Featured Assisted Suicides

I know many believe all life and death decisions should be left to G-d, but I also think we were given brains for a reason.
Many here do cry foul when a parent refuses medical treatment for a child, and that child dies. If it is okay to use medication and artificial life support, why is wrong to refuse to use those? Both are ways of saying "okay, we think this is in OUR hands to choose."

Let me give you two true scenarios that have never left my mind, because I was there and involved in the care of both these people.

1. An elderly gentleman with end stage colon cancer. He was on state medical care and had hours or days to live...you never know which. I held his hand as he screamed for his mother, as he bled out all over the sheets, fully aware and conscious of what was happening. Since he was on state care and in a nursing home facility, who cared to make sure he was comfortable? Who cared to take on the cost of easing his pain?
Nobody.
All I could do was offer distraction, keep him clean, and hold his hand.
He begged for death. He begged to be let go.
I will never, NEVER forget that man's screams.
Jesus no longer walks the earth performing healing miracles. Death happens, and it happens in horrible, painful ways.
If the option existed to let this man's suffering end sooner, I can't see where saying "no, assisted suicide is wrong. Sorry bud, this is what our loving Father wants for you."

Uh uh. No way. MAN sinned and caused death and suffering, NOT our Father. The repercussions of that echo down and the just and unjust continue to suffer the results. We have the means to help those suffering, whether those means are through an antibiotic to heal someone and save them from death, or a medication to ease pain and hasten certain death. Again, why is one wrong and not the other?

2. A man with dementia. Given the normal human life span and that his body was quite healthy, he may have had 20 years left. Who knows.
He became violent. Very violent. His family could not handle him so he was brought into residential. Very tall and strong, and I do mean strong. He picked up a loveseat and tossed it across the room like it was a toothpick.
He dragged me to his room with the intention of rape.
He tried to drag another resident to his room with the same intention.
He got a hold of a knife and I had to use every psychological trick in the book to finally get him to willingly hand it over.
What were the options?
There was no way for his family to care for him at home. There was no way he could safely live in a specialty care facility without posing an extreme danger to others.
I suppose he could have been locked up like an animal, drugged up from the outside to have people come in and provide his personal care. Money wasn't an issue. No amount of money could have bought him the care he would have required to be cared for properly and keep him safe from himself and to keep others safe from him.
I can't say what happened for real, because nobody ever said it out loud, but once it was clear that he could no longer be cared for in that facility and had to be removed, we learned he had passed away.

The first is an example of a case where I think an assisted suicide would have been the merciful option and the second is where it seems that a mercy killing could not be condemned.

There are other situations I've seen. Those are the two that stand out in my mind.

I've watched some people slip peacefully into their next journey, and it was sweet to watch them be released from their physical problems. They were ready. However, not everyone dies that way. Some diseases cause horribly painful and prolonged deaths. Get someone in who can't afford to be made comfortable and/or without families, and you see some really nasty stuff that stays in your head. It doesn't go away.

Although it may not be noted in Scripture, common sense has to kick in here somewhere. Not everything is black and white. Not every situation is the same. We were given the gift of brains, knowledge, emotions, senses...they were meant to all work together and help us make this a better world for those around us. I don't see how refusing to use them and then putting the responsibility on G-d makes any sense. He left it to us to do the right thing, with a set of guidelines given to us in Scripture. Let's use them all.

 

Jesus said that those who were sick were in need of a physician, not an executor.

I find no verse in the Bible that tells us to kill the sick and suffering. I do however, find verses that tell us to heal the sick, to minister to their needs.

 

Look to the Cross

I agree that the suffering of human beings due to the fall of man can be down right horrendous. I have been to Africa and seen the children plaugued by malnutrition and neglect. The adults suffered as well. Most of us have never encountered any instances in which man is tormented by the extreme pains of death, and it is easy for us to say mercy killing is wrong.

This makes me look back to Jesus Christ, the prime example, for any question we may have. Remember the merciless abuse, his brutal beating, and unspeakable torment on the cross? They offered him vinegar in the midst of his pain, and he refused it. The element was intended to numb the pain and speed up his death. I do believe if our Creator, who suffered more than any ever shall, refused mercy killing, then we should follow in his steps.

 

There were many things done by Christ that cannot/were not meant to be repeated by modern man and would be wrong for us to try to follow. The crucifixion was a horrid example of what humans are capable of and the most amazing example of what Christ was capable of. It wasn't an example of what we are meant to do. It showed what we cannot do and was not meant as an example of what we should do.

If that were the case, we'd have to begin viewing horrendously painful deaths as noble and the closest we can get to being like Christ. That's a ridiculous (and dangerous) notion. We're to try to follow his exampled of love, generosity, unity, and hatred of sin...not try to BE him. Wasn't that the downfall of Satan and humankind?

 

I don't intend for the greedy medical establishment to torture me into keeping on living when it's hopeless while draining every dollar they can get that I want to will elsewhere.

