If I were to put my delightful cat Doobie in our traveling cage and stop feeding him until the meowing and crying ended and he finally died, I would be guilty of a Class 6 felony in Virginia. Under the law, I would be eligible for “a term of imprisonment of not less than one year nor more than five years… and a fine of not more than $2,500, either or both.” Yet in Florida Michael Schiavo— who years ago abandoned his marital vows along with his disabled wife and now lives with and has had two children with his girlfriend—found a judge whom he convinced that his late wife Terri wouldn’t have wanted to live in the disabled state she was in. Somehow this judge was convinced by ‘clear and convincing evidence,’ the highest level of civil proof—in spite of the fact that Terri never wrote a living will nor left any evidence of advanced directives. And in spite of parents who wanted to care for her, and believed Terri would never have wanted to die like she did, this same judge ordered the removal of her feeding tube—relegating Terri to a slow, torturous, two-week long death by dehydration and starvation. But wait! Florida has a law that should have applied to this case (but, of course, wasn’t).
It is aptly named the “Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation of Elderly Persons and Disabled Adults” Act (see Florida Penal Code, Sect. 825.102). Under it, it’s a serious felony to cause the “[a]ggravated abuse of [a]... disabled adult” by, among other things, “[w]illfull tortur[e].” It is also a felony if one responsible for an incapacitated adult “willfully or by culpable negligence neglects [a]...disabled adult” or fails “to provide [a]...disabled adult with the care, supervision, and services necessary to maintain the... disabled adult’s physical and mental health, including, but not limited to, food, nutrition...” Now that Terri is dead, any applications of law or nonviolent moral action on her behalf are moot. Yet her legacy is such that the Church should be energized to fight for a culture of life to prevail over the culture of death like never before.
(The term “a culture of life” was one the late Pope John Paul II introduced to the world’s lexicon during his amazing 26-year papacy. He will be sorely missed by both Catholics and Protestants worldwide. His life and life ethic are memorialized in our next issue of CCT.) For either a culture of life and its attendant law will prevail, or one that would send me to prison for killing my cat, while protecting Michael for killing his wife. Tragically, I think it is really unclear, at this moment in America, which one it will be, as no one stood up for Terri at the end—everyone failed her and left her to die. For many secularists, our cherished constitutional history of the right to life and freedom of religion has morphed into a dedicated effort at building a civic life that is characterized by the freedom from religion and the culture of life. Hostility toward life and religion—and toward Christianity in particular—has grown into a multifaceted cause that is scrubbing away all reference to God and reliance on faith-based actions in the public square.
Taking the dubious doctrine of separation of church and state to absolute ends, militant secularists have used speech codes (on many of our best college campuses), extremist analogies (comparing George Bush to Hitler), litigation and radical jurists (Roe v. Wade and the Massachusetts case for gay marriage, among a myriad other cases), and threats and violence (the quasi-terrorist antics of Act-Up against the Church) to promote its cause and deny any influence of faith-based policy in the public forums of our nation. This secular hostility has also played itself out in psychotherapy and mental health care—in what has been generously described as “the faith gap.” Compared to 85% of the populace who claim to believe in God, with as many as two-thirds or more believing in Christian faith and values, those numbers are nearly reversed when mental health professionals are queried about their beliefs in God—the great majority don’t. No doubt one reason a great many conservative church leaders are skeptical, even hostile toward psychology and counseling is that so many therapists are themselves unbelievers.
They are too often agents of unbelief since counseling and psychotherapy does, whether by design or effect, transfer the values of the therapist into the life of the client. This fact alone may be the greatest reason to advocate for a robust Christian counseling in the life of the Church. As recently as 30 years ago, the Democratic left were the champions of life, of protecting the rights of the poor and the weak in society. In 1977, Senator Hubert Humphrey stated the maxim that should be a principled policy of all political parties: “The moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life—the children; the twilight of life— the elderly; and the shadows of life—the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.” Modern liberalism’s embrace of abortion, physician-assisted suicide, and a pervasive euthanasia for the elderly and the disabled has thoroughly abandoned this ethic of life. Would it be unfair to assert that the secular left in America has become the enemy of the preservation of life? I think not.
Columnist David Limbaugh, speaking on the wrath faced by the current Harvard University President for his recent and arguable remarks on the dearth of women in math and science, held forth that, “This isn’t just thought control, it’s thought prison. The Left is increasingly intellectually bankrupt and delusional. But worse, it has become boorishly dictatorial, not even sparing would-be allies, like Clintonite Lawrence Summers, from its hellish wrath, if they dare not just to disagree with their dogma, but to express a willingness to consider ideas the [politically-correct thought] ‘code’ forbids.” Likewise, Hugh Hewitt in WORLD magazine (April 9, 2005) chronicled the unbridled venom of the Left against conservatives and Christians. From Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd shrilly warning about theocratic tyranny and religious extremists who someday may start assassinating liberal politicians, to Andrew Sullivan branding Bill Kristol an ‘ally of religious radicalism,’ the lies of the Left seemingly know no bounds.
