Palliative Caring

On the day that I write this, it is one more week until the infamous Brittany Maynard ends her life with the help of a physician unless she comes to her senses.  This story makes me rage with anger.  She is a beautiful young woman, age 29, newly married, and now she wants to end her life because of her stage 4 cancer diagnosis.

I understand.  Treating cancer is a nightmare.  The cures are worse than the disease.  It is agony to see someone you love wasting away through cancer, and when they do pass away we feel relieved that they do not have any more pain.

However, if the death panel follows through with their plans to erase Brittany from existence, this will only lead to more killing.  We already have children aborted over issues that are not life threatening such as Down’s syndrome or a kidney disease diagnosis that turns out negative.  Now we will have clever magicians who take advantage of the bad news of a positive cancer diagnosis and misdirect these young, impressionable people that assisted suicide is the most compassionate choice.

If Brittany does follow through with her plan, she will still be beautiful, and her family will not have to spend so much money looking for a treatment.  Who are her husband, friends, and family anyway?  Why do they not make more effort to keep this young woman alive until God decides to take her?  Is money really that much more important than the life that is still vibrant?  Are they calling this compassion so that they can sleep at night?

I know a woman who found stage 4 cancer on her adrenal gland.  Stephanie, my mother, made the decision to keep living.  Dad, Andrew, and I kept her alive until the following January.  It was March when we got the news.  It was mom who determined that she would live and exhaust all resources to find a cure for this disease.  She braved chemo, her body weakened, her hair fell out, and she did this so that she could still be here to care for her aging mother, my dad, Andrew, and me.

When January came around, we felt so much pain to see Mom on Hospice.  One day she could drive and eat at the Mexican restaurant.  The next day, she went to the hospital.  After all exhausted resources, Mom and Dad opted out of any treatments when the cancer only spread in December.  When Hospice started, we slowly saw Mom go through pain and eventually delirium.  When she finally did pass away on January 21, 2009, we were relieved because we knew she was perfectly healed and living with her heavenly Father.

I am so glad that nobody ever suggested that my mother take her life that March or April when she received the diagnosis.  We would have missed out on the months of praying for her, believing for a miracle, helping the medical community research for a cure, and generally reaching out to the world with God’s love and our hope in Jesus.

We also got to grow closer to members of our church who would drive Mom to surgeries and chemo sessions.  That is how I got close to my friend Erin that summer whose mother would take care of my mother.

The good news is that I know my mother is alive with the Lord.  The bad news is that I feel that Brittany does not even know Jesus.  If she succeeds in committing suicide, then that will only commence her eternity of enduring God’s wrath.

No, I do not believe that suicide is unforgiveable.  However, Brittany does not act in the heat of the moment.  She has had a whole month to ponder over this and still insists on taking matters into her own hands instead of trusting God to do amazing works with her and her “loved” ones the way he did in the life of my mother.  She trusts in herself and not in Jesus, and that will land her in hell for eternity, an ending much worse than stage 4 brain cancer and chemo deterioration.  How much more will the physicians suffer who influenced her to make this rash decision?

I end with a quotation from Joni Eareckson Tada.  If anyone has wanted to die throughout her decades of wheelchair confinement, Joni would have as much excuse to end it as anybody else.  However, she just turned 65 years old and has accomplished so much for the name of the Lord.

“Like many, my heart broke when I recently watched Brittany Maynard's video in which she outlined her plans to die through physician-assisted suicide. No one – absolutely no one – welcomes the pain that dealing with a terminal disease invariably brings, and it's clear that this young woman is firm in her convictions. But if I could park my wheelchair beside her, I would tell her how the love of Jesus has sustained me through my chronic pain, quadriplegia and cancer.”

Joni has lived from age 17 to 65 in a wheel chair influencing the world because her focus was on people other than herself.  While Brittany throws a tantrum about “my decision,” Joni has saved the lives of disabled people all over the world, provided retreats for them, provided wheelchairs, written songs, painted paintings with a paint brush in her mouth, and has even been nominated for an Academy award.  And she has not stopped.  Her care for other people was more important than her decision.

Brittany, please, I implore you, refuse to choose.  Your final days are worth every second of the pain if only you would think about how you can help your family and the world to live and not shrug an apathetic shoulder to death which is already defeated by Jesus.

