Gain the world, forfeit your soul

It's almost impossible to cruise around the internet today without encountering some news story or commentary about Terry Schiavo. The bottom line is that you or I have no way to really know whether or not her brain is functioning. The lawyers and doctors for her husband say that she is in a persistent vegetative state, whereas the lawyers for her parents claim that she might be in a transitional state of some kind, with the possibility of recovery. How in the world am I supposed to figure this one out? I'm not a doctor or neurologist. All I have to go by are competing news stories, and eventually it seems to boil down to this - if you are a typical, run-of-the-mill, conservative republican, then you side with Terry's parents. If you are a typical, run-of-the-mill, liberal democrat, then you side with Terry's husband. So which team do you want to be on?

Personally I think that either solution is horrible and painful and sad. To let her die by removing her feeding tube is a very serious decision to make, and I would not want to be the person who ordered that, or did that, or had to watch her die as a result. I would not want to be directly responsible for the death of another human being. Then again, leaving her alive is not exactly the wonderful option that it has been made out to be. She has been in some sort of comatose state for 7-8 years now - how many more do we keep her body alive for? What does that achieve? Who, exactly, are we really keeping her alive for? For herself? For her own benefit? What does she gain by being kept alive in this condition? Or is it so that others can avoid dealing with the pain and agony of her death?


Either way around, this case is a reminder of our fantastic corporate denial of the reality of death. One day I will die. And so will you. That is an absolute certainty. Sooner or later it happens to everyone. However, we spend an enormous amount of time and energy trying to avoid that fate. We pop supplements and pills, exercise 24 hours a day at the gym, try to avoid bad foods, drive safe cars, and sanitize everything we can. Even air fresheners now contain anti-bacterial agents. Air fresheners! I mean, give me a break! Are you really telling me that a squirt of Glade is going to purge this entire room of all dangerous bacteria? It's obsessive-compulsive behavior, and it's because we fear death.

Now, fear of death is normal - it's hard-wired into us from day one. But the danger is that this leads us into an obsession with life. In averting our eyes from death, we forget why we are really here. In effect we are taking our eyes off the goal, looking away from the finish line. This is why I love the movie Gladiator. It shows a guy who has his eyes firmly fixed on the afterlife. Because he knows that there are some things more important than what we can see and hear and taste and touch and feel right now. Although they don't show it in the movie, I'm sure that deep down he still would have had some fear of death, but the point is that Maximus could see beyond death, and that profoundly impacted the way he lived.

When we live life thinking that death is to be avoided at all costs, we also start to think that suffering must also be avoided, since suffering is awfully close to death. And these are completely false worldviews. Contrast that with the Apostle Paul:

"And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me. However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me - the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace." (Acts 20:22-24)

God was telling him that he had to go to Jerusalem, and that he would encounter hardships and prison, and probably even death along the way. But he wasn't worried about that because his eyes were fixed on the goal. Paul's entire life was centered around this one thing, it was his life purpose, "to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me." And so, you might say, "well good for Paul! Thank goodness I haven't felt compelled by God to do the same thing."

Really?

In Matthew 16:22, Jesus has just told the disciples that he would be betrayed and killed in Jerusalem, and Peter, in a totally normal, avoid-death-and-suffering-at-all-costs sort of way, blurts out impulsively,

"Never Lord! This shall never happen to you!"

You can just feel Peter's pain and anguish at the prospect of Jesus dying. Jesus, the man that Peter loves so deeply. Jesus, the man that Peter always seem to be trying to look out for, as if Jesus was his little brother. And so here, his protective nature comes out and he leaps forward, as if to say,

"Don't mention the 'D-word'"

But Jesus has a completely different perspective for us. He rebukes Peter in the sternest possible terms, saying,

"...you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

I love how Jesus cuts straight to the heart of the matter here. He is telling Peter, "Hey, it's time to take this to the next level. Time to change your persective once and for all. Stop thinking like the world, and start thinking about God."

And then he goes on to say,

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glody with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done." (Matthew 16:24-27)

That seems pretty clear to me. Elevate the importance of the physical body, of life, of this corporal, tangible, material world, and you will lose sight of the things that really matter. Paul understood this clearly, and spent his entire life focused on serving Christ, even thought that meant all sorts of suffering and hardship. He understood that there was a bigger picture he was a part of, that there was more important things than living a long comfortable life. Paul was focused on the goal, and he never took his eyes off it.

And this is what bugs me most about the whole Terry Schiavo case. Sure, yes, there are all sorts of moral and ethical and legal and biological arguments to be made on both sides of the case. And as Christians we are called to be compassionate and loving, and we are also called to protect those who cannot protect themselves, and to preserve life and not to take life. I heard a commentator on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour the other day who was lamenting the fact that our societal presumption appears to be towards death, and we have to fight to preserve life, whereas he wishes it was the other way around - that our presumption in all such cases should always be towards preserving life. As in a trial where the jury must find the accused guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt, the same should be true here - the husband should be forced to show beyond a shadow of a doubt that Terry's wishes were to have the plug pulled. Absent that, our presumption should be to preserve life.

However, let's not forget in all this that death is not the end. And ultimately what is far more important here is not Terry's physical body, her physical life, her physical death, but her spiritual life. Whether or not she is kept alive by a feeding tube is far less important than whether or not she will be kept alive eternally by the power of Jesus Christ. Christians should be far more focused on that aspect of this situation than anything else. Because ultimately Terry will die one day, and whether that is today, tomorrow, or 10 years from now, the question will still be the same - Do you know Christ?

For those of us not in a coma, Paul has a word for us in 1 Corinthians 6. His reminder is that our lives are not our own. We "were bought at a price." And as such our lives should be fully committed to God, not fully committed to avoiding death. Terry's case should be a wake up call to all Christians that God has important work for us to do, and time is running out.