Christian Living
No matter what each of us was doing on that day just a few days ago, we all shared a mutual moment in time. Some of us were getting ready for work, some of us were working, some of us were driving in the car, and some were relaxing. Some of us were spending time with our families, and some were watching closely for news that we did not want to hear, but each of us was united by a common disappointment and surge of grief when we heard of the death of Terrie Schiavo. May she rest in peace.
We all thought to ourselves about what a travesty it was. We all wondered what the world was coming to that it could stand by and let such a thing happen. Perhaps we were disheartened by the game of politics and legality that played for keeps and cost a woman her life. We shared a common grief that day, and most of us share it yet today.
Terrie Shiavo’s death is indeed a travesty. That is the truth of the matter. There are some that would disagree with me, but I prefer not to speak on all of the politics, legality, physiology, and human rights commotion surrounding this issue. Enough of these voices are being raised in protest and approval on every side, and amongst them lays great confusion and a surreal lack of clarity. I will let the talking heads argue it out, but when it really comes down to it, Terrie represents a human being created in the image of God. This is true no matter what state of consciousness she happened to be in. God is the author of life, and as such, only He can determine whether one of his creations should live or die. Mankind has no voice in the Realm of the Divine. We cannot put value on what we did not create; to do so echoes as a resounding slap upon the cheek of the Almighty.
Considering my audience, I am sure that most of you agree with what I have just said. After all, it is the same thing most in Christian circles are saying. Just as we shared a common moment of grief when we heard the bad news, so we share common beliefs about the sanctity and value of human life. God is the Author of life; we are not. Life has value because it was created by God in His image. This is “old news” type stuff to us really. After all, were Christians not heathens.
We say we believe that all life has value, yet the incongruity of our beliefs and actions hits closer to home than most of us care to admit. As many of us accuse those that decided Terrie’s life was not valuable enough to let her keep living, we forget that more often than we want to realize, we put our own sets of value on people’s lives. Most of the time we do this to a lesser degree and with less devastating results than we have seen in the Schiavo tragedy, but we still do it none-the-less.
Right now you might be thinking to yourself that I don’t know what I am talking about, considering you haven’t terminated anyone’s life recently. -Perhaps not. Most of us have never been responsible for anyone’s death. However, don’t we walk through life treating people as if they are not valuable? If people don’t fit into our ideas of what we think they should be, don’t we tend to dismiss them as sub-level life forms? Most of us have come to a place where we outwardly tolerate people who do not meet our standards of life as we think it should be, but deep down inside we do not see them as real human beings.
As we walk down the street, we see the shabbily dressed kid who drags his feet and lurches when he moves. He doesn’t walk, he stumbles. Yet he still smiles, waves, and says “hi” in a garbled, barely understandable voice. We wave back half-heartedly, and hurry our children into the store, afraid that we might catch whatever it is he has.
We sniff with distaste when we drive by the slums. When we see the bum on the streets, we think to ourselves with disgust that he should stop drinking and get himself a job. When we see the single mother at church, the one who can barely afford to keep her beater of a car running, or feed her obnoxious children, we turn away and drive home to eat a warm and tantalizing Sunday dinner.
We avoid nursing homes like the plague, and if for any reason we ever have to darken the doors of one, we rush in and rush out, as if in hurrying we will not be reminded that someday we will most likely end up in one. When the elderly stranger in the wheel chair grabs our arm and asks us a question, we brush them off and move on our way as fast as we feel that we can get away with without seeming like barbarians.
(I made a delivery to such a place the other day, and I was saddened by the amount of lonely people who have been left by their own families, and who are abundantly blessed just to receive a smile from a stranger. I was also saddened to realize that it took a work related task just to get me through the door of such an establishment.)
We scurry past people who live at a level that we perceive to be lower than our own. To us, their lives don’t really seem to have value. They are the destitute, handicapped, drug addicted, prostituting, bed-ridden, dying, aged, orphaned, disease infested, shut-in, homeless, single parenting, and jail celled, masses. They are the Terri Shiavo’s, as it were, of society, whom we dismiss as having lives without value.
Yet God, as their Creator, loves them infinitely! Who are we to judge the courts for saying Terrie Shiavo’s life was not valuable enough for her to keep living it, when we often do the same thing to others that we come in contact with?
As Christian’s, the clash of our convictions with our actions must change. We are not being who we are presenting ourselves to be. If we are to continue to call ourselves followers of Christ, we must go to him with our questions of how to treat people. Just look at how the God we claim we serve talks about humans and commands us concerning our relationships to them in the bible. Take James 1:27(NIV,) as an example:
“Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep one-self from being polluted by the world.”
To paraphrase, God has pretty much said through the mouth of James,
“As far as religion goes…Here are the most important things to me… Looking after the refuse of the world and working to make yourselves holy like I am.”
We see here that God puts immense value on even the dregs of society. He has just used them as part of a summary of everything that is important to him. Let us also look at one of my favorite sets of verses coming strait from the mouth of Jesus, Matthew 22:37-40(NIV). I am sure that you have heard these before. The Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus with one of their infamous “stump the Rabbi” questions. They have just asked Jesus what the greatest command in the law is. He gives them a two-fold answer. He says:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the Prophets hang on these commandments.”
Jesus puts it simply for us. He says Love God, and love man. All the law and the prophets, (-that is every way that God has spoken to reveal himself,) hang on, or rely on these two orders from our Creator. There are no foggy politics or laws here, there is just truth aspire to.
Throughout history, we see God putting extraordinary emphasis on the value of life and on loving people. We call Terrie Schiavo’s death a tragedy, and it surely is. We say that it was wrong for people to put a value on Terrie’s life when she had no say in the matter, and it was. Nevertheless, if we can see such a tragedy happen, and not have it remind us that all life has value, and not have it change the way we view people, then it is a sad day indeed.
As we mourn with Terrie’s family and friends over her death, may it remind us that deep down inside we are not all that different from those who let it happen. We are the Christians; we have a responsibility before God to value His Creations, large and small. I pray that our responsibility would not continue to fall by the wayside.
-May God forgive us and change our hearts!
I leave you with three soberly final verses to ponder:
“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” (James 2:14-17. NIV.)
(Note: I am not using the above verses to speak about a works based salvation. I am merely using them to speak about a true faith based salvation.
This article may be republished and redistributed if it remains intact in its entirety.)
-Jared Norton 2005.
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