The Question: Leviticus; the Answer: Hebrews

This is one of those days where I read an amazing article on Tabletalk Magazine, and without trying to I read it again on the website.

It is the article where Benjamin Shaw explores the biblical dichotomy of clean versus unclean.

While studying the book of Hebrews this semester, I read about the book of Leviticus and realize: Leviticus is the question, Hebrews is the answer.

Our God is so holy and we are so not.  Without cleansing we cannot approach this perfect God or we will burn.

Leviticus 11-15 showed all the ways the Israelites had to cleanse themselves before they could approach God.  They had to stay away from any "unclean" food.  They had to abandon their houses if mildew showed up.  They had to sacrifice a lamb to the priest at the temple only to sin right away and have to be cleansed again.

This was God's way of showing them that they cannot ever come clean before our holy God by this treadmill of rituals.  This is where Hebrews steps in:

9:13-14, "For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, ¹⁴ how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God."

God let these people labor until Christ came simply to show them that they cannot be clean and stay clean on their own time.  A perfect man had to live the perfect life and then take the punishment for us.  It's by his blood we are clean and we don't have to keep renewing the contract.  His blood was for one time.

I sang "Ancient Words" yesterday in church.  It has a lyric that says: 

Holy words of our Faith
Handed down to this age
Came to us through sacrifice
Oh heed the faithful words of Christ

I meant to sing "faithful" during the practice before the service.  It wasn't even 9:00 and I was tired.  I mindlessly sang "faithless."  Ugh.

Mistake or not, that is no small error.  That borders on blasphemy.  If I lived in the Old Testament, I would have to bring a lamb to be slaughtered by a priest.  Afterward, I'd end up sinning again.  I would lose the salvation status that I have just earned by that lamb.

Now that I live in the New Testament, Christ was slaughtered for me.  He offered the perfect sacrifice of himself.  And he never sins, so he doesn't have to do it again.  And when I approach God for forgiveness, he now sees Christ's sacrifice and not my crappy version.

There are people who live under the name of Christ that still believe you have to keep your salvation status up because you lose it every time a peccadillo comes along, which is many times a day.  They are shocked when you think that they have to work for their salvation, but their system says otherwise.  If I was in that church, I'm sure I would have to go talk to a priest.  Then I'd have to say a prayer five times a day and do some community service.

"By these means, the people maintained, rather, regularly restored their cleanness before God through the ordinary course of life."

 

These folks still live in the Old Testament.  They do not live with the hope that Jesus paid their sin only one time and that's it.  They can't even approach him directly.  While the New Testament says that he is our priest and intercessor before God, they still like to approach a human priest or even someone deceased.  This is an absolute insult to God and what Christ has done for us.

And this logic leaks into all denominations.  (Not to step on any friends' toes, but here goes) Some have to say "Hail Mary"s, some have to speak in tongues, some need to be rebaptized, some need to end global warming.  We are always tempted to try to add to what Christ has done which shows we still do not trust him.  Just ourselves.  After my lyrical slip yesterday I seriously wanted to just do the song again.  Or bang my head against the pulpit.  Thank God that in the next two services I got it right because I looked to Jesus and not to my own memory.

the prowling lion versus the Lion of Judah

I never quite know how to react when people say that Satan is preventing them from doing something.

This Sunday, there was an excellent sermon about not incurring debt.  Without the video, sound, power point, etc., we would still have a sermon based on the Word of God and pointing people to Jesus and not to materials.  Souls would be enlightened, and church would happen.

But life happens.  The power point presentation would not load up.  The video would only play the sound and not the picture.  The mics would give feedback, which never happens.  My husband Tim, who works with all that was like, it was like a gremlin got into the system.  The pastor said, it was like Satan didn't want me to preach this sermon but God overcame it.

It was a good conclusion but one I still ponder.  We know that since Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, Satan has no control over us.  He is defeated and cannot hurt his church.  God's grace comes through and his Holy Spirit works miracles in the otherwise dead congregation who can do nothing apart from God's grace.

But then, evil still happens and will happen until the Lord comes back.  1 Peter 5:8 gives a sober reminder that our enemy the devil prowls about like a roaring lion waiting for someone to devour.

But the more dominant Lion of Judah is the one in control.  The little lion does nothing unless the big Lion allows it.

