Monday, January 27, 2025

Duh. . .

While visiting the doctor for the annual check up my wife and I heard the ultimate in common wisdom.  The older you get, the more likely you will die.  Whaaaaat?  News to me.  I beg it is news to you as well.  Of course, the wisdom was justification for being on meds we did not need but are protocol to prescribe to those of, shall we say, a certain age.  It just goes to show you how uncommon common wisdom and common sense have become.  In particular, death has been moving further and further away from our circle of experience and awareness.  Sure, we know the violence of the world and other bad things that happen out there, but our mortality is not on our radar.  If it is, we have long ago dismissed any real sense of accountability or judgment.  God is too nice to hold anything against us and nothing that we desire should be called a sin anyway.

Getting back to the doctor, I reminded him that death is in the crystal ball for all of us.  He is not an idiot.  He knows that.  But he is all caught up in the big pharma and medical establishment which really does presume that we are in charge of scheduling our death.  Sure, we have all been raised to believe that there are healthy habits and unhealthy habits which contribute to our well being but have we now bought into the idea that death is something we control?  Surely, those in favor of some sort of assisted and painless suicide for those who have decided life is too much trouble or pain think so but what about the rest of us?  What about Christians?

Do we believe that we live our lives in God's hands, according to His timing, and by virtue of His grace or do we believe that we are in charge of deciding our living and dying?  Even Christians seem to have embraced the default of our age in presuming that life and death are ours to decide and God is only there to pick up the pieces at the end.  When did that happen?  It surely is the natural fruit of those who have concluded that life begins when we say it begins and that until that time it is nothing but a clump of cells but apparently it also works the other way.  Life can turn into a mere clump of cells no longer valued or needed when we decide it.

We talk about the sacred character of life but as Christians we have generally conceded that its beginning and its ending are within our control.  We want to preserve life at a certain point but we also want to be free to let it go at another point.  In countless conversations I have heard well-meaning Christians insist death is not the worst thing that could happen to you -- living under certain conditions is far worse.  As soon as we conceded that point, we surrender the whole cause for life.

My doctor thinks that medicines are the means to preserving life.  My culture says that being free of pain and free to pursue your own definition of happiness are the means to preserving life.  My Church says that Christ is the medicine of immortality who gives us birth to His new and everlasting life in baptism and feeds us Himself as this medicine of immortality in the Holy Eucharist.  I am not at all suggesting that we forego all the blessings of modern medicine but neither am I willing to cede to big pharma and medibusiness the power to begin, keep, and end life.  And I am certainly not willing to let the culture around me tell me what constitutes life, life full, and life empty.  There is only one Word that we can trust in the tangled way around such issues -- the voice of the God who died and now lives never to die again.  He is the One who imparts this very life to us mortals.  Thanks be to God.

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