Christian Perspectives on Life and death

CASE ran a very successful conference on the 21st March that sought to allow participants to be better informed about medical ethics. The conference was well attended with 100 people taking part (our maximum number). It followed a recent issue of Case magazine that focussed on the theme Living and Dying Ethically (here). There were many wonderful sessions (some of which will be posted or published in some form in coming weeks), including:

Dr Andrew Cole – Why Christians should be interested in ethics in medicine?
Dr Megan Best – Ethical issues at the beginning of life
Dr Patrina Caldwell – Medical research involving children
Dr John Dearin – End of life issues - Euthanasia
Dr Mel Cusi – Victorian Legislation on Abortion
Melinda Tankard Reist – The grief of abortion

I was challenged by every session, but the overview presented by Dr Megan Best of key ethical issues concerning the beginning of life was particularly challenging. She made the simple point at the beginning of her talk that technology has given us information about the unborn child not possible just a short time ago. One consequence of this is that we now find it easier to identify disease and abnormalities in the unborn child. This can be good, with new ways to identify problems and abnormalities prior to birth, and ways to intervene medically, increasing the chance of a successful birth and in some cases solving medical issues more easily than if they are left until after birth. Of course it also provides opportunities for parents to know things about their unborn child not previously possible. This presents parents with opportunities to terminate the life of the foetus based on judgements about identified disease and abnormalities. Hence, technology offers us new knowledge that can be used to ensure life or sadly to terminate it.

She made a simple but profound point. Medical ethics is about challenging people to consider not just what we CAN do with technology but what we SHOULD do with it. Every doctor and in fact many parents face new ethical and moral challenges due to technological developments. One of the participants at our conference was living evidence of the outcome of choices that a mid-wife and a doctor made in his life. I sat down to have lunch at the conference with a young man named Darren (not his real name) who had severe cerebral palsy. As we sat eating he suddenly said to me in words that he had to repeat three times before I could grasp what he was saying:

"What would you do if you were a doctor and a baby was born and it didn't breathe for 20 minutes."

I gulped and said:

"Darren, that's a very hard question, even for a doctor, and I have no medical training. Without knowing how long doctors wait before declaring a child brain dead, and without knowing case history concerning revival rates after 20 minutes, I guess, I'd want the doctor to keep trying to resuscitate the child until such times as they knew it would be impossible to revive him."

Darren slapped his hands together and cried out with great enthusiasm:

"That's the right answer. And you know why I know that?"

I replied, "No Darren, why?"

"Because I was that baby."

We live in an age where perfection is what people expect. Physical imperfections are air brushed out in photos, cosmetic surgery is a growth market, the perfect body seems to be worshipped, and men and women sculpt their bodies to conform to current views on the perfect look. Deformed or missing limbs must be replaced, facial features changed. Lawsuits have been brought against doctors when birth defects have gone undetected in the womb eliminating the option of an abortion.

Technology allows us to identify abnormalities and problems and correct them. It also presents parents and doctors with the opportunity to decide to eliminate life in the womb if it doesn't meet our standards of perfection. These are not the only ethical decisions to make. Every day decisions are made to treat or not treat, resuscitate or not resuscitate. Technology doesn't eliminate the need for medical practitioners to make right choices, in fact in many ways it offers far more choices. Sound medical judgements must be made, but also ethical and moral judgements. Medical practitioners face these dilemmas every day. The life or death choices made by medical staff that attended Darren's birth meant that he lived rather than died. They honoured God in the priority that they gave to his life; Darren now honours God in his life.

Humble apologetics?

In the 'The gagging of God: Christianity confronts pluralism' (1996) Don Carson, while pointing out the obvious errors of postmodernism, concedes that there is at least one thing that we can learn from it. He suggests that postmodernism is a counter to arrogant dogmatism for which there is little justification. Dogmatism is the strong expression of an opinion or assertion without evidence. It is not to be confused with expressing our well argued and thought through views with strength, boldness, certainty and conviction. The key is the need for evidence to support our views and to have right motivations.

John Stackhouse takes this idea a step further (with a twist) in his book “Humble Apologetics” (2002):

“If we are going to defend and commend our faith, we must do it in a new mode: with a different voice and in a different posture. Our apologetics must be humble.”

This is an interesting point in a book with which I find plenty to disagree. In fact, at times his unpacking of the theme of the book leaves me wondering about his biblical approach. I don't think there is a need for a 'new' mode, just an understanding of what the Bible teaches about sharing our faith. Paul surely demonstrated this mode 2,000 years ago (e.g. his teaching in Athens as described in Acts 17:16-34). Paul was constantly evangelising people who were biblically illiterate and had worldviews inconsistent with Judeo-Christian teaching. Did he do this with humility? I think he did. Although his detractors have claimed that he was arrogant, I don't see it this way. To present alternative views or even truth claims does not equal arrogance. While Paul’s writing and teaching did not hide from the exclusive claims of Jesus, he presented these claims in reasoned ways; he presented evidence. The gospel message was not accommodated to the desire for pluralism and acceptance of many gods and many views. Rather, Paul and the other apostles vigorously presented the claims of the gospel and gave evidence. As Carson puts it,

'[They kept] insisting on the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the exclusiveness of the saving power of his gospel. But they did so in such a way that they showed they understood the people they were addressing. We must develop similar firmness, and similar flexibility.’

