Weaver 1 Nandri Weaver Mr. Jonathan Patches Capstone Project 17 February 2021 To Die or Not to Die? Imagine a place where a child can decide that they no longer want to live, and a doctor is legally allowed to kill them. In Belgium it is legal for minors of any age to choose euthanasia. In other words there is no age restrictions on euthanasia requests. A seventeen year old who was terminally ill was the first minor that euthanasia was performed on. Euthanasia is the act of putting a person to death painlessly or allowing them to die by withholding medical services, usually because of a painful and incurable disease. The Greek word translates euthanasia to mean “good death.” The struggle between the longing to stop suffering and the longing to survive is something that humans have wrestled with for a long time. Euthanasia is becoming more accepted by society because they are embracing the curse of death instead of letting God be the final judge of when a human’s life is over. There are two types of euthanasia that I will be talking about throughout my paper. The first type is called active euthanasia which is when an action is taken with the intention to cause death. The second type is called passive euthanasia, this is the action of withdrawing and withholding of life-sustaining treatment with the result that death will occur as a natural consequence of the disease. A debate called the nutrition-hydration debate states that there is a difference between killing someone and letting them die. The question is then raised if feeding Weaver 2 someone who has no chance of survival is worth it or if they should just let them die? It really all depends on the intention because if the intention is to relieve the patient of a burdensome treatment, or if it is useless to preserve their life, then it is not considered euthanasia. But if the intention is to bring on death, it is considered euthanasia. There are multiple terms that are used instead of the term euthanasia. Supporters of euthanasia use more favorable terms such as “mercy killing” or “death with dignity.” Sometimes euthanasia is referred to as physician assisted suicide or physician assisted dying. Not only are there different terms but also many different views on whether it should be allowed. Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia, Luxembourg, Western Australia, Spain, and Canada. Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, Germany, the Australian state of Victoria, in eight of the U.S. states, and in the District of Columbia. There are many more places where people are trying to legalize euthanasia. Sometimes it is said that we live in a “culture of death.” Abortion, euthanasia, infanticide, and suicide are all things that are vastly prevalent in our culture and are becoming more accepted. The society that we live in is accepting of the termination of one of its members by allowing euthanansia (Tang ch.1). Sadly, our society tends to value people for what they do for us rather than for who they really are as a person. People who have good jobs, a lot of money, big houses, and or expensive cars are individuals whom society tends to look up to. To society these are people who have an exceptional status and we view them as important. We have established human status to determine human value. “Euthanasia is a social decision. It involves the one to be killed, the one doing the killing, and it involves a complying society to make it acceptable” (Tang ch.7). Society as a whole should feel responsible for protecting the sick, weak, and poor. They should not be undervaluing them as human beings, which euthansia is Weaver 3 supporting. As soon as people start to reduce their morals concerning human value it is easy for them to accept euthanasia and the inhumane treatment of people. We saw this happening in World War two in the concentration camps. Euthanasia was actually a term used by the Nazis that meant to terminate those whom they considered worthless to the society that they were trying to create. The medical field work is also being affected by the way society is valuing people. Medical decisions are no longer based on moral ideals but are being focused in a business frame of mind. Dr. Alex Tang is a Bible teacher, medical educator, practical and moral theologian, and a pediatrician. In his book on euthanasia he states “The concept of healthcare as a business, however has changed medical care such that the bottom line is not healing but dollars and cents. This means that patients are not treated as human beings but as commodities. Once we begin to treat people as means and objects, we devalue and dehumanize them” (Tang ch. 1). Next I will be focusing on some of the cultural trends or lies that exist in our global society, which causes people to accept physician-assisted suicide. One lie that people tell themselves is “I can do what I want because this is my own body” (Tang Ch.1). As a Christian I believe that our body is a temple of God and that we have to honor God with our bodies. We should not do anything to harm our bodies which would include killing ourselves or allowing a doctor to end our life. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). These verses are clear that our bodies are not our own and that we are to glorify God with our bodies. “If man was indeed created in the image of God and he was created for a life of fellowship with God, then death is alien to anything that God in his creation of man intended before man’s fall.” (Koop 113) Weaver 4 A trend that is seen in the secular world of medicine is that doctors are no longer focusing on moral traditions but instead on the business and financial aspect.. As stated before when people are being viewed as a way to make money this dehumanizes them. This would make it much simpler for doctors to kill their patients if they are viewing them more like objects. We live in what is known as a pluralistic society, which means that it is based on a conglomeration of principles and beliefs. This is a popular lifestyle trend where anything and everything is deemed as acceptable. As Christians we have certain beliefs and we do not believe that everything is acceptable. We are to live upright and holy lives that are pleasing to God. Jesus goes as far as saying not only is murder wrong but he equalizes hating someone with murder. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15) Should quality of life be considered at the end of one’s life? Our lives are made up of good and bad times and experiences. When people struggle with depression, heartbreak, the loss of a loved one, financial problems, or injury, these are all times when their circumstances can make them feel that the quality of their life seems low. As Christians we recognize that we are not the determiners of the quality of our life. Everyone’s life has meaning and God has a purpose for them. We need to let God be the one who determines when our life should come to an end. We should not let our opinion of the quality of our life take control of us that we would decide to end our life. There are many places where the Bible talks on these things. In Ecclesiastes 3:1 “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (ESV). Also in Acts 1:7 Jesus said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.”’ The biblical standpoint would be that “Quality of life cannot be defined by Weaver 5 external factors. The quality of one’s life is deeply personal and yoked oftentimes to that person’s relationship with God. Healthy, successful Americans may have a low quality of life due to emotional unrest and poor moral decisions, while a handicapped person in a developing country may live a joy-filled life. Physical sickness also does not determine a person’s quality of life, so trying to evaluate it is not within our power” (In End-of-Life Decisions). Many people have wrestled with the following questions for a long time. Why does God allow suffering if he loves His people? Why doesn’t He choose to heal everyone? First, suffering was never God’s original plan but came as a result of the fall of man and because God gave everyone the freedom of choice. We have to choose to believe that God is still faithful even when we are suffering, because ultimately it is not His fault. An example of someone who believed in the faithfulness of God even in the midst of suffering is Job in the Bible. He went through a great deal of suffering and still trusted in the goodness of God. Job had lost pretty much everything he had. All of his children died at one time, and his wealth and health were stripped away from him.