"Thinking Eternally, Acting Locally." - Neal August
Now I have been frequently criticized by my conservative Christian peers for frequently criticizing the public behavior of my fellow Christian conservatives. I have also been criticized for not criticizing liberal Christians enough. First, I do criticize liberal Christians when I see fit. But, two, since I am a conservative I'd rather critique believers of my own ilk than those believers from a different tradition.
But in the case of Terri Schiavo I think that it is time to both celebrate the public actions of conservative Christians and criticize the behavior of my liberal brothers and sisters in Christ.
It seems to me that while conservative believers have acted honorably and forthrightly in the name of a weak and poor woman, in a rather ackward turn of events, liberal believers have either remained silent or, even worse, have sided against this poor and weak woman.
Too often conservative Christians stick their nose into issues that have no bearing on their call to serve the kingdom. Here, in the Terri Schiavo case, is a prime example where Christians should become involved. The health and wealthfare of poor individuals such as Terri Schiavo is the quintessential area of public life that Christians should inject their influence and efforts. I do often criticize evangelicals for investing time and resources in what Cal Thomas calls "trickle-down morality" but here is a case where evangelicals have stood rightly for the gospel and its proclamation of jubilee for the poor. The apostle Luke would be proud. I am very proud to call myself an evangelical.
But to my liberal brothers and sisters ... where are you? Here is a great situation for the social gospel to be made manifest to the world and, instead, you have either shrunk back into silence or, worse still, advocated the slow starvation of this poor paralytic woman. Does the fact that a husband who has cheated on his paralytic wife and who now wants her death not anger you feminist Christians? Does not the fact that this poor, unhealthy woman will meet an end of starvation frustrate you social welfare believers? Why aren't you the first ones out and ready to defend the life of this woman? What would St. Francis think? What would Rauschenbusch think? What would Dr. King think? This is a shameful moment in liberal Christianity.
Remember: “What you do to the least of these …”
4 comments:
you, the GOP-dominated Congress, and the media are all barking up the wrong tree. the issue is not this woman's right to live (or die). it's the fact that her husband, over the course of many many years, is being burdened by crippling medical bills.
the husband's expenses to keep his wife attached to a feeding machine are in the millions. insurance companies don't actually cover things like this, they just jump through the loopholes in their contracts. if life can ever be reduced to a simple economic equation, this is the time. it simply costs too much to allow this woman to live. it is not the government's place to perpetuate this man's financial catastrophe.
in fact, your comments remind me a lot of the (invalid) arguments used by anti-abortionists (ahem, pro-lifers). your focus is on the child. the focus should actually be on the mother.
like many Republicans, you only seem to care about treating the symptoms of the disease, rather than finding a cure for it. you want to hush up sex on TV (the Super Bowl Nipple Extravaganza), while your daughters get knocked up because of abstinence-only sex miseducation curriculums in public schools. similarly, you guys think it's ok to go and carpet-bomb countries on the other side of the world - killing able-bodied men, women, and children - but you want to keep this woman - whose brain is probably the consistency of wet cereal - alive.
i'll never understand your kind of doublespeak. i guess this is the kind of mental duality it takes to believe in God when "His" existence is impossible to prove.
When the idea that money or lack there of takes precedence over a human life, what does that say about our society? Doublespeak is "talk intended to confuse or decieve." I don't see any doublespeak in valuing all human life equally. I find much doublespeak in the idea that someone should be let to die who isn't "able-bodied." What's next, should we annihilate all humans with an IQ under 70?
all i'm saying is that this man should no longer be burdened by crushing medical bills. the money is not REALLY the issue though - it's the fact that through the money, this man can no longer have a life of his own. his "life" is consumed by maintaining his wife's existence. to demand that the woman stays alive is to demand that her husband continue to spend his waking life appeasing hospitals, doctors, insurance companies. Congress should not (and does not) have a right to do that.
the guy wants his wife to die so he can have a normal life back. he is capable of leading a life, feeding himself, bathing himself, wiping his own backside. through his wife's continued "life," his own waking life is just a shadow of existence. between the cripping costs of keeping her attached to the machine, he has to deal with the fact that she - as she was - is never coming back. every day he has to wake up to that reality. he will never get over it as long as she is alive.
so i guess the issue comes down to this: is it better to feel compassion for a living man, or a braindead woman?
does the husband deserve life more than a woman who relies on a (very expensive) machine to stay alive? i think he does, but i don't really have to make that judgment. the husband has already made the judgment for me, for you, for the entire country, and anyone in the world who's s watching this case. he's said, "this woman is technically braindead, and i want my life back. i want to move on with the grieving process and stop paying these bills."
those whose jurisdiction actually pertains to this case (that excludes Congressional GOP people) agree with him.
Will, I appreciate your input and passion regarding this issue. I am sure you have the best interest of the Schiavos at heart. However, I do not think that the issue centers upon finances. 1) Michael Schiavo has not made finances an issue. 2) Terri Schiavo’s family is more than willing to take up the financial burden of caring for a loved one. 3) Many people would gladly donate funds to keep Terri alive. Just recently someone offered Michael Schiavo a million dollars to drop the case.
Also, the woman is not brain dead or even in a coma; she is brain damaged. There are many people who are. There are many people who take care of such people. We are a compassionate society that raises taxes in order to care for the elderly, the sick and the poor. I think that we should do this. The comments in my article were directed both towards conservative and liberal Christians. I tend to avoid politics. I was congratulating conservative believers for showing compassion and being politically active in the proper place. I was displaying dismay at the silence of liberal Christian friends who are not showing the compassion that they normally exhibit on the weak and the poor.
I do agree with you though that we sometimes focus more on symptoms than cures. I made the point in my article that conservative Christians often want to focus on changing society in order to change individuals in society (“trickle-down morality”). Liberal Christians have focused on this for quite a while too. You are right that these are only symptoms of the problem. The real problem is sin. The cure is Christ. Sin cripples are wills and makes us prideful and self-centered and “me-driven”. Sin causes us to justify our actions and desires by seeking only evidence that validates our own prejudices and biases. Sin causes rifts between us and God and our neighbors. When we have a relationship with Christ, He heals the rift between us and God. He heals the division between us and those around us and we begin to have more compassion for all. He eliminates sin (the problem) and, therefore, the symptoms.
Again, I appreciate your comments. May God Bless you.
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