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A Time for Everything
J. D. Pendry
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,… -Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 NIV
Ecclesiastes
3 is thought provoking. I call it
Bible poetry, which may not be proper, but not being a trained Biblical
scholar, they let me get away with it.
Did you know the verses made a hit rock and roll song, Turn,
Turn, Turn recorded by the Byrds in 1966? I was always curious about how many of 1966’s
flower power hippies knew the origin of the lyrics. There are many commentaries
written about this passage by theologians and Bible scholars. Study them sometime and, like me, you may
wonder what happens when we impose our will on outcomes. I’m not well equipped to get into deep
philosophical conversations about topics such as this, but I’m sure that Paul, my resident website
Chaplain and one of my spiritual mentors, will grab me by the stacking swivel
and jerk me back into line if I stray. I
have some thoughts I need to try to descramble relevant to this Bible passage
and current events. Listen in and maybe
you can straighten me out.
In about two months, I expect
to be a first time Grandpa. A few days
ago, some three-dimensional sonograms of Olivia Grace turned up in
my email. I remember the days when
parents selected boy and girl names for inbound babies, then relied on
soothsaying to guess the child’s sex.
Now, we can observe a completely formed human with two months still left
on the construction schedule. People
abort babies at this late stage, and sometimes even later, calling it a freedom
of choice. They somehow justify it in
their minds because the child is not yet physically born. There
is a time to be born. Can you and I
decide when that time is? I believe
Olivia is already born; we just haven’t welcomed her into our physical
world. She is a defenseless, totally
dependent human.
Are you familiar with the Terry Schiavo case? You can study it at the link provided. For fifteen years, Terry, who suffers from
brain damage has been kept alive with a feeding tube. All of her body functions work. There are no machines used to keep her
alive. She’s a living, breathing,
responsive human (watch the videos at the website) who is simply not able to
feed herself so it’s done with a feeding tube connected to her at
mealtimes. Terry’s husband, who on a
side light has fathered children with another woman during these years, wants
to unplug the feeding tube and let Terry die.
The true, but unpleasant way to put it is to starve her to death and it
looks as though the legal system is going to help him. When Olivia arrives, she’ll not be capable of
feeding herself. Would it be OK to let
her starve?
Do you have an experience
with living wills? My Father had
one. To summarize it for you the will
specified that he was to be “unplugged” if his body was not capable of
functioning on its own and machines were keeping him alive. It also specified that if his body was
functioning he was to receive nourishment by whatever means to keep him
alive. Dad had a severe stroke several
months before he died. We fed him
through a tube during those last months.
He wasn’t very responsive like Terry is and it wasn’t pleasant to see a
man you knew as physically and mentally strong in such a state, but when was not our decision to make. Dad stayed with us until it was time to die.
Have you watched Clint
Eastwood’s movie, Million Dollar Baby? It’s entertaining, but I wasn’t happy with
the ending. I actually left the movie a
little depressed. I expected Clint to be
in character, go after the dirty boxer, and make everything right. Instead, Clint’s character decided it was
time for his injured boxer to die so he performed a Jack Kevorkian on her and
left us thinking it was the right thing to do.
Euthanasia is legal in some
countries. Some want it to be legal
here.
Once again, I’ve arrived at
a point in an essay when I’m not sure that I’ve cleared anything up for you or
me. Maybe I’ve just caused you more
confusion. There is a time to be born and a time to die and
unless in physical defense of ourselves or at war, should we make a conscious
choice to impose our will on either?
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Schneidmill's Weekly Devotional
J.D. Pendry
is author of The Three Meter Zone, Random House/Ballantine.
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JD Pendry, All Rights Reserved.
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