Bioethics: A Primer for Christians by Gilbert Meilaender

Book Analysis

Bioethics: A Primary for Christians

by Gilbert Meilaender

Published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Introduction

Few Christians, if any, have thought long and hard about abortion and its effects on the mothers, families, and communities. As Christians, we are staunch opponents of abortion, fighting for the sanctity of life. Another ethics issue we think a lot about include the sanctity of marriage, but beyond that, our scope of concern for ethics is typically narrow. We can give some kind of answer after thinking about an issue for a period of time, but we are not prepared to face these kinds of situations.
I cannot remember the last time I hear a pastor take on the issue of in vitro fertilization, genetics testing (beyond cloning humans), or euthanasia, with the exception of seminary professors and Dr. Al Mohler’s blog. We see some of these issues as “beyond reality,” non-existent and thus demanding no reason for our attention. Those times are over. 

Gilbert Meilaender, in Bioethics, gives a succinct summary of a number of issues pertaining to the biological life of everyone, from reproduction all the way to embryonic research, guiding Christians through right thinking of how to deal with bioethics in general. He has not set out to accomplish a thorough, all-encompassing worldview pertaining to bioethics, but rather gives us what we need to think them through. I want to give three scenarios of life situations I have been in dealing with bioethics, and how I now make sense of them: (1) The life of a young woman facing a rare birth defect for the child she is carrying; (2) Two young men who want to commit suicide; and (3) a faithful, elderly Christian lady who is suffering in a nursing home dependent on machines.

Analysis

Let’s begin with the issue of abortion, dealing with Bioethics in chronological order of its layout. Since beginning Survey of Christian Ethics this semester, my view has changed on abortion. Prior, I was against abortion in any case regardless of the situation (including rape, potential threat of the mother or child’s life, incest, and so on). There was no case that could previously convince me to accept abortion as an acceptable action. I took this view from a stump speech I hear by Ron Paul, former OBGYN and current Congressman, during the 2008 presidential election. I did not particularly like Ron Paul and I have since liked him even less since his son Rand beat the candidate I worked for in last year’s U.S. Senate race here in Kentucky. So my acceptance of his words was not because of political influence, but because of his professional authority in the medical field. He said there was never a case in modern technology of a birth that threatened the life of the mother. I did not check the facts, nor did I consider other hypothetical situations.

About a month ago, a lady I worked with told me her daughter had an abortion. I was appalled because I knew her sincere commitment to her faith. Her daughter’s child was developing, but had a condition called omphalocele meaning her abdominal organs were on the outside of her body. In this case, there was no hope for survival and the child would have either been born dead. They chose to abort the pregnancy and have since had other kids. This was not an easy decision as she explained, but ultimately for their psychological and physical health, my colleague’s daughter made that decision and lives with it still.

I have since decided there are medical justifications in favor of aborting children, but it should not be the first option, nor is it to be taken lightly. Therefore I agree with Meilaender when he says, “There are I think, some circumstances—very limited circumstances—in which we would not deny [the mother] an abortion if she seeks it. We can be grateful that in our time such circumstances are medically quite rare,” (Bioethics 14). This is one of those cases. In all case studies I am writing on, we shall include a couple of criteria Meilaender presents: “Useless treatments may rightly be refused, but we need to make certain that we ask of possible treatments: Will they benefit the life this patient has? That is quite different from asking, Is this patient’s life a beneficial one, a life worth living?” (Bioethics 70). In the case of the abortion, the first question was being asked and there was no reasonable treatment that could potentially save the life of this child based on the information given to me.

However, dealing with the second question, “”Is this patent’s life a beneficial one, a life worth living?” Take contemplated suicide into consideration for two young men I am very close to. One of the two is a Christian who has battled lifelong depression and attempted suicide a number of times, the other was once a nominal Christian but has since denounced Christianity. Is it okay for either to commit suicide? Growing up, two of my friends hanged themselves, another student I graduate high school with shot himself, and another two passed away in accidents (one a drug overdose and the other a car wreck).