So the glitches happened in the technology in the service because God is still in control.  Why would he let this happen?  Maybe it underlines the fact that this was an important sermon.  Debt accrues because people think things and prestige will make them happy and save them from low-quality lives.  But this doesn't happen because they spend money on useless things and have nothing with which to feed their kids.

It is really important that we place our value on Jesus and follow his direction for our lives and not go out and buy the next iPhone.  It's not wrong to have an iPhone, but it is wrong when it becomes more important that Jesus and the people that he loves.  It becomes wrong when you can't feed yourself and have to get welfare, but you still were able to afford an iPhone.  I could see Satan wanting to stop this sermon from happening because he wants to distract us all from the true riches of Christ and his life that never fades or grows old, and he wants to get us trapped by having to pay for the newest technology that will already be obsolete next year.  Then we have a pile of debt and cannot go on missions or get our kids to college because we spent all our money on the next temporary fad.

Tim brought up something that had happened at Big Picture Con the week before.  He had a film in the short film festival that didn't win but still did really good in the voting poll by the audience.  The film that did win the voting poll but not the contest was a film called Checkmate, except Checkmate was in German and I can't pronounce that at the moment.

This film was the first to be shown, but when it started getting into the story, it stopped playing and would not continue.  We had to wait until the end of the festival to watch the whole thing after they found another file on the internet.

When I first saw the first half of Checkmate, I thought it was another lame video about a young kid or a woman groaning about life and its ennui.  When I saw the whole thing, I thought it was the best video and had a wonderful message.

This young boy is trying to ask this girl out who already dates the popular guy.  This boy is a quiet boy who plays the Chess that you find on Star Trek.  Life is like Chess.  You have to make hard decisions.  They may be good or bad, and you still may lose, but you have to keep playing.

In the long run, we see a hilarious exchange where he tries to woo the girl but to no avail.  This time around, he lost the game.  But you keep playing.

Satan doesn't want messages like that to circulate.  Even if the other team scores once, he wants us to stop the game completely and give up.

I cannot get over the fact that this young woman named Brittany, who is my age and newly wed, wants to go ahead and end her life with the help of a physician on November 1 because she got diagnosed with terminal cancer.  No consideration for her husband or her joyous bridesmaids in her wedding picture.  She says it would be more dignified to take her own life than to go through the long painful process of chemo.

She's wrong.  Every day is worth living.  Even the days ruined by a weakened chemo body are worth living.  God wants Brittany to live and continue playing until he decides to take her life as he only has the right to do so as he gave it to her.  Satan wants her to just throw in the towel and abandon her new husband and her loved ones because of her vanity.  This is not dignity.  This is mutiny.

Yes, the devil prowls about like a lion, but the verse before says to cast your cares on Christ, the dominant Lion, because he cares for you.  I suppose he still lets Satan prowl to call our attention to these things.  And if this is the case, please Lord, do not let Brittany and her doctors follow through with their anti-life plan.

Mortifying Sin: the Wrong and the Right Way

I've been reading "The Mortification of Sin" by John Owen along with Reading Classics Together on Tim Challies' blog.  John Owen's words flow with such depth and passion.  At the same time, I can't pay attention really well so sometimes I get lost.  That was not the case last night.

The whole theme of his book has been an exposition of Romans 8:13.  In the ESV it says, "For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live."  Owen's tagline is "Be killing sin or it will be killing you."

For the rest of the book, Owen shows how people try to kill sin the wrong way, using their own penances and rituals.  Instead, he wants them to leave human effort and come to Jesus to be changed.

There is only so many ways you can say this concept, but nothing is more important in reaching salvation and being sanctified in the Holy Spirit.

Basically, Owen says that people try to mortify sin, but they do it the wrong way.

He reached a point in his treatise where he gives the example of Peter's speech in Acts 2.  In verses 29-36, Peter explains how David died but looked forward to the resurrection.

God loved David, but without his help, David was a wicked man indeed.  In himself, there was nothing good.  But because of his faith in God's promise to send an eternal king on his throne, David died with the hope of living again and with the hope of freedom from sin.

