical advice. One article about death is a faithful proclamation of the gospel. However, other articles about death are offensive to orthodox Christianity in both their content and their intentions. This particular issue of Horizons could just as easily have been named “Living with Deception,” because of all the deception occurring within its pages. In fact, “Unconventional Grace: Pushing Aside Convention for God’s Will,” written by Bridgett A. Green, encourages deception if it is used by a woman in her “attempt to be a vessel of God’s will.”(31) 

 Practical Matters

Two authors, in particular, give helpful advice for those experiencing grief or those who need general information about preparing for a future death. Ann Weems in her poignant article about the death of her son twenty-five years ago writes of the continuance of grief. Weems in her “Psalms of Lament: The Passing Years,” makes an important point: that grief suffered because of the death of a loved one never really goes away. 

One of Weems’ very practical points is that those who are suffering grief do not “need to attend a class on ’10 Steps to Correctly Grieve,’” or to read a “book outlining the correct order of the steps.” Nor should anyone ever insist that it is time for them to accept the death and move on. As Weems puts it, death “is unacceptable.”(12) An article by Cynthia J. O’Brien, “Preparing for a Death in the Family,” covers such issues as preparing for a funeral, storing important papers and allowing your faith to be shared during the funeral.

 Faithful Witness in the Time of Death

 “Too Close for Comfort,” by Kathleen Long Bostrom, faithfully proclaims the biblical message of Jesus’ death and resurrection. She also faithfully connects the gospel to her readers' needs. Writing of the imminent death of both her father and members of her congregation she ends her article with these words:

 Tell me, what do I say to the dying mother and the grieving parents; what do I say to my own broken heart and the congregation who looks to me for words of hope?

 I say listen to what Jesus had to say, “I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” (John 16:32-33).

 I say, “Christ is risen!”

You say, “Christ is risen indeed!”

We all say, “Amen.” (7)

 Those are beautiful and faithful words indeed!

 Suicide and the Redefining Of Words

An article on physician-assisted suicide is offered by Presbyterian Women and the Editors of Horizons in the midst of a March conference which was planned “with the hopes of presenting possible theological and pastoral recommendations to the 218^th General Assembly in 2008.”1 Their advocacy places them in the midst of a culture of death that is spiraling downward towards the unthinkable.

 Anitra Kitts, “a former member of the Oregon House of Representatives,” advocates for physician-assisted suicide. In her article, “Death with Dignity,” Kitts, who uses an interview with the first Oregonian doctor to help a patient die, never refers to such deaths as “physician-assisted suicide.” Furthermore she seemingly uses illogical points to further her views. But the illogical points are well planned along with the lack of the term physician-assisted suicide. And Kitts is not alone in this deception.

Oregon has redefined the term physician-assisted suicide to physician-assisted death. Likewise, the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine on February 14^th 2007 also redefined the term.   They write:

On occasion, however, severe suffering persists; in such a circumstance a patient may ask his physician for assistance in ending his life by providing Physician-assisted Death (PAD). PAD is defined as a physician providing, at the patient's request, a lethal medication that the patient can take by his own hand to end otherwise intolerable suffering. The term PAD is utilized in this document with the belief that it captures the essence of the process in a more accurately descriptive fashion than the more emotionally charged designation Physician-assisted Suicide. 2

Dick Walters, one of the founders of Death with Dignity Vermont, puts it this way: “Suicide is a desperate act.” He continues, “It’s done in a back alley, a barn. It destroys families.”3 In Tikkun magazine, a progressive Jewish publication, Barbara Coombs Lee, past president of Compassion in Dying, an off-shoot of the Hemlock Society, in her article, “Dying in the Spirit: A Progressive View of Decision-Making at Life’s End,” takes this all a step further. She suggests that those who oppose physician-assisted suicide adhere to a despicable god. She writes:

Prevailing religious doctrine often portrays an externalized and authoritarian God as sole arbiter of how and when we die. Images of a jealous and powerful deity using death as the ultimate avenging act support rigid notions of good and evil. In this narrative any human hand in death is immoral.4

 And so the attempt is made to make suicide the ugly word, which of course it is. At the same time supporters of the term physician-assisted death hope it will not be seen as ugly, but it also is!

 Twisting of Concepts and Ideas

 In a shameful twist Kitts implies that the law in Oregon has given physicians a chance to talk with the elderly who are dying and thereby prevent them from committing suicide. Something they allegedly would not do without this law! Another illogical point is that not very many of the dying use this method; they simply want to be assured that it is there if they have need.

