Sunday, January 22, 2006

Liberty - To Live or to Die??

Hello everyone,
Almost everyone would agree that the principle of liberty stands as the chief cornerstone of this nation's foundation and has been uncompromisingly fought for and upheld ever since the birth of this nation. It's almost impossible to imagine America with its citizens robbed of their liberty, and for liberty's cause many have laid down their lives. Yet, a couple of incidents that happened in the last week have brought to light the different (or changing) notions people have about liberty.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 majority voted to provide legal protection to doctors who participate in the medically assisted suicides of patients with illnesses that are determined to be severe or "terminal". The verdict was interpreted by many as an act of protection of personal liberty, and was greeted with great excitement and fist-pumping by many, including hundreds of elderly sick citizens. I asked myself, "This wonderful tenet of liberty, whose wonder and power the nation's founding fathers grasped inimitably and traveled thousands of miles on the sea, weathering the ravages of nature, to found a nation that was built on it, could it serve as a key to death?? If liberty could produce death, was this the liberty that our fathers strove hard (and many died) to establish and promote??" If the answer to either of these is "Yes", it leads to a conclusion that would shake the nobility of the foremost foundational principle of this nation. Thank God, the answer is not "Yes".

How good is a fruit if its juice is sucked out?? Liberty is not really liberty if God is taken out of the picture. Liberty without God produces a culture of death for it fails to recognize the giver of life.

Now, is there a right to do whatever one wants in life?? Absolutely! The placard of one of the celebrators of the above-mentioned Supreme Court verdict read, "My Life, My Death, My Choice". I said to myself that he could have also added "My Hell". There is a right to do anything, but, before we exercise our rights, wouldn't it make sense to think about where it would take us??

Oh! That the world may see, acknowledge, and embrace the one and only Liberator, from whom alone comes the true liberty, which leads to life.

Thanks to everyone who has commented on my earlier blogs! Bye for now!


- Wes

9 Comments:

At Fri Jan 27, 05:31:00 AM PST, Blogger z said...

Well, Wesley, what if Christians decide to end their lives if they know they'll have to die soon anyway, and that they will die a slow and painful death? Would it be so wrong to choose to go to sleep and just never wake up in this world anymore?

Sure we aren't meant to "kill," but is choosing to die the same as "killing"?

 
At Fri Jan 27, 11:15:00 AM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The comment of Z is worth consideration and deeper analysis. Well,what is suicide? It is ending of life to escape guilt,mental pain due to disappoinment,or other sorrow.In the same way ending life to escape physical pain also can be called as suicide. But there is a subtle but important difference. In normal case of suicide, the action is impulsive and totally avoidable with umptine number of alternate solutions. But the case of medical-ending of the life of terminally-ill patients is different.It is done after carefull consideration of all possible ways of treatment. When there is NO-WAY,in order not to make the patient suffer terrrible pain, the life is terminated medically. In other words, death is made painless. Anyway,medically there is no alternative to death,hence it is administered after carefull consideration . So it can not be termrd as abetting suicide.It is a choice between watching the loved one suffer wild-pain or see him/her close the eyes calmly.When it can be argued that no one can take away the life,it can also be argued that no one can claim to have real love by prolongimg the suffering of the sick.
Anyway it is very difficult to establish moral sanction on this issue.It is not 2+2=4 kind of answer.It can be 2+3-1=4,or 2x2=4, or
2x3-2=4 and ever-so-many ways of getting the same answer.
Dad Moses.

 
At Fri Jan 27, 02:32:00 PM PST, Blogger Wes said...

I guess, there needs a clarification be made here. The court ruling in question here is not one that covers only those who are in extremely severe, torturous, unending, progressive pain in a medically irreversible condition and/or are advanced in age. I believe that Mr. Moses had such patients in his mind when he made the comment about the "choice between watching the loved one suffer wild-pain or see him/her close the eyes calmly". This verdict encompasses much more than such extreme situations and could potentially have a far-reaching impact on how life is viewed. Measures like this are basically attempts to simplify life as a mere choice in which humans exercise their full rights to decide on its continuation or termination. Such a view on life gives no consideration for eternity nor the Author of life.

I agree with Mr. Moses' comments, but I need to make a point that this verdict covers a much larger range of situations than Mr. Moses probably had in his mind when he expressed his opinion.

