Another board???!

[Soulfyre]

You might ask, "With all the boards on this forum, why one more?" Your question would be a good one. Let me assure you that I did not set this board up just because I am so enamored with the sound of my own words that I feel that your lives would not be properly enriched without them. In fact, it is my hope that I will not be the only person writing here. Both Melinda and Eric are profound thinkers and writers, and are gifted with a gentle touch and loving hearts. Often they will share briefly, or make an insightful response, but I long to read from them what journalists often refer to as "thought pieces"--longer posts that will allow them to share their gifts with us in a more directed manner, to, in the "evangelical" vernacular, "share what the Lord has laid on their hearts." Now please don't cringe when I say this (actually, I even cringe when I say this), for I think there is, indeed, a valid place for such heartfelt devotion, informed by study, worship, prayer, and life in the trenches. Certainly it was true of the many Puritan authors, whose sweetness of life and clarity of vison challenge us today, as did the fathers and mothers of the church before them. But these lived in a time in which such writing was stressed, and literary endeavor, in both reading and writing was an important way of holding all our thoughts captive to Christ. On this board, I hope to allow Eric and Melinda, as they have time (and I know that their time is limited), to write unhindered by the bounds of set topics and questions. And occasionally I will post a piece as well.

Incidentally, if there are others who wish, from time to time, to try their hand at this type of writing, let us know by sending us a copy of what you would like to post. We will be happy to respond.

God bless us, everyone, in His Son, our Savior and Lord,

Matthew (soulfyre)

[melinky]

Matthew,

Thank you for your words of encouragement and praise. This sounds like a challenge that I need to take. I'm so glad you pulled out the proverbial boot to give me a kick-start!

Your sister in Christ,

Melinda

[Soulfyre]

The media circus surrounding the recent death by starvation of Terri Schiavo has served to remind us again of the watershed of Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court decided that matters of death (in this case, the death of an unwanted baby) are ultimately issues of privacy. Evidently the freedoms for which our Revolutionary War was fought, those inalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, are hopelessly anachronistic. Our men (and women) in black now extol our inalienable rights to privacy, self-determination, and pleasure--not its pursuit, mind you, but its realization! We now live in a society of entitlement: it is no longer our responsibility to work for our own benefit and the benefit of others, but the moral responsibility of others to labor to assure us of the kind of life we believe we deserve; it is no longer our obligation to apply ourselves to the development of virtue, but to demand that others respect our preference for vice; it is no longer incumbent upon us to succor and defend the powerless, but rather it is our right to eliminate the powerless if they interfere with our the life to which we believe we are entitled. And these pretensions are liberally enforced by an unelected oligarchy who are appointed for life. Of course, they can be impeached for "gross immorality", but in our politically "correct" atmosphere, who will have the timerity to define what is, in fact, immoral?

I have hesitated to post concerning this issue because of the media circus that attended this event. As as many pointed out, the ending of the life of Terry Schiavo was by no means unique, except that it attracted the attention of a press hungry for controversy. After all, the battle between the "vast right-wing conspiracy" and the "looney left" makes for good press. In many ways, it is unfortunate that this issue has not attracted our attention before, but this is typical of our taste for selective indignation. If a young black girl is missing, scarcely an eyebrow is raised. But if it is a young white girl, the Amber alert is sounded and the press lathers at the mouth to keep us innundated with the news. It reveals how selectively our culture values people. In many ways, Terry Schiavo is no different. If the news story had been about an elderly black man in a nursing home, it is doubtful whether a sound would have been heard except his death rail, and that only by the grieving family. But the Terry Schiavo case had all the prerequisites of a good drama: a young, attractive white woman cut down in the prime of her life; religious, grieving parents willing to undertake her care; and an adulterous husband whose motives could be called into question. Nevertheless, collective guilt over our selective indignation should not be used to avoid this topic entirely.