 But the shameless ploy of community versus isolation that is pushed by the Death with Dignity advocates is used by Kitts in a deplorable way.  She uses Scripture and the biblical idea of community. Kitts writes:

The apostle Paul claims the deep connection between the individual and the community when he writes in 1 Corinthians 12:26, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it. If one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” Dying under the Death and Dignity Act is no exception. (21)

 One of the important but often unspoken issues connected to the Oregon law which allows physician-assisted suicide is that it is a law promoted by the white upper-middle class while it works against the poor. Wesley J. Smith, author of Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, writes of how leadership in the disability communities “are almost unanimously opposed to legalization” since “disabled people are both devalued and overwhelmingly poor.”  Smith goes on to write of the law in Oregon “assisted suicide is covered as ‘comfort care’ under Oregon’s Medicaid health plan, which rations health care to the poor. Thus while Oregon will pay for poor citizens to kill themselves, it sometimes will not pay for the far more expensive treatment of some life-threatening conditions such as a few late-stage cancers and premature birth.”5

 Smith writes about two respected German academics, one a doctor, the other a law professor, who wrote a book in the early part of 1920 that would start Germany down the road to the final solution. The book, Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life, written by Karl Binding and Alferd Hoche, singles out several human categories the authors felt were unworthy of life.

 One of the categories consisted of those who “have been irretrievably lost as a result of illness or injury, who fully understand their situation, possess and have somehow expressed an urgent wish for release.”6 The ideas in Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life were so well accepted by the German people that by the1930s Hitler was able to use many of Germany’s respected doctors in Nazi crimes against humanity.

 Beyond the many ethical and technical issues involved in physician-assisted suicide is the clear biblical mandate of not killing. Ignoring this commandment eventually leads to the killing of the innocent, the killing of the souls of those who allow killing and the killing of a nation whose citizens no longer care for the weak and helpless. The doctor Kitts interviewed expressed his perception of his first assisted suicide with the chilling remark, “It’s so crisp. One moment we go from both of us talking and then a few moments later one of us is dead.”(Italics mine)(21) Hopefully those called by Jesus will shudder!

 From Evil to Foolishness

John P. Ferre has written his article, “Animals Are People, Too: Pet Heaven in Popular Books” in the post-modern style of simply reporting and not making any theological or moral judgments. Ferre concludes his article with an honest evaluation that the books he has written about mirror “American religious faith:” make use of the Bible yet also  contain “contradictory traditions,” including spiritualism. What is perhaps the most troubling part of this piece, which is filled with new age silliness, is the huge list of books recommended at the end of the article. The books range from scriptural with a bit of silliness thrown in to outright anti-Christian bias. The author of The Other Side of Death writes:

… my experience has shown me that whatever our “religion” is—what we devoutly believed in—is what we’ll find. The Jew will find Moses, or a prophet of old. The Christian will see Jesus; the Buddhist, Buddha, and so on. …

… the “theology” of heaven is universal; we can never be separated from God; we are our own devil; there is no original sin; every soul is an incarnation of God …

One can only ask, what were the Editors of Horizons thinking of when they recommended those books?

 The Cruelty of Misrepresentation

Joan Chittister’s writing on her web column was chosen as a means of honoring the Amish and illuminating the terrible event of October 2006 when a disturbed man killed five young Amish girls and wounded five more. But once again this is deception. Chittister’s article, “What Kind of People Are These?’ does little to honor the Amish.

 In writing about their faith she explains all of the Amish’s practical Christianity, that is, their pacifism and all that entails. Chittister also explains some of their history, their persecution, suffering and exile. But she ties none of this to the very foundation of their Christianity, their faith in Jesus Christ.

 Chittister does not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ; she writes in one of her books, “’The tomb was empty,’ the Scriptures said later, metaphorically perhaps but pointedly, nevertheless.” Continuing with her subject of resurrection Chittister also destroys Jesus Christ by dividing his person. She writes, “Where once they had known Jesus, in retrospect people now saw the Christ, the anointed one of God for whom they waited as well.”7 Chittister has not honored the Christianity of the Amish because she does not honor Jesus Christ in his true being nor does she honor his work of redemption.

 Chittister is a pacifist as are the Amish. But a better and more faithful witness for the Amish wrote on the web around the same time as Chittister. Theologian Ben Witherington, also a pacifist, wrote of Marian Fisher, the young Amish girl who attempted to buy time for the others by asking to be killed first, and he wrote of the Amish as a people. I will quote a small portion of what Witherington wrote here:

 There is a deep, spiritual connection between Jesus and his people, like a head attached to a body, such that what happens to us, in some mysterious way, happens to him, though he be in heaven. I do not understand it, but I know this is true for he said so.

 So I stand with the Amish and I stand with Jesus. Not all the armies who ever marched have had the power or effect on history of that one single and solitary life, the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, on all of humankind going on now for over 2,000 years.8

 Jesus Christ has called us to faithfulness: faithful in life, faithful in death. We are also called to be faithful to the body of Christ, the Church. That faithfulness includes honesty in what we speak and write. When writing about death, as Christians, we must also lift up life.

For this is the will of My Father. That every one who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day. (John 6: 40) For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.” (Philippians 3:20-21) NASB