The Partnership
My Dad was a conservative Catholic. He also loved to philosophize and debate. I guess I didn't fall to far from the tree. Anyway, back in the eighties we could spend hours debating religion, abortion, welfare, you name it, we argued...I mean debated it. One of his favorite subjects to debate was euthanasia. I think his age and his health had a lot to do with his interest in that subject. Plus Jack Kivorkian was doing his thing back then and that kind of kept the subject on the front burner.
His fear was that if we tolerate euthanasia, it would only be a short time until it would be forced onto the elderly, weather you were dying or not. This seemed to be a logic that conservatives used a lot. They were also afraid that if you allowed gays to have all of the same rights as other people, it was just a matter of time until homosexuals would insist on everybody being gay or they would go right to the animal issue...."So if we allow gays to marry each other, what's next, we can marry our dog too?" I guess you can't blame people for thinking that everybody has a hidden agenda. It's been demonstrated enough. Plus it's human nature to fear what we do not understand. However, I believe we can change that. I think we can turn fear into curiosity and curiosity, eventually, into understanding. But that's another blog, another day.
So my Dad had two main arguments against practicing euthanasia. One was the fear of government taking it to an extreme and his other argument was based on a Christian principal that he could never explain all the way thru. It went like this...."Life is Gods to give and Gods to take, it's not up to man to make those decisions. We should trust in God completely. If we are alive, it's because God wants us alive and we are not to interrupt His plan." I always countered that argument with the agriculture argument. It went like this...."If we are to trust in God for everything, we should have faith that there will be food growing outside our door when we get hungry. But we do not practice that kind of faith, or we would starve to death. We showed a lack of faith in God when we started planting the fields. If God gave us the reasoning skills to grow our own food, and it's ok to use those skills, maybe it's ok to use our medical skills to end a life that is in great pain and has no chance of recovering." At this point he would start quoting the bible.
I think we have been messing with God and nature from the moment we figured out how to make fire. But getting back to my Dads story....He eventually died of cancer in 1989. The months and especially the weeks before he died, I can tell you that he changed his mind about euthanasia. I would hear him in his room begging to be put out of his misery. Near the end, he really loved his morphine. I think hospice eventually overdosed him, and that's ok, that's really what he wanted. So here was a man, who thru his conservative values, was willing to judge what was right and wrong for other people until he was forced to walk a mile in their shoes, then he changed his values. I think if he would have beat the cancer and lived, he would have had a different idea about euthanasia.
When it comes to hot issues like euthanasia, abortion, gay marriage, medical marijuana, we are quick to judge what is right and wrong for other people. Maybe there really isn't an absolute right or wrong, maybe we just have ideas and solutions and they produce different outcomes. Maybe it should be up to us to decide what is right and wrong for ourselves. Maybe God is not judging us at all. Maybe God put us here (or we choose to be put here) with all of these possible solutions to all of these endless issues, scenarios, and survival situations and we must decide for ourselves what the rules are, which ones do we agree on, and when should they be forced on everybody. Maybe true growth comes from the process of making decisions. We seem to have adopted the golden rule as our basic code to make all other rules from. Some will argue that the bible is a good rule book to go by. Whatever works. In a more liberal society, we would adhere more by the rule that says, "If it doesn't hurt anybody else, then it's none of your business."
There is an old story that goes....A wise master was talking to a group of students about the importance of putting complete faith in God for all things. One student approached the master and asked, "If we go into town and leave our camels unattended they will surely run off. So if we must leave them for a while, should we tie them up or trust in God that He will not let them run off?" The master replied...."Do both!" We have a saying in the west for that kind of thinking...."God helps him who helps himself."
Personally, I think this whole earth survival thing is a team effort. If you've raised children, you probably believe in divine intervention because there is no way any kid could survive past two years old without it. Maybe it's not about judgement and right or wrong, good or bad. Maybe it's about deciding, maturing, learning, loving, and experiencing. Maybe it's about experiencing the partnership?
Comments
Jeff says....
"I would hear him in his room begging to be put out of his misery."
But Joe, your dad's suffering and apparent change of mind doesn't invalidate his earlier position, which is either true or false on its own merits. Suffering and pain can temporarily change almost anyone's mind about anything - but it doesn't change the truth. One might get you tell lies under torture, but that doesn't turn lies into truth.
Joe's replies....
His earlier position was not necessarily either true or false on it's own merit. That was the whole point of this blog....that maybe we decide what is true and false for ourselves. Euthanasia of itself is not good or bad, nothing of itself really is. It's what we do with it....we do not define it, we define ourselves by the decisions we make and what we do. Euthanasia is only an idea. Everything is an idea until we act on it. Ideas unto themselves are not true or false.
Jeff goes on....
"Near the end, he really loved his morphine. I think hospice eventually overdosed him, and that's ok, that's really what he wanted."
Administering morphine to relieve pain in the terminally ill is NOT euthanasia, even if it hastens death. If your dad was Catholic, he knew that asking for morphine in his condition was perfectly legitimate.
Now if someone deliberately gave him more morphine than was needed to relieve the pain - in order to, shall we say, "expedite" his death and thereby save on insurance costs - that would have been murder.
Joe replies....
I didn't say he was euthanized although that may have been the case. Drugs are often overdosed to dying victims, not necessarily because of insurance costs, more so because the victim may be in his final hours and things are "expediated" a bit. Happens all the time.
Jeff goes on....
"So here was a man, who thru his conservative values, was willing to judge what was right and wrong for other people until he was forced to walk a mile in their shoes, then he changed his values."
Perhaps - but I suspect you may be reading too much into the experience. If your Dad truly changed his values, there are others who experience the same thing and do not, and it really means nothing either way. The truth of such values do not depend upon individuals upholding them.
Joe replies....
We decide what values are. I'ts all relaltive, all values change.
Jeff goes on....
"I think if he would have beat the cancer and lived, he would have had a different idea about euthanasia."
I think if he had beat the cancer and lived, he would have been grateful that he wasn't euthanized.
Joe replies....
Very clever last line Jeff, but when we talk about euthanasia, we are really talking about people who are in situations where they have little to no chance of regaining their health, short of a miracle. We can't make decisions based on miracles. I believe in miracles, however, they are very unpredictable. My dads situation was irreversible, at least in the last few weeks. There is no way anybody would have euthanized him while he was conscious during the weeks before his death because he did not want that, he did not believe in it, therefore he needed to ride this thing out to the end. Now when he got really miserable, closer to the end, this is when it gets open to debate as to if euthanasia would be proper or not. In his case I would say no because while he was clear headed he stated his values and beliefs and they needed to be honored to the end, which they were, kinda. I would never want to make my values his or your values. On the other hand, and really what I am always blogging and arguing about, my real problem with right wing values, is that right wingers are willing to force me to adopt their values as my own....And that's just wrong!
Posted by: Jeff Culbreath | January 2, 2008 10:44 AM