From
The May 2005 St John's Eagle
“Let God Decide!" - By John Harcourt
It's for God to say when our lives should end, we often hear. "He will call us to Himself in His own good time; till then, we must wait impatience and in hope. God is the Lord of Life: He gives, He takes away — He alone."
Yet many who express such sentiments are not entirely consisten. Some of them approve — often stridently — of capital punishmen. Most of them justify killing on the battlefield or in defense of self or loved ones. A large number — apparently a majority — accept the fact of abortion or at least a woman's right to choose. Family planning makes it possible, within obvious limits, for us to determine when life shall begin. And even if we talk of the seamless web of life, we rarely extend our compassion to the animals and plants we destroy to grace our tables or enlarge our profits — or just for sport.
So in practice, the warning not to play God is directed mainly against genetic engineers and those contemplating suicide. But at the same time that our society is being torn apart by divisions over such issues as abortion and gay rights, a new ground for dissension is already present among us: euthanasia. We read of Doctor Kevorkian with a mixture of fascination and horror. We debate the mortality of physician-assisted deaths. A book called Final Exit, containing detailed information on the use of lethal drugs, has made the best-seller list. The principle of euthanasia has been proposed to voters and, except in Oregon, thus far defeated. Meanwhile, membership in groups like the Hemlock Society continues to grow.
At bottom, the question is one of freedom. The major religious traditions all antedate the rise of democracy and the modern concept of the individual. Their God is most frequently portrayed, at least in the West, as as an absolute monarch who requires unquestioning obedience to His commands. But our prevailing cultural-values do in fact affect our religious thinking. We talk of the sacredness of the individual — of personal rights and freedoms — as though these ideas were the wisdom of the churches rather than the insights of eighteenth-century deists and freethinkers. We are increasingly likely to hear, even on Sunday morning, that freedom is God's most precious gift to use, that we have been given the responsibility for shaping our lives in accordance with His will. We speak much of the quality of life and of our personal obligation to enhance that quality in others and ourselves.
Hence, sooner. or later, we shall have to rethink our views of dying in terms of the quality of the life-at-stake rather than of its mere prolongation in time. Already we question the appropriateness of continuing medical procedures that are almost certain to prove prove useless. DO NOT RESUSCITATE is generally regarded as a merciful decision. The passive choice of death by refusing treatment or perhaps even food is not universally condemned and sometimes even applauded. We can at least understand when someone elects to end life rather than use up the savings needed for family to pay staggering bills. We can even show some measure of sympathy for the person who decides to end life when its quality threatens to give way to pain and humiliating physical weakness, who rejects the return to diapers of a "life" sustained only by tubes and machines
Might not someone say, God is the God of freedom, who has given us our own measure of freedom so that we may determine not only when life is to begin and how it is to be lived, but also when it may be ended while grace and dignity are still possible?
This I believe.
Professor
Harcourt is the Charles A. Dana Professor of English Emeritus at Ithaca College. He died on 17 May 2005, and he wished this column to be published as his last upon his death.