Having lost sight of normal, mainstream religious America by branding it dangerous and an object of legitimate hatred, the Left’s anti-Christian propagandists, in “complete separation from logic or factual support” now put in print hate-filled vitriole “for whom no lie is too big, no exaggeration too bold.” Hewitt rightly calls it astonishing. Let’s also call it alarming and a prelude to proper arming. Princeton University bio-ethicist Peter Singer is probably the best thinker— and the most influential advocate—of the Death Culture, putting animals on par with humans and arguing for a pervasive euthanasia for people who no longer meet societal criteria for rational self-awareness and usefulness. In his recognition by TIME magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people (April 18, 2005), Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania said of him, “It is easy to demonize Singer, 58, since his theory points toward conclusions that some find morally repugnant—for example, that euthanasia might be the appropriate response to the intractable suffering of an infant born with a terrible genetic malady.
Those who scorn his views can rarely produce an argument about why he is wrong—they simply don’t like his conclusions. But ethics is all about arguments, not moral pronouncements.” This is nonsense twice over. Ethics is about argument, yes, but the ethics that are rightly grounded in capital-T Truth are the morally persuasive arguments that reason the best ethical principles revealed to us in the Scriptures. And from God’s revelation, the most powerful claims for the sanctity (as opposed to the Death Culture’s reliance on the quality) of life can be argued with a certitude that goes far beyond the mere subjective dislike of the values of the culture of death. Tragically, if God and His revelation are rejected in toto, then Caplan’s assertion may well be true, for what reasons can be given, and by what standard can one argue anything better? Power and coercion become, in the end, the only instruments left “to persuade” anyone in a postmodern, post-Christian world that rejects a universal Truth standard. Remember what Jesus said in response to goofy speculations about marriage in heaven, an assertion that could easily apply to this issue, as well as to most human imagination without a transformed mind: “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures, nor the power of God” (Matthew 22:29). And while we would not assert this Truth so boldly in an adversarial debate with a hostile audience, that would surely be our covert presupposition.
It is the overt foundation of every article and column in this issue, and the reasoned knowledge of godly ethics that you will learn in this and our next issue of CCT (13-1) will guide you in most ethical practice quandaries, and arm you for many a good ethical debate. To his credit, Singer will engage in respectable debate—and thinking Christians should prepare to debate these issues with anyone who will respect two sides of an argument. With a growing number of militant secularist opponents who hate religion and embrace the death culture, however, there is no rational debate, no ‘play-by-the-rules’ engagement whereby the best ideas win. No, with these folks and the culture of death they purvey, there can only be resistance. Since their aim is not to hear us, but to squelch our freedoms and ideas and right to speak openly—to effectively rule over or destroy us—there can be only warfare. It is time to acknowledge the extent and virulence of this hostility, properly judge its corrosive effects in the Church and on our nation, and join the various efforts to resist it. From our end, this ‘war of ideas’ must be waged—and it is dark and deadly ideas that we war against, not the people who spew them out. Our resistance should be non-violent, ethically fought, well planned and coordinated, courageously pursued, and patiently persevered. The culture of death must be resisted or it will rule over us. Take help from internet counseing .
Thomas Jefferson once noted presciently, “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” Therefore, unless good people stand up and fight for good government, we will be overcome by bad government—by the anti-Christian forces of death that are determinedly pushing their dark agenda upon the nation and the world. I know you see it happening. Have you joined the resistance? Are you fighting for good government—for the forces of “human life and happiness?” If not, isn’t it time to begin? End-of-life care is just one of the increasingly “hot issues” of bio-ethics. Following are two excellent articles by wellknown Christian leaders around another big bio-ethics issue currently—stem-cell research and its application to medical treatment. A well-reasoned and tightly argued case by Tony Perkins and David Prentice is followed by the eloquent and passionate advocacy of Joni Eareckson Tada. Read on and be armed. George Ohlschlager, J.D., LCSW, is AACC Senior Editor and Writer, Executive Director of the American Board of Christian Counselors, and Chairman of AACC’s Law & Ethics Committee. He maintains a nationwide clinical/ethics/forensic consulting and training practice, and teaches in the Liberty University Center for Counseling and Family Studies and at St. Petersburg Theological Seminary.
