[Dialogue] Spong

[KroegerD@aol.com]

March 30, 2005 
The Debate Rages: Do We  Have a Right to Determine How We Die? 
{To my readers: As the national debate continues over Terri Schiavo, I use  
this column to answer a question I received from a reader on this subject. Next 
 week in place of the question and answer feature I will share a sampling of 
the  incredible outpouring of responses that I have received to the guest 
column last  week. John Shelby Spong}  
Carter from Richmond, Virginia, writes:  
You have shared with us what Harry T. Cook thinks about the Terri Schiavo  
case, but you have not told us what you think. How do you see this debate?  
Dear Carter:
I first have tried to identify the nerve center deep in our  psyches that 
this story has touched creating in people behavior that seems as  obsessive as 
that which marked the O.J. Simpson trial a few years back. If the  media outlets 
reflect the interest of their listeners, viewers and readers, we  need to 
note that even the tragic school murders and subsequent suicide of a  teen age 
Native American boy in Minnesota could not push this story into second  place. 
Probing to uncover this hidden agenda led to a number of possibilities.  
Part of it is surely rooted in the fact that death is a universal human  
experience that we prefer to avoid discussing, but the debate around Terri  
Schiavo has made avoidance impossible. Another element seems to be that this  debate 
has uncovered the insecurity we have about our fading religious  convictions 
that we do not know how to process. For many it is difficult to  admit that we 
are no longer members of a believing society. This difficulty  hides beneath 
the aggressive passion that has been poured out from almost  hysterical 
religious voices. It is also present in the silent resentment  expressed in the 
voices of America's rapidly growing "Church Alumni  Association." The Terri 
Schiavo case has destroyed the mask of our religious  pretending. The members of the 
religious right need to feel surrounded by a sea  of non-believing judges to 
justify their anger. These judges must be defeated,  sometimes even killed, in 
order to avoid an almost apocalyptic despair. The  secularists avoid religion 
by refusing to engage what they regard as an  irrational mentality. Religion, 
they feel, has always been a safe hiding place  for neuroses. The two are 
thus mortal enemies. In this debate, however, neither  side can escape the other. 
Another element creating this obsession might lie in  a growing awareness 
that we are in the adolescence of our humanity. By this I  mean that we modern or 
even post-modern men and women are no longer content to  remain children 
living in passive dependency on forces beyond our control; but  neither are we yet 
mature enough to be comfortable taking ultimate  responsibility for our life 
and death decisions. That is why the Terri Schiavo  case appears to attract 
and repel us simultaneously. Almost no one has been able  simply to let it be.  
Another factor has surely been that this story played out during Holy Week  
when the Christian world focused on God, life and death. Sermons on Good Friday 
 and Easter in churches across America constantly referred to Terri Schiavo.  
If one's definitions are not clear and one's reasons for being so emotionally 
 involved are sub-conscious then the public debate provides more heat than 
light.  This truth was evident when I discussed this issue with a religious  
fundamentalist in a five-minute segment on CNN Easter morning. It was like  
having a conversation with one who speaks a different language. Before real  
dialogue can occur, the following questions need to be posed to get to the real  
issues. How is death defined? Is death a natural and normal part of the life  
process that needs to be embraced? Is it the ultimate enemy that needs to be  
defeated as St. Paul suggests or the ultimate punishment for sin as the creation  
story implies?  
Is there a point where science and medical technology cease expanding life  
and begin only to postpone death? Can that point be identified and accepted? Is 
 it not true that this debate would never have arisen a century ago because 
the  choices we can make today were not options for our grandparents? Patients, 
now  kept alive by extraordinary means, would have simply died in the past. 
When the  evangelical minister on CNN said that we should not interfere with 
'the natural  course of life,' he did not recognize that modern medicine is 
designed to do  just that. If we let nature take its course, the average life 
expectancy would  still be 30 or so years. One cannot have it both ways with any 
rational  consistency. I rejoice in expanded life. I grieve when medicine is 
used only to  postpone death. I do not believe that a breathing cadaver is a 
living self.  
Why is it, I wonder, that those identified as secular humanists, who express  
grave doubts about the reality of life after death, seem almost universally 
to  favor allowing Terry Schiavo to die in peace; while those identified as 
members  of religious communities, who claim to believe firmly in life after 
death, seem  so eager to keep bodies alive long after meaningful life has 
departed? At what  point does religious rhetoric affect one's actions?  
How does one separate sincere conviction from political manipulation? It is  
not my desire to cast judgment on anyone's motives. That role is reserved for  
God. It is, however, legitimate to notice and to raise questions that might 
lead  to a possible or even probable conclusion that Terri Schiavo has become 
to some  a useful political symbol. The only way I know how to separate hype 
from  conviction is to look for consistency. To say one believes in "a culture 
of  life" sounds good until one employs a reality check. Can one believe, for  
example, in "a culture of life" and still applaud the decision to go to war in 
 Iraq which has cost the lives of over 1500 members of the American Armed 
Forces,  and left with wounds more than 12,000, to say nothing of the Iraqi dead 
and  wounded said to number more than 100,000? When one realizes that this war 
was a  preemptive strike, not a response to an attack and that all of the 
reasons cited  to justify that preemptive strike turned out not to be true, is 
the claim to  favor 'a culture of life' still credible? Can one who claims to 
believe in "a  culture of life" still refuse to investigate fully those 
responsible for the  inhumane practices that occurred in the prisons at Guantanamo and 
Abu Ghraib, as  well as the murders of prisoners by American interrogators in 
both Afghanistan  and Iraq?  