The young Christian man considered these five cases, his dad’s imprisonment, and his lack of desire to live. The young man was me. I had such a desire to leave this fallen world that had brought me down into what seemed like the pits of hell for years; it was elementary school when I threatened to wrap a bandana around my neck to suffocate myself through freshman year of my undergraduate studies when I resorted to “canned air” not as a high, but as a means of suicide. In high school I told a girlfriend of a plan to come to school on my birthday and shoot myself in front of all those kids who had made my life a living hell, to make them see what they had caused. The weekend to come I was showering, getting ready for work, when my mom and step-dad told me someone was at the house to see me. I had no idea who it was and to my surprise, once I was out of the shower, I walked into the living room where two Kentucky State Police were standing.

One of those officers was a youth leader in his church and he posed the question to me, “Where do you really think you would go if you were to kill yourself? You would have murdered yourself without chance for forgiveness.” Those two questions temporarily brought me out of that mindset. In the words of Meilaender, I “desired to be more like Creator than creature,” and I agree with him when he says, “contrary to what Christians have often believed, such rational suicide does not necessarily damn one,” (Bioethics 57). I was so mad about the situation that suicide would not come back for several months. I have tried to thank the ex-girlfriend since, but she has virtually fallen off the face of the earth; I know of no way to contact her. But, would I have actually gone to hell? I don’t think so. I knew the gospel and I knew Christ, I wanted to be with our Lord because I no longer could take living in this fallen world. “God judges persons, not only individual deeds, and the moment in one’s life when a sinful deed occurs does not determine one’s fate,” (Bioethics 57).

My time to return the favor to someone else going through suicidal thoughts came during my senior year in college. My roommate was a close friend and was to be a groomsman in my wedding. He and his girlfriend had split up and he could no longer take it either. I had convinced him to seek help and he did, but the medication prescribed was able to not only rescue him out of his situation, but held the potential to solve it how he desired. I came in from class as usual and he was still asleep from the night before. I waited a little while and around 6:00 pm I finally decided to wake him up. He promised he would not do it again and handed me his medication. I locked it up in the glove box of my car thinking the problem was solved, but it happened again. He was threatening to cut his wrist. My only thought was the one I should have acted on in the first place. I called the police. He was not in my wedding and we have not had a friendship since, but he is still, to this day, living. I was not going to sit idly by, essentially assisting in his suicide. In the case of suicide, the second question is being asked, “Is this a life worth living?” This is not a question we, as creatures of a Creator, have the authority to answer.

Lastly, my Mamaw, right after her seventy-ninth birthday, had a massive stroke. It eventually placed her in a nursing home on feeding tubes with a trache connected to a ventilator. She could not speak, she had few memories, and her life was only sustained because of the machines. There was a time when we had hope for her to eventually go home, but that left us after a couple of months. She lived out the final two years of her life hopeless and in pain. I prayed daily for God to take her home to heaven. Would it have been a case of euthanasia to remove her from life support? I am not convinced. While “God does not really ‘solve’ or take away the problem of suffering,” (Bioethics 63), “no one is obligated to pursue treatments that are not expected to be helpful, and to refuse such treatment is exactly that: the refusal of a treatment, not the rejection of the gift of life. It is not killing but ‘allowing to die,’” (Bioethics 69). As humans, we are finite creatures. We should be more concerned with caregiving than relieving suffering, but there comes a time for “allowing one to die” when we can do no more.

Conclusion

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Meilaender's Bioethics. There were a lot of questions I have had that were answered, there are a lot of answers given to questions I never asked, and there are a lot of questions I answer differently than Meilaender. He is thoughtful, consistent, and I believe biblical. Many of the questions do not have direct biblical insight, perhaps because of technological advances, but also because the root of the issue is directly spoken to in the majority of the cases. We, as creatures are finite, we must recognize this both as a patient and physician. To understand our limitations is to also understand we live under a sovereign God who is constantly caring for the greatest good beyond what our finite minds can comprehend.

Bibliography

Meilaender, Gilbert. Bioethics: A Primer for Christians. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005. 126 pp.