Voluntary Euthanasiaby William Edelen
Recently we had a memorial service for a member of our church. I offered some thoughts and reflections at that service, emphasizing voluntary euthanasia and its positive aspects. Not once did I use the word "suicide" or any word that was even related to that. Afterwards I was caught by surprise at how many people came up and sought me out. They said, "Thank you for putting this all in such a positive context by talking about voluntary euthanasia. Thank you for removing our guilt."
Considering the response to that memorial service. I wish to go into this subject in more depth. I want to think about it both on an individual and a collective level. But before I begin these thoughts and reflections, I want to make one point very clear: I am in no way condoning or sanctioning suicide among young people who are otherwise healthy; what they need is a little counseling about how to discover the significance and joy of life. In religion, the subject of death has always been central, especially so in Christianity. It's in our Western traditions where death has been looked upon as an enemy. The apostle Paul says, "the last enemy that shall be overcome is death." That is not the case in the Native American or in the Eastern traditions. But in our Western tradition, it is so. The Native Americans would think this idea humorous and ludicrous. One of the most respected men in the Christian church internationally was Dr. Henry Pitney Van Dusen, the president of the prestigious Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Dr. Van Dusen was considered one of the outstanding international scholars in Christianity and church history. He and his wife were highly respected. Dr. Van Dusen had reached a point, about 12 years ago, where he had lost his voice and was also suffering intense pain, as was his wife. He and his wife discussed voluntary euthanasia, and they made their decision. They took a bottle of sleeping pills and went to bed. They left a note for all the world to read. It said: "Nowadays it is becoming more difficult to die. We feel that the way we're taking will become more acceptable as the years pass." A great many people who have never thought this subject through were horrified to think that one of the outstanding Christians in the world would choose this route. But it was left to Norman Cousins (at that time the editor of the Saturday Review) to put it all in perspective in one of his editorials. He asked this question: "Why are people more appalled at what they term an unnatural form of dying than by an unnatural form of living?" Individually and voluntarily, freely, Dr. Van Dusen and his wife, living in harmony with the ultimate freedom, the right to privacy, chose their terminal point on this earth. How about collective voluntary euthansia? The Rock of Masadah at the eastern edge of the wilderness of Judea, with a sheer drop of more than 1,300 feet to the western slope of the Dead Sea is a sight of grandeur, majesty and beauty. It is also the site of one of the dramatic episodes in the history of Judaism. In the first century Palestine was under the occupation of the Romans who had overthrown the Jewish kingdom; in 70 A.D., Jewish rebellion flared up again, and the Romans brought in all of their reinforcements. There was one Jewish outpost that was holding out against the Romans - Masadah. On the top of Masadah was a 23-acre kind of mesa-like place. This was occupied by 1,000 Jews as their last outpost. In 72 A.D., the commander of the tenth Roman Legion, Flavius Silva, resolved, once and for all, to crush this last outpost of Judaism, Masadah. The Jews were on top of the rock, 1,000 of them - they resisted as well as they could, till they knew it was the last minute. And so one night, with their last defensive wall burning, they reviewed their hopeless situation; there was no room for escape, and the Roman Legions would be there the next morning. The commander wrote these words: "A death of glory is preferable to a life of infamy. And the most magnanimous resolution is to disdain the idea of surviving any loss of our freedom." In a way, it was like Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death." What that said, rather than becoming slaves to the Romans, the defenders of Masadah, 1,000 men and women and children, thereupon ended their lives. One thousand chose voluntary euthanasia. They ended their lives, voluntarily, at their own hands. And when the Romans marched up to the top of the rock the next day, what they found was 1,000 dead Jewish people - men, women and children. You might call this collective voluntary euthanasia. In both cases - the individual decision of Dr. Van Dusen and his wife and the collective decision of the Jews of Masadah - with those decisions being made from a sound mind and from rational and logical thought, then why would we continue (we still do today, it's everywhere) to use that archaic phrase, "they committed suicide?" Like they committed some crime or they committed some sin - or they did something that wasn't right or wasn't moral or wasn't ethical? We use that phrase "they committed suicide" as though they should have felt guilty about it . . . if they were alive. Why don't we use words and phrases like "they chose voluntary euthanasia" - "they chose the terminal point of their own existence on this planet" - "in the ultimate freedom that's given us all, they chose when it would come to an end," "they voluntarily chose the time and the place and the circumstances." Where do our concepts come from that this is some kind of a sin - some kind of a crime? It does not come from the Bible. It is nowhere in the Bible. The German philosopher Schopenhauer put it this way: "The clergy should once and for all be challenged to give an account, with what right, they stigmatize, in the pulpit, an action committed voluntarily by so many." And then Schopenhauer said, "There is no biblical authority that gives them these rights. So where do they get them?" The word "suicide" is not found in the entire Bible: it's not found in Hebrew, it's not found in Greek. There are four "suicides" in the Old Testament and not one word of adverse