Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, Feb 2, 2010




I'll die before I'm 25, and when I do
I'll have lived the way I wanted to.

Sid Vicious (Simon John Ritchie Beverley)
of the Sex Pistols. He died of a drug overdose ,
age 21, on this date, 1979


Sid’s death before the time he predicted leads me to a question. It’s an important question, humanly and theologically. Is “warehousing people” Christian? Or “humane?”

I think it’s a question we really have to deal with in this day and age, as (at least in “affluent” societies with good health care – so, many Americans aren’t quite in that category, at least about 17% of us) people can be kept biologically alive longer and longer. If I had to say what the most depressing and troublesome image is of my decades in ministry, it is this: corridors upon corridors of warehoused persons strapped into wheelchairs, drooling, shouting out, women calling out to me “What lovely legs you have sweetheart!”. So, so sad. And I think, grossly inhuman.

Oh, I know. Life is “sacred”. So, define “Life”. If we look at it the way a lot of people do today – that Life must be biologically prolonged at any cost – then, taking the Christian Myth at face-value, God has to be faulted for allowing Jesus to die far too prematurely. If Life is to be prolonged at any cost, the God should have listened to the person who cried, “Let God save Him”, or come down from the cross Himself.

Personally, I think that the Hippocratic oath has been co-opted by insurance companies, playing on doctors’ guilt, for the worship of the Almighty Dollar. (The most money spent on Medicare in the USA is spent during the last six months of a person’s life – and it runs into billions of dollars, while children starve and practically no preventative medicine is covered.) Death isn’t a sublime Mystery in America; it’s a Big Business.

So: there’s my rant. I’m not going to pontificate on it. But it’s critically important to think about it.

Choice: Life? or Living Death?

Brian+