A key apologetic lesson that we can learn from Paul in Acts 17 is that he did not present the gospel to the Athenians through a moral lesson, nor through a deconstruction of their culture. Rather, he laid out a biblical worldview framework then presented the evidence for the gospel of Christ. Paul afforded the Athenians every respect, but he did not accept that their views of the world had the same authority; instead he presented what he saw as the truth because he knew that the truth would set them free (John 8:31-32).

In reality, average postmodernists are not simply seeking universal intellectual humility. Nor are they simply arguing that we are fallible humans capable of error on a constant journey to learn more. Rather, their aim is often to reinforce the relativistic argument that all interpretations of text are equally valid, and in its most extreme form, that all textual forms are equally valid and valuable. This is a direct assault on the Christian’s claim that the Bible as a written text is the source of evidence for our faith and ultimately, God’s truth.

Paul also demonstrated in life what in fact he taught the Ephesians, that we must "speak the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). Paul's debate with the Athenians demonstrated what this means, that his desire above all else was to see people won for Christ. Douglas Groothuis reminds us that if we don't speak the truth in love, we are guilty of arrogance. Instead, we should develop our apologetic skills to "sanctify ourselves in the truth, to win souls for Christ, and to glorify God".

If there is such a thing as arrogant apologetics it must surely be to lose sight of why we give a reason for our faith; to rely on self, to engage in intellectual arguments with others to prove a point, to score points, to seek to increase our sense of worth and maturity by our eloquent and reasoned debate. This is the seedbed from within which arrogance grows and humility is choked. Paul reminds the Corinthians:

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

Paul urges the Corinthians to be controlled by the love of Christ, to search their inner motivations, and to be driven by the knowledge that Christ died for them. They are to persuade others to understand this truth. There is no room for arrogant pride here, only a humble knowledge that Christ died for us and calls us to tell others to give a reason for our faith and to seek to persuade others with the truth of the gospel.

Related links

Previous posts on apologetics from CASE (here)

Quality of life: What should Christians hope for?

This post has been written by the Associate Editor of Case,
Roberta Kwan

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the term ‘quality of life’. I guess that’s what having an elderly, unwell relative does to you.

It seems that quality of life is part of the Australian experience. In 2007 we were ranked first in the Asia Pacific and fifth in the world by the IMD (International Institute for Management Development) World Competitiveness Yearbook for quality of life. In the same year, Sydney was ranked equal ninth (of 215 cities) by the Mercer Worldwide Quality of Living Survey on a list of 39 criteria including political, social and environmental factors (click here for more details).

This indicates that most of us in Australia have a lot to be grateful for. The quality of life most of us enjoy can be received by Christians with thanksgiving. And I have no problems with this. But I do have a problem when the expectation of a high level of quality of life is so embedded into the norms of our society that it becomes a measure of the value of a human life; when we judge the worth of another by their ability to contribute to or experience or enjoy (or whatever verb we choose to insert) life.

In her article in our latest Case magazine Dr Ruth Powys, a Staff Specialist in Palliative Care, identified the utilitarianism of modern ethicists such as Peter Singer as the world view that undergirds this belief. What a stark contrast to the Bible’s assertion that human life has an intrinsic value of its own; that is, a human life is always valuable, irrespective of current quality of life, because each person has been intentionally created by God to be human.

As Dr Powys points out, euthanasia is a ‘logical’ consequence of the utilitarian world view. If, according to the proponents of euthanasia, a person no longer has an acceptable quality of life, then the dignifying and compassionate thing to do is allow them to and aid them in ending a life that has been stripped of the hallmarks of ‘value’.

In February, the popular IQ2 debate in Sydney focused on the question: ‘Should we legalise euthanasia?’ Not surprisingly, an audience survey found that three-quarters were in favour of legalisation. In an article following the debate (here), The Sydney Morning Herald writer Lisa Pryor concludes her pro-legalisation reflections by suggesting that she would not mind becoming just like the ‘scary and demanding’ elderly people at the debate who apparently caused quite a commotion in vocalising their support for legalising euthanasia. No wonder Lisa Pryor wouldn’t mind being like them—these ‘oldies’, as she refers to them, obviously still enjoy a quality of life that means they have, according to Pryor, the ability to drive the legalisation movement. She reflects a thoroughly utilitarian worldview by commending them for what they are able to do.


Who should Christians hope we will be like in the latter years of our lives? The biblical writer to the Hebrews urges us (in all seasons of life) to be like a different group of ‘ancients’—to be ‘sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see’ (Hebrews 11:1). Sure that, regardless of my quality of life, regardless of whether or not I have the ability to protest or assert myself, my value lies in the fact that my Creator has made me and loves me. And certain of the unimaginably high quality of life—eternal life—he has in store for me.

CASE is running a conference entitled ‘Medical Ethics: Christian Perspectives on Life and Death’ at New College (Sydney) on Saturday 21st March. We’d love anyone interested in exploring a biblical perspective on medical ethics, including the issue of euthanasia, to join us. For more information click here.

A slightly different version of this piece has been posted on the Anglican Media website (here)