Death Ethics - Suicide, Euthanasia, Capital Punishment

Well, good evening everyone. We are continuing tonight in our study of Christian ethics and tonight we are in class four, which is.

Death ethics.

Each week we do a different ethical topic. Last week was life ethics. We looked at abortion and genetics and the subject of contraception and birth control. Tonight we're going to be looking at the subjects of suicide, euthanasia, and capital punishment, therefore the the topic of death.

The teacher for the evening is Dr. Burt Jordan. Burt has been a member of our church now for a while. I don't know, for about a year I guess or so or more, and Burt was actually one of the men who founded or was responsible for founding the seminary that I went to.

So he's been teaching for a long time and I look forward to him teaching us tonight. He is currently a school teacher at Lighthouse Christian School, and he said that he's looking forward to teaching tonight, and I'm looking forward to hearing him.

So without further delay, here's Dr. Burt.

Suicide as a Sensitive Ethical Dilemma

All right. Mike, would you lead us in prayer?

I will.

All right, so tonight we are looking at these three subjects. Naturally, as we look any week, and I do admire Dr. Foskey, and sometimes I hate to get all that in. I hope we can do this tonight. But we all know that it's a lot to cram in in an hour and a half with a little break in between.

So anyway, we're going to be looking at suicide, euthanasia, and capital punishment. I think sometimes the reason I was assigned to do this course is I'm closer to the euthanasia as anybody probably. But anybody, you know, but anyhow, I kind of look out out there, you know, because maybe that's how I inherited this.

But tonight we're going to be talking about first of all one very sensitive subject, and that is suicide. It's very sensitive. I would imagine if you really took a poll of what was the most sensitive word in the English language, that might be somewhere in there, suicide.

We've all been somewhat affected by it in many ways or in many forms, correct? I mean, we have been around it. We have, or we have heard about it, and it just, and anytime you ever hear about it, the first thing that happens is you are greatly just appalled or surprised, right?

You can't believe it. Why would this individual, so much going, so much happening? So let's look at a couple of things here. Let's look at a sensitive, but real dilemma. First of all, we're looking at the 11th leading cause of death in the U .S.

Now, you may say, well, that's really way up there, but when you start knocking out some of the more common ways of death, which mainly the three I would presume would be heart issues, diabetic, kidneys, liver, you start knocking it down, it starts getting it pretty close to maybe your non-normal ways of dying.

We also note there's 132 suicides every day. You say, well, good grief, how many people are in the United States? That's not very many. It's too many. Wouldn't you agree? It's too many. And we see that if you adjusted the age average, it's 15 per 1 ,000.

Now you start getting kind of, whoa, now that's looking kind of not good at all. But as I start, and I'm just one of these guys with statistics. I just like to look and see where the number's coming from.

And so I actually went to the suicide prevention area, and they gave these statistics out. But it's number four and it's number five that concern me highly. And that is, and the age is 16 through 24, it's the second leading cause of death.

Naturally at that age, there's not too many heart issues. There's not too many diabetic issues. There's not too many kidney issues. There's not too many, right, the normal issues that people have as they age, as they get older.

So that bumps up 16 to 24. Now, as Dr. Foskey had mentioned, I teach at Lighthouse Christian School. We go through training every year. Two hours of that training is from the Suicide Prevention Center.

That comes and teaches us and tries to direct us and tries to show us and tries to give us some insight into what to look for. And that reason is this statistic right here. And basically it boils down to this.

If a student gets a paper back from me and says, oh goodness, I'm just going to kill myself. We are immediately responsible to report that. Now you say, well, that's just, you know, I mean, I got some papers back in school and I thought about it myself, right?

But that's not what the situation is. We are really drilled to anytime you hear that from that age group, you need to let somebody know. And of course, we have to do that. And then the other statistic here that really concerns me is the ages 54 to 82.

It's the fourth cause of death. So looking at four and five, what would you say is happening in our country today as far as suicide? It's okay. This is going to be an interactive class. You're right. You can talk.

Anybody? We are losing our young people and old people to this. This is really concerning to me. Are they just... And I do know teaching young people, they're very discontented.

They're...

I guess there's a few in my class that I might classify as, quote, happy. But most of them are dealing with things that you and I probably never in our lifetime thought we'd have to deal with. And many of these young people are experiencing these type of things.

They are bombarded from everywhere, correct? Just like you and I are. We're bombarded with too much information. Overload. And they carry that overload to the classroom. They carry that overload to the cafeteria.

They carry that overload when they walk in the door in the morning. So, let's then get to some definitions. The dictionary says that suicide is the act or an instance of taking one's life voluntarily or intentionally.

And for most of us, as we get to thinking along that line, that's what we think about. But the Dictionary of Christian Ethics gives another... gives another viewpoint of this, which kind of hits a little more critically.

And that is, it's the murder of oneself. We have lost somebody. We have lost a life. We have lost a prospect of something good. We have lost a prospect that's going to leave pain. For the rest of other people's survivors' lives.

So, that does kind of hit a little closer than just the general, okay, they did, you know, he just took his life voluntarily, intentionally. He said that's what he was going to do. He's going to jump off the bridge.

That was it. But when you talk about murder of oneself, you're getting very close to theologically looking at it, aren't you? You're now destroying a life that God has given. And that is, and the way I look at life is this.

If God's given it to you, you're healthy and good. You ought to do everything you can for him for the rest of your life while you're able to do it. My wife told me to slow down one time. I did and had a heart attack.

I mean, not supposed to do that, but I did. I slowed down. I got late. And I tell you, I told the Lord at that time, Lord, you know, if I can get through this thing, and believe me, sometimes sitting in a hospital bed and you're sitting there saying, Lord, if you can just get me through this thing, and I get out of here and I'm in good health, I'm going to serve you.

Well, I'm in it. And I'm 72 now. I still plan to keep going as long as I possibly can. So we see then murder of oneself. So looking at these two definitions, we see that it gets very, very close to maybe how God looks upon things sometimes as far as our lives go.

And when we get into euthanasia later on this evening, we will get some idea of basically how this stuff starts throwing into different avenues. OK, so there are suicides in the Bible. That is correct.

Correct?

There are suicides in the Bible. We talked about one