or critical comment about any of them. In the New Testament, even the one of Judas is merely recorded without comment - it is not listed as one of his so-called crimes. There is not one word in the New Testament or the Old Testament condemning voluntary euthanasia or suicide or even commenting on it. In the first years of the Christian church, when it was in its organizational stage, suicide or voluntary euthanasia was such an accepted fact and such an accepted subject that the first church father, Tertullian, regarded the death of Jesus as a suicide. Another church father, Origen, agreed, and said that Jesus had (quote) "voluntarily killed himself." And John Donne, the 17th- century poet who wrote No Man Is An Island, made a formal defense of suicide or voluntary euthanasia by writing these words: "Our blessed Jesus chose suicide himself." The idea that suicide, then, is some kind of a crime or some kind of a sin, comes very late in Christian doctrine, and was developed as a doctrine of the church - for various reasons. The reasons were these: the suicides of the Christians of the early church, for several hundred years, were pathological and fanatical and psychopathic - and I don't hesitate to use those words. In Rome, voluntary suicide was acceptable by Roman citizens, even casual decisions. But even the Romans were not prepared for the fanaticism of the thousands of early Christians who begged to be allowed to die with the lions in the Colosseum, hoping thereby to gain glory and salvation and to go to heaven. The church father Ignatius wrote these words (very revealing): "Let me enjoy the wild lions, who I wish were much more cruel, for if they will not attack me, then I will provoke the lions to attack me and kill me." This was Ignatius, one of our church fathers - he couldn't wait to be fed to the lions. There was this cartoon a number of years ago that I saw in a Sunday School book, and the Sunday School teacher was showing her class of 5th or 6th graders pictures of the Colosseum - and in one of the pictures were the lions and the Christians. One little girl started crying. So the Sunday School teacher asked her what was the matter. She thought, you know, that she was going to be crying because there was such a sad scene of the Christians. The little girl said, "Look at that lion over in that corner all by himself. He doesn't have a Christian!" At any rate, Ignatius said, "Let me enjoy the wild beasts who I wish were more cruel even than they are." In any history book, you can read this, that thousands of Christians, in the early centuries, women, men and children, killed themselves hoping to attain immediate glory and salvation and go to heaven. They took over what was acceptable in Rome, at that time, and they perverted it and distorted it and made something pathological out of it, and they tried to give it theological justification. The Romans found all this contemptible. To the Romans, of every class, death wasn't important; but it was terribly important how one died. Their way of death was the measure of their final value of life. The Romans chose to die with dignity and rationally at the right time of their own choosing. So it was important how one died. And along came the early Christians with this psychopathic obsession about killing themselves, and it filled the Romans with nothing but disgust. Of this period, once again, John Donne, the 17th-century poet and clergyman, wrote these words: "The people, the Christians, of that day, were affected with a disease, a madness. They had grown so ravenous to kill themselves for glory, that they begged to be baptized only so they could throw themselves into the fire or into the arena and be burned to death or eaten to death by the lions. Their children were taught to provoke the executioners - that they might be thrown into the fire." Donne concluded, "They could only be called lunatics." Augustine observed the scene in these words: "To kill themselves has become their daily sport." In 533 A.D., the Council of Arles refused rites to anyone who killed himself and called it a sin, a mortal sin. And the Roman Catholic church, by canon law, took the final step in the 7th-century - that late, in the 7th century, by the Council of Toledo, which ordained that even to attempt suicide was a mortal sin and the rest of the family would be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church. Today, I think it's time that we look at all of this with a new mind, in a new period of history, with new logic, with a new degree of rational thought - not the psychopathic and the lunatic mind of the Christians of the first five centuries - and not from the 7th-century view that it was a sin and would get one excommunicated. It's time, I think, we moved past the archaic views of "someone committed suicide" to using the phrase "they chose voluntary euthanasia" - and see it for what it can be, as Dr. and Mrs. Van Dusen did. Not as an act of cowardice. In fact, as Norman Cousins said in his editorial, "It is sometimes a most courageous act." In his autobiography, Goethe says how much he admired the Emperor Otto. Why? Otto took his own life. Goethe said he decided if he was not brave enough to die in the same manner as Otto, he was not brave enough to die at all. In Faust, Goethe has Faust say these lines as he plans the fatal act: "To shudder not at yonder dark abyss, With glad resolve to take the lead, Pure crystal goblet, I draw thee now, To drain the goblet at one droth profound. Let this last droth, the product of my own skill, Be my own free choice, And be drunk on this day with resonant will, And be drunk as a festive greeting to the coming time and the coming day." Voluntary euthanasia is the ultimate freedom of each individual to choose their own terminal point on this earth. No one of us has the right to dictate to another when that point will be. A priest was being chased by a lion. Finally, when he couldn't run anymore, he stopped and knelt down to pray. To his surprise, the lion also stopped and folded his hands. "What a miracle!" the priest exclaimed. "Miracle?' said the lion, "I'm saying grace."
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