We begin with Chester Nimitz Jr. Nimitz, a retired admiral and CEO and the son of the Pacific fleet commander in World War II, was 86 years old and suffering from congestive heart failure, constant back pain and stomach problems so severe he’d lost 30 pounds. During better days, he loved living. He thrived. But now he was a sad sight. Modern medicine couldn’t do anything about the problems, and he was doomed to die soon, so, according to an article by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek, he decided to “consciously, rationally, deliberately” not live out these hardships. He was euthanized.
The other man in this story is named Job. He lived roughly 4,000 years ago in a place called Uz. You can read his full biography in a culmination of writings called the Bible. Like Nimitz, he had three daughters. Additionally he had seven sons. Job was the wealthiest man in all of Uz and a leader. One day his 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels and 1,000 oxen were stolen or killed. The same day all 10 of his children were killed when the house they were in collapsed. Not long after he lost his health. He was covered from head to toe with oozing boils and worms and covered in dirt. He’d lost all his possessions and his health.
The difference between the two men was that Job chose to live.
The word “euthanization” is relatively new but the concept is not. In the face of all his adversity, Job had thoughts about and was encouraged to consider the idea of euthanization. His wife said, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9). In Job chapter 7, Job speaks of his terrifying dreams and says, “My soul would choose suffocation; death without pain.” But Job did choose pain. He figured out there was a reason for God doing this, and he was right. God allowed Satan to do these things to Job. Because of his faithfulness, Job was rewarded. God blessed him with seven more sons and three more daughters. Beside that, the number of his sheep, camels, oxen and donkeys were doubled. Instead of thinking about how poor and wretched he was, he thought about how God had given him everything and really everything belonged to God, so He had the right to take it away.
I have already made my case and could stop there, but I know that many of you don’t think the Bible is valid, even though it is and has been proven so on many occasions. So I will use a more scientific argument. A woman of 86 recovered yesterday from an “irreversible” coma and began talking and eating on her own. Dr. Michael Wolff, a specialist in geriatric medicine, told last Friday’s court hearing there was no chance Mrs. Coons would recover. He said he was at a loss to explain what had happened.”
This piece from the Daily Telegraph in 1989 is proof that God still works miracles. If we allow euthanization to become legal, we run the risk of having situations like the following story from Holland, where euthanasia is legal, becoming reality here.
Brad Mattes of the pro-life group Life Issues recounts, “A physician came back from holiday, found a patient gone and asked the nurse, ‘What happened?’ The nurse coldly replied, ‘We needed the bed.’” While I know that sort of thing won’t be widespread, there are much better options.
Good medical care is a very sensible solution. From research, we have concluded that 85 percent of patients with pain can be totally relieved with the help of drugs, another 10 percent almost completely and the remaining 5 percent of patients can have their pain removed for most of the time. One thing most people don’t realize is that just having hospices around can help a person cope with seemingly unbearable pain. One woman said, “I came here to die of cancer. Now I have learned to live with cancer.” Notice how similar that is to Job’s situation. He learned through God’s help to cope with “unbearable” pain. Even just having company around you can be very helpful.
Two usual responses to the debate over euthanasia are, “I don’t believe in euthanasia, but if they want to die, they have that right,” or, “They’re in unbearable pain. It would be better for them to die.” The answer to the first response is: If we give people the right and make it legal, think about how many hurting depressed people will want to be killed. But we don’t have that right. God has given us life, and He has planned the exact moment we should die. Euthanasia, along with suicide, abortion, and cloning, takes, or tries to take, death, along with life, into its own hands. That would be like inventing something incredible, patenting it, and then having someone come along and in disregard to the patent, make something out of it for his own personal use.
As to the second response from euthanasia supporters, there is a simple yet strong argument against it. To quote from the movie “The Princess Bride,” “Where is it written that life is fair?” Life is a gift and pain is part of the bargain. Think of all the veterans of World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and the Gulf War. Where would we be if those same veterans refused to live with the excruciating pain many of them went through and go through now? Would we be the greatest nation in the world? And yet, even now we are moving in the opposite direction. It is because of potential dangers like euthanasia that this is happening.
In summary, it all comes down to this: We can’t play God, and life is not always utopia. And that is good, because some of the best lessons learned in life are through pain and suffering. James chapter 2 verse 12 says, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of righteousness, which the Lord has promised those who love Him.”
Jared Korver is an eighth-grade student at New Century Middle School.