After all, the question here is fundamental: what is life, and how do we value it? When our culture was more informed by, for lack of a better designation, Judeo-Christian religious values, this question was answered with relative clarity. Life was the provenance of God. "Quality of Life" was not ours to decide, for who can truly assign "quality" to life but God? Even the Hippocratic Oath, with its pagan origins, intoned "First...do no harm." But since our secular society has undertaken to define all things from the assumption of a mechanistic naturalism, humanity itself becomes merely one of several competing organisms within the eco-structure of our world. And the one which is, seemingly, the most expendable. Presumptions concerning the "survival of the fittest" calls into question the definition of fittest, and if we are to, in fact, be consistent with our Darwinian roots, we must finally admit that Nietzsche was right when he wrote Mensch und Ubermensch--it is the will to power that defines us, and we must utilize whatever methods necessary to strengthen the gene pool, culling the less able from our midst, assuring the survival and thriving of our species. Of course, it is commonly thought Nietzsche ultimately succumbed to insanity, but who are we to argue with success? Anyone who supposes our culture to be sane has definitively lost their grip on reality.

What does it say of a society who calls us to "save the whales" and allows the unhindered slaughter of millions of unborn children, often merely because they are "inconvenient"? What of a society in which single women feel justified in using men as sperm donors so that they can meet their desire to address the ring of their biological clock without the added baggage of a husband (heaven forfend!)? What of a society that defines what a child needs primarily in terms of financials rather than family? What of a society that, in the guise of "death with dignity", masks a growing demand for us to be able to finally determine the span of our life, or that of others, based on moving targets like "value"? In fact, what IS valuable about life in our culture? When we cannot "contribute fully" to our society, when we become a net financial liability, is it time to "pull the plug"? With no concepts of an absolute--with no word from God, only and empty void--how can we avoid this conclusion? To deny God but conclude otherwise is hopeless romanticism.

While many may have disagreed with the Pope's decision not to vacate the Papacy when he became physically impaired, I believe his statement by his life was unambiguous. It is not we who decide who is valuable or not, who can contribute or not--it is God. It is not in our society to assign importance or value. What basis would we use? In our politically correct society, while it may not be popular to count the disabled as of less importance to our community, this is only window dressing. Of course, no one will argue that the unwanted unborn, the disabled, or the elderly are less human--there is a not-so-subtle move towards diminishing their value. Terry Schiavo was merely a dramatized example of this problem. It is no wonder that advocates for the disabled spoke up quickly. Perhaps it is they, even more than others, who realized the real implication of the court decisions. If the fate of someone who could not speak for themselves could be left in the hands of a less-than-disinterested party and the cold legal calculations of a secular court, then who, truly, is safe? And what of a Living Will? Like suicide, it leaves little room for a change of mind. We surround ourselves with high-sounding language like "no extraordinary means" in prolonging life, but how does that keep pace with science, and what, in fact, does it mean? It used to be thought that food and water were not extraordinary (after all, we have a welfare system that attempts to address this need), but a common mercy?

Years ago (almost twenty, in fact), Francis Schaeffer and Dr. Koop were attempting, in the fashion of Paul Revere, to sound the alarm. Fortunately, we listened to Paul Revere. Schaeffer and Koop, however, were treated like extremists. After all, they warned what the unrestricted access to abortion would mean. They pointed out that the simple demarcation of the birth canal did little to separate infanticide in the womb from infanticide outsitde of the womb. And where would such arrogance lead? If we were able, without compunction, to assign to death the most innocent and helpless among us, who would be next? The elderly, the infirm, the disabled? Perhaps, anyone suspected of having a genetic anomaly. At one time, we considered people of color to be less human. To our shame, some even justified slavery and the later hidden slavery of segregation and discrimination using the Bible, although many Christian voices rose in protest and this folly (of course, the founder of planned parenthood was a proponent of eugenics--genetic cleansing through sterilization--on a much wider scale, but that is rarely discussed). Can we not recognize that having turned the corner with Roe v. Wade, we have now opened ourselves to a holocaust of which Hitler's racial cleansing of the Jews was only a harbinger? How can we so easily forget the lessons of history, without realizing that we are blithely signing our own death warrants? Or will we only realize when we face death at the hands of a utilitarian society who no longer finds us of value?

In Christ,

Matthew (soulfyre)