 
At Tue Jan 31, 01:00:00 PM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think people commit suicide if they dont have a purpose in life or if they have lost it. For patients with sever illness on the other hand, who have been told by doctors that there is no chance of survival and it is just going to be a slow and painful death for them, what can possibly be the purpose in their life? Why would they want to live? What would their loved ones get in return of watching them suffer than pain?

 
At Tue Jan 31, 10:01:00 PM PST, Blogger Wes said...

Hello Anonymous,
Thanks for your comment. Based on your statement on a possible reason for people committing suicide (without an explicit mention of whether you think it’s a justifiable act or not) and your observation on the purpose (rather, lack of it) of people with severe sickness, let me ask you this. Do you say that it’s OK to take away the life of a person if he doesn’t have a purpose or has lost the purpose in his life?? I’d be startled at such an attitude towards a person’s life. I believe that every person has a purpose in life, immaterial of his current state, and when dealing with those who seem to not have it or have lost it, the right approach would be to enable them to realize their purpose and live life abundantly. Even sick people have a purpose to live for.

Z asked, “Would it be wrong to go to sleep and just never wake up in this world anymore?”. I think that the answer to the question depends on how one goes to sleep. It’s one thing for a person to willingly deprive himself of “mere-life-extending treatments”, but it’s another matter to have high doses of lethal injections administered to the patient to kill him. The Oregon Law is about the latter one, and logically, I don’t see a difference between this and taking poison.

Going back to Anonymous’ comment about the lack of purpose in a person with severe illness, let me ask this – Aren’t there countless cases of patients outliving the dire predictions of doctors, with even full recovery in many cases, however realistic and medically sound the predictions appeared at the time of diagnosis?? My point is that doctors are not the ones who have an ultimate say on life, and even if they are accurate, the life that God has given us is for us to live it out and not to curtail it on our own (I’m not talking about voluntarily removing mere-life-extending treatments). My opinion is that the exercise of the right to end one’s own life would not be an act of the real sense of liberty.

I understand that some people may see no harm with the Oregon Law, especially when they have in their mind their elderly loved ones who are going through or have gone through severe physical pain. However, rather than the immediate effect of this Law, what bothers me more are its future implications, wherein people could try to broaden the scope of this law or use this as a precedent to establish laws that are more ruthless to weak humans. An example of this is the Euthanasia Law in Holland.

Well, I’ll close here.

 
At Wed Feb 01, 10:21:00 AM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I, G.Moses,am in FULL agreement with WES. It is ABSOLUTELY true that GOD only is the Giver and Taker of our lives.And humans have no right or authority to end life. The thrust of my earlier comment was direcly and singularly applicable ONLY to those cases of sufferings with incurable diseases,wherein all kinds or artificial implements are used just to prolong life ,or,to say exactly,to prevent normal and eventual end of life.
All other cases of end to life are morally untenable and all connected justifications &laws can be only permissive and not just.

 
At Tue Mar 21, 01:27:00 AM PST, Anonymous Anonymous said...

jane you have never heard this addressed because you have not bothered to research the topic.

Killing yourself cannot be an easy decision to make, and if you'd researched the topic you would know that in MOST cases sucide is deliberate and 'well' thought out that is to say it's premeditated. I'm not getting at you but how will you learn about a topic without trying to find out?

 
At Thu Mar 23, 09:04:00 PM PST, Blogger LadyCelticFire said...

You speak of the founding fathers with such Love and admiration. You speak of Liberty... I have one question for you... Where was the liberty for the Native Americans our forefathers raped, murdered and brutalized? Where was their liberty when they were given blankets with diseases, or rotted meat.? Forced onto lands that they did not know, with tribes they were not kin to? Where was their Liberty?

You asked me to post on your site, and so I am. As far as assisted suicide. I am all for it. You speak of your God, well did your God not give one free will? Is it not right then to say that it is a persons free will to die with dignity?

Your God's followers are murderers. They rape and pillage and kill ALL in the name of Him... I do not follow your God, nor do I follow ANY God. I follow my heart and my brain. Perhaps if more people started doing that, we wouldn't have problems as we do now...

 
At Fri Mar 24, 09:08:00 AM PST, Blogger celticfire said...

Not to mention WOMEN and SLAVES and countless others that were never granted liberty.

 

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