A Life and Death Issue

As you may or may not know the battle to save the life of Florida woman Terri Schindler-Schiavo seems to have exhausted nearly all legal options. For those of you who may not be familiar with this tragic story, in 1990 Terri was debilitated due to an alleged heart attack in which she suffered a lack of oxygen to the brain. For the past 15 years Terri has lived in what some doctors have determined to be a persistent vegetative state with only the assistance of a feeding tube. She is able to breath on her own, she has normal sleep cycles, and according to her parents she appears to respond when they walk into the room.

For much of these 15 years Terri’s husband Michael has attempted by way of the courts to have her feeding tube removed which would lead to her death. Terri’s parents have fought this every step of the way, often unsuccessfully. Terri’s parents have offered to take total care and responsibility for her needs and relieve her husband of any and all responsibilities. Michael refuses, however, and still insists on having the courts order the feeding tube removed. According to Michael Terri stated that she would not want to live on life support in the event of her becoming and invalid. Terri did not have a written directive and never expressed this to anyone other than Michael however. It is also important, I believe, to note that Michael who is not divorced from Terri, has fathered two children by a woman he has been living with for a majority of the time Terri has been hospitalized.

Today, February 22, 2005 The 2nd District Court of Appeals allowed a stay to expire which would keep the feeding tube from being removed until Terri’s parents could file further legal challenges. Unless her parents are successful in their legal challenge, Terri will die sometime within the next 10 days.

I believe with all of my heart that if Terri’s feeding tube is removed resulting in her death that all persons regardless of status will be one step closer to losing their God given right to life as mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and which is also one of the foundations upon which Scripture itself rests. When the Declaration of Independence was penned the founders stated very clearly that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Notice they did not say “among these are a life of liberty and happiness.” Why? Well, it is clear that they understood that life is not defined by quality but rather by quantity. This is primarily why our founders included the line “endowed by their Creator.” These rights do not come from man or more specifically government but rather they come from God.

Man has no say in what qualifies as a life and what does not. God has laid those guidelines down in His word and we are simply to respect them. When you depart from God’s word you are left with nothing but empty legal wrangling not based in any absolute reality or truth. When it is left up to man to decide what constitutes life, the question then becomes, which man’s definition do we use? Adolf Hitler had strong convictions concerning what constituted a life. If it is up to man to decide this issue than what makes Hitler’s definition of life any less acceptable than yours? Without God and His absolute standards your decision making is reduced to that which is for the common good. The problem with this is, again, who decides the common good? Apart from absolute standards, that which one uses to determine what is for the common good will never remain constant.

The Schindler-Schiavo case is yet another example of what mankind is left with when God is pushed out of society; a law devoid of morality. When this is the case we are all in real danger.

God Bless,
Pastor Duane

For more info on the Schindler-Schiavo case visit http://www.terrisfight.org/

Sermon Outline from January 30, 2005

Separating the god from the God
from the series "Elijah: Every Man's Prophet"
Text: 1 Kings 18:16-46

4 key truths that are fundamental to the Christian life. It is essential that we know and understand these 4 truths if we are going to engage our world and change hearts and minds.

1. With the Truth Should Come Boldness. (vs. 17-19)

2. With God It's All or Nothing. (vs. 21)

3. Wrong but Sincere, Is Still Wrong. (vs. 26-28)

4. God Honors Genuine Repentance and Obedience. (vs. 41-46)

Closing points:

a. Unless we are willing to go through disciplines such as the dry brook, the empty barrel, and the dead boy, we will never have the victories of Mt. Carmel.

b. Unless we feed on the word of God we will never know the truth we are to so boldly proclaim.

c. Unless we allow God to refine us daily and remove that sin and those idols which keep us from a total devotion to Him we will live in a state of constant spiritual defeat never experiencing the blessings that come with pursuing and knowing God.

Sources referred to:
The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
National Geographic Magazine; November 2004 "Was Darwin Wrong?"

Two views.

As I have been preparing for the "How Now Shall We Live?" series I am reminded of the fact that there are truly only two views of life out there according to Scripture. Either you believe in the one true God and His word or you don't. You cannot accept parts of it. You cannot deny part of scripture and then defend any other part of it. St. Augustine himself said that “If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

Scripture cannot be simply a good book of "values" or "fables" with quaint moral lessons. The very message of Scripture does not allow for anything other than a full acceptance or full rejection of its message. Either Scripture contains the answers to the most fundamental questions of life or it does not. Either it is totally reliable or it is totally unreliable. Take my car for example: if my car were to never break down, I would consider it reliable. If it were to break down once I would no longer consider it reliable, at least not in the strict sense of the word. I may tell you that my car is pretty reliable, except of course for that time when it left me stranded along the road. From that point forward my expectation would be that it is not a matter of if but when it will break down again. The same is true of our view of God's word. When we deem one part of it unreliable we deem it entirely unreliable.

In a world where moral absolutes are viewed as non-existent I find myself clinging all the more to the words of John "Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth."(John 17:17 NASB) I don't cling to God's word as some sort of crutch to get through the day, nor do I possess some kind of blind faith but rather I seek the truth, and upon finding that truth I want to stay as close to it as possible. C.S. Lewis said: "An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or Practical reason is idiocy. If a man's mind is open on these things, let his mouth at least be shut."

Lewis was absolutely correct. In his book "The Abolition of Man" Lewis states the following "...you cannot go on "explaining away" forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on "seeing through" things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to "see through" first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To "see through" all things is the same as not to see." We ask questions to receive answers. Life is not a series of rhetorical questions. God has given us the truth, but are we willing to take it at face value?

Faith, not reason alone, is the final doorway to accepting truth. Faith is required by God if we are to come to Him. Reason will only take you so far, and then you will come to that point where you must accept that which cannot be explained by reason alone. This is also true of the humanist. He may say "I believe the world around me is a product of chance" but he to will come to the realization that chance cannot explain everything and thereby he will find it necessary to put his faith in something that he cannot explain or understand.

Though many may deny it, everyone possesses faith. Faith is universal to mankind; it is the object of ones faith that differs.

God bless and have a great day!

Pastor Duane

- I Thessalonians 5:24 “Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.”