"This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses."  God raised his eternal Son from the dead.  Why did Jesus die?  Because we are so hopelessly lost in our sins.  On our own, we will not come to God for salvation but always look to whatever we can do.  Jesus loved us so much that he lived the only perfect human life and then died under God's wrath that humans deserve.  Since he was perfect, he could not stay dead, and since he was the perfect sacrifice, we are not enamored with our sins anymore.

"Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."

The penitent ones heard what Peter said and were "cut to the heart."  If I was among the crowd, I would think, "The only good man on the planet died so that I could be free from sin.  What must I do to repay him?"

This is what the folks asked.  Did Peter say to go wash seven times in the Jordan?  Did he say complete five years of a discipleship course?  Did he tell them to pray five times a day to some heavenly sponsor?

No, he simply said, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹ For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself."

All they needed to come to Jesus.  The Holy Spirit would baptize them, and they could finally be fit to enter God's presence.  And if a man of the household came to the Lord, his children and wife and servants could also be baptized and be considered holy because of him.  Simply coming to Jesus makes no only myself clean, but also makes my whole family clean by association (though not necessarily individually saved.  They are still considered holy along with me and we must pray for Jesus to truly lead their hearts.) 

The bottom line: quit trying to find holiness apart from simply resting in Jesus.  He will make you holy.  The people you love are also holy because of you in their lives, so treat them as inside the faith and let Jesus change them.   Remember to forgive them as the Lord forgave you.  What you did to Jesus is way worse than what they've done to you or anyone else.  Trust the Lord to change their hearts and simply love them in the process. 

I close with this 2nd Chapter of Acts song:

 

Did you catch his face? Was it 10538?

This is another adventure in Evidence Unseen, the apologetics book I have been reading on my Kindle.  But it is more because it leads to music.

The author goes into detail about how atheists will try to find meaning in this world and life, but without God there really is no meaning.  If this world was a result of an explosion and other non-entities such as chance, then there is no meaning and all we have are biological fatalism. 

He gives the illustration of a master artist who one day let his 3-year-old nephew splatter paint all over a canvas.  That evening, he invited some critics over and showed him his nephew's painting, but then he told them he had made the painting.

So the art critics invented meaning after meaning about all the splotches and spatters arranged by the nephew.

Finally the artist gives in and tells them that this painting was created by his nephew this afternoon after he let him fling paint all over it.

Some of the critics left all angry because their deep meanings suddenly became meaningless.  But some stayed still drawing meaning out of the blotches even after the artist told them that it had no meaning.

Sometimes I feel like the art critics who stay after the big let-down when it comes to the "10538 Overture."  By Electric Light Orchestra.

It's lyrics are simple:

Did you see your friend crying from his eyes today?
Did you see him run through the streets and far away?
Did you see him run? Did you see him fall?
Did his life flash by at the bedroom door?

Did you hear the news, came across the air today?
Someone has been found on the rocks down in the bay
Did you see him hide? Did you see him crawl?
Does his life mean more than it did before?

Did you see that man running through the streets today?
Did you catch his face? Was it 10538?

My meaning: When I listen to these words and the amazing orchestral rock sounds, it has such meaning to me.  There is this man who does not fit in society roaming the streets all alone in life.  Does he have a name?  Why doesn't someone reach out to him?

Jeff Lynne's meaning: According to wikipedia, he simply wanted to write a song about an escaped prisoner who had a number and not a name.  He had a tune intended to be an orchestral masterpiece.  He then got inspired to write lyrics and the recording engineers added guitars and violins and all kinds of decoration.  The song became their first hit as ELO.

But all the same, Jeff Lynne would not have written the song down if it hadn't at least a subconscious meaning for him.  It has meaning.  It has an author, and lyrics and tunes don't just happen.  The same way, that guy's nephew gave the painting meaning when he spattered it with paint.  We don't know it, but the 3-year-old isn't a zombie robot.  He's a human with his own volition and ideas.

So really, I think this argument might fail in trying to logically prove God's existence to people who believe the earth has no specific origin.  Whether people realize the meaning or not, the earth was created.  It is clearly created by someone intelligent.  How can you study something like childbirth or planetary motion and not see that this could not have arisen from a non-entity?  How can you look at human progress and not see the original artist behind all these people?  Cities and internets and technology do not come as a result of biological synapses.  Someone invented it, and someone fashioned the man to have his desires and ideas.  This is no accident.  This is a planned work of a loving God who knows what he wants and who he loves.