Can one believe in "a culture of life" and still practice capital punishment  
to excessive levels? Why is it that states that are in 'the Bible Belt,' 
where  the religious vote is determinative, execute more prisoners each year than 
any  other part of the nation put together? Why is it that this region, of 
which I am  a native, practiced slavery longer, allowed legal lynching longer and 
fought so  hard to preserve segregation? Are these things consistent with "a 
culture of  life"?  
Can one believe in "a culture of life" and still oppose the use of condoms in 
 Africa where the AIDS virus is rampant, or the dispensing of clean needles 
as  well as condoms in the United States when we know that the absence of both 
makes  death a certainty for many?  
Can one believe in "a culture of life" and oppose competent sex education in  
public schools, the absence of which is a major factor in the rise in 
abortions?  Does one really believe that pious rhetoric is a substitute for effective 
 policy? Has anyone noticed that the abortion rate has risen during the last 
five  years with anti-abortion forces in power? If the ultimate goal is to 
lower  numbers of abortions, as I think it must be, what actions are effective or 
 ineffective in accomplishing that goal?  
Can one believe in "a culture of life" while the rhetoric of the religious  
right continues to be a factor in the abuse and murder of gay and lesbian  
people? Do we need to be reminded that at the funeral of Matthew Shepard in  
Wyoming, a Baptist preacher picketed the church carrying a sign that stated "God  
said fags should die! Leviticus 20."  
When I see inconsistency in the bigger picture then the credibility of the  
loudest voices seeking to prolong the life of a woman, in a vegetative state 
for  15 years, is compromised.  
I add two other troubling questions. Does a political party opposed to  
universal health coverage have the right to tell people how they must act in the  
long term care of a brain destroyed person, for whom they bear the private  
health care costs? Does a political party dedicated to the principle of smaller  
less intrusive government have the right to enter the most private arenas of  
human life in an effort to serve the ideological convictions of a major part 
of  its political base? Inconsistency arouses my suspicion that one's stated  
conviction is sometimes little more than the handmaiden of political 
expediency.  When I learned that the names and addresses of those who have contributed 
to the  principals in this human tragedy have been sold to a direct mail 
marketer of the  religious right, my idealism about this situation simply dies.  
I am glad this case has forced a national debate on end of life issues. I am  
also glad that this debate has demonstrated to people the importance of 
livings  wills. We also need to guarantee by law that these directives will be 
carried  out faithfully by the medical profession. I do not want doctors, 
hospitals, or  insurance companies to make that decision for me. Above all I do not 
want the  President of the United States, Tom Delay, the Congress, or the Courts 
of this  land to intrude on my stated wishes. I reserve that decision to 
myself alone so  long as I am able and when I no longer have the ability to 
decide, that power  must pass to those I love the most. These are my convictions. 
They rise directly  out of the Christian faith to which I am committed. Life is 
sacred. It is to be  treated with the deepest respect. Life's sacredness, 
however, is not located in  the maintenance of biological functions but in the 
ability to live, to love and  to be inside meaningful relationships. 
-- John Shelby Spong 
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Merle from Nevis, Minnesota, writes:  
Based on the sequences in the Genesis creation story, there seems to be a  
serious discrepancy in the timing of the creation of light. Light appeared on  
the first day but the sun, moon and stars did not appear until the fourth day.  
How do creationists rationalize that anomaly as being literally accurate? 
Also  Adam and Eve were the first humans according to creationists but with only 
Cain  and Abel mentioned in the Bible, where did their wives come from unless 
they  evolved from somewhere else or sibling incest occurred with Eve herself? 
The  same situation for propagating the earth seems to occur after the flood? 
If God  created everything 8000 to 10,000 years ago as some believe, 
(although now the  Department of the Interior seems to insist that the Noah flood 
created the Grand  Canyon) then God must also have created the ability for science 
to clone, to  adapt stem cells to new purposes, etc., etc. In fact nothing 
can ever be done  through science that God did not create the ability to 
accomplish in those  terms. Yet fundamentalists insist cloning and the use of stem 
cells is  unethical. Of course the other option is that God created everything 
in God's  own time (15 billion years or so ago for the universe, 4 ½ - 5 
billion years ago  for the planet earth) according to current theories.  
Dear Merle,  
Your comments indicate that you are trying to confront the anti-evolutionists 
 on a rational basis. My experience is that this is a waste of time. Their  
objections to evolution have little to do with rationality. It is rather an  
emotional attempt to minister to their fractured religious certainty. I am no  
longer willing to have rational conversations with or to take seriously the  
point of view of people such as the members of the flat earth society,  
creationists or those who think homosexuals choose to be depraved. Life is far  too 
short to waste any of its precious moments in meaningless conversations with  
irrational ignorance.  
There is no doubt that this planet earth is between 4 ½ and 5 billion years  
old, that all life ultimately stems from that first single cell and that we 
Homo  sapiens are kin both to the apes and to the cabbages. DNA evidence is 
quite  conclusive.  
Everyone is quite entitled to his or her own opinion but no one is entitled  
to his or her own facts. It is a mark of sheer hysteria when religious fear  
tries to impose its religious convictions on the minds of children in public  
education. Kansas tried it once. Arkansas tried it once. Both failed. In the  
present mood of the electorate, especially in the south and the Midwest, there  
is evidence that the "Religious Right" will try it again. Their current 
effort  is to perfume anti-evolution with more sophisticated words like 'creative  
design.'  
They also will fail. They will, however, create much havoc in the process and 
 much energy will have to be used to protect our whole society from these  
peddlers of snake oil religion. That is a pity but the combination of ignorance  
and fear creates strange responses especially when we live in a world of  
anxiety, upheaval and insecurity. But all this will in time pass away as it  
always does. Progress is never achieved in a straight line. Periodically human  
beings do manage to create a new 'dark age,' but if you take a long range view  
of both life and history we human beings seem finally to get it right. My 
best.  
-- John Shelby Spong