 

I will allow others to "live by faith" on this one. If you ever find ME in that particular situation....Please SHOOT! :wavey: BTW I just got it...You are in an engineer unit and you go by "Sapper"...(nice) :thumbs:

 

Gina, in my previous post, I wasn't talking about trying to do what Christ did on the cross. If an observer of His suffering had intervened by killing Him prematurely would that death have fulfilled His purpose for being on the cross in the first place? If someone didn't allow Jesus to say "It is finished." would we have salvation through Him?

Luke 9:23 KJB - And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.

This is the example of what we should do. We are to deny ourselves of anything that isn't His will. We are to bear what is put upon us if we follow Him. Why wouldn't that include watching suffering of others until God determines when to take them? If/when God gives us that cross to bear, does He expect us to lay it down prematurely by killing someone else in order to end our own suffering?

I watched my mother die a slow and painful death from breast cancer. It took 12 years from her first diagnosis to the last 6 weeks of her life in a hospital room. In the last few months that led up to her final hospitalization, would God have approved if I'd taken a gun, put it between her eyes, and pulled the trigger? Because I didn't want to see her suffer? Because I didn't want to spend Thanksgiving sitting beside her in a hospital? Because I didn't want to bury her Christmas eve? Yes, her funeral was on December 24th.

Is it compassion for others that leads to "assisted suicide" or direct action that ends a life? Or, is it our desire to escape the cross of seeing the cross others bear?

Thou shalt not kill (murder) EXCEPT when it allows me to lay down my cross to bring my own suffering, as an observer, to an end. Is that what Jesus Christ taught us?

 

I am going to have to bow out of this conversation. Both sides are making good arguments. I know what I would do in most cases. However, I cannot prove that what I would do would be the right thing, only the merciful thing.

My conscience would be clear, and I would gladly face anyone's family with my explanation.

 

That's true, but a totally different situation as it was the fullness of our sins being atoned for and nothing we are expected to do.

That's a valid point. I'm just not sure if I can agree. I can understand that viewpoint, but it sounds like it's about us and not the person person suffering, which is what our focus should be.

I'm sorry you both had to go through that. I lost my mother to cancer too, my husband lost his wife to it, meaning his kids lost their mom to it.

I've not had to enact a decision on behalf of a loved one, but I did have to come to a decision in case. It was with one of my daughters who was being considered for open heart surgery. It's a long story, but to make it short...I felt that it would be selfish for me to allow her to suffer in order to do all things possible to save her life, should it come down to that. I know many will do anything in their power to keep their children alive and I don't disagree with those types of decisions as they are highly personal, but after much prayer and contemplation, I felt that if it would not be the right choice in our situation...that medical intervention that would cause her pain and suffering to keep her alive, under my directive, would be me being selfish and not having her best interests at heart...knowing that being at peace and in our Savior's arms would happen. It was heart rending, gut wrenching, rough to say the least and a consideration I'd never wish any parent to have to consider.

But...it happens. In the end, it is an immensely personal and family decision, imo.

I say that as someone who did what I could to support Terry Schindler-Schiavo's family's desire to keep her alive. That was their personal decision and I respected their right to it.

Either way, I can't see others stepping into extreme situations and judging right from wrong in those particular ones, as I see no Biblical directive one way or another in extreme cases. There are almost always exceptions to rules...situations that veer from the norm and call for flexibility in our thinking.

Each person in such a situation needs to ponder that question intensely. Assisted suicide calls agreement on both sides and is the desire of the suffering person.

Mercy killings...I see them as separate from murder, which seems defined in the Bible as a sudden rise against another, done out of anger or spite, which is why capital punishment is not considered murder according to the Word. However, this isn't punishment.
I guess I differ from the norm in that I do sometimes see selfishness in the extremes people will go to in order to keep a loved one alive when that loved one is too young or too incapacitated to express their desires. I'm speaking of SOME cases, not all, but again, that's their choice and who am I to judge? Sometimes it just breaks my heart to see, but I'm not them. It's not my family, and thus not really my business.

I think this is a situation that we really can't give a clear answer on. Well, anyone can, but I don't see any of us as being right or wrong, or at least not able to establish our opinions as right or wrong with any proof that goes beyond a shadow of a doubt.

 

In the early 1960's, I stood by the road side and watched as two young (early 20's) people burned to death. There was no ability to rescue, and there was no relief to be offered. But had they the means, neither would have refused having their life taken in a much shorter and far less painful fashion. At least William Tyndale was strangled before being burnt.

The Scriptures state, "Give strong drink to those who have no hope."

That is an indication that sufficient medical help should be offered to prevent physical suffering if there is no hope of recovery.

Within that scope would also include "assisted suicide" for medical reasons in a person who has no hope.

I had a doctor that actually would tell his terminal patients that if they were not careful to take the medication as prescribed, it could be fatal. He was a wonderfully sweet and Godly Christian man who understood the wish of his patients in the final medical condition.

It is certainly better than sticking your head in the oven as a mother did some years ago when diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Personally, I am a firm believer that life and death are held in the hand of Christ.

No person can take another's life nor can they take their own without specific permission given by Christ.

That does not excuse the murderer, nor the person of suicide.