Posted by Dave on March 28, 2005 at 22:57:52:
In Reply to: Dave, posted by pj on March 28, 2005 at 20:11:56:
Thanks, PJ, for your prayers. He truly is awesome, and awe-inspiring. So many people would have walked by now.
Terri's case is very hard. Her parents seem to believe she is going to wake up one day and ask for a cup of tea. If she were merely in a coma, they might have reason to hope. In Terri's case, however, her cerebral cortex, that region of the brain which supports higher consciousness, has liquified, or atrophied to the point that it practically no longer exists. She is not going to wake up, not by any natural processes, because she lacks the physical cognitive mechanism to sustain that type of consciousness.
Now, could God perform a miracle in her case? Certainly. But so far he hasn't done so, and it's been 15 years. Terri has a functioning brain stem, which is sufficient to keep her alive physically, giving her the appearance of having some rudimentary form of consciousness, for many years to come. She could continue in her present state ad infinitum. So, how do we force God's hand? Short of bringing Benny Hinn to the table, reenacting Elijah's famous wager against the prophets of Baal, what do we do?
I don't mean to be flippant. I think what we're facing now is the dark side of medical technology, which has allowed us to sustain a person's chronological years far beyond what would have been imaginable half a century ago. The problem is, it sustains only the mechanism, not consciousness, and certainly not life.
Terri's parents are fighting for their little girl, based on an unfounded belief that she is going to come back one day. And who could blame them? If I were in their place, I might do the same thing. But somebody has to think rationally in cases like this. Medical technology has put us, as Christ's followers, in a strange spot. Because of the relative newness of our situation, we haven't yet been able to resolve it. We occupy a land of moral twilight, rife with ill-defined, kinetic shadows, which instill fear and defy discrimination. Eventually, as medical technology progresses even further so that it sustain the Terri Schiavos of the world indefinitely, we will have to learn to discriminate, to define life beyond the simplistic standard "if there's a heartbeat, it's a soverign life." Otherwise, we will continue to imprison people life Terri within their defunct machines while we await orders from on high, orders which may never come because the commander is waiting for us to grow up, to reach a level of maturity that we can make our own compassionate decisions. My position is simply that the sooner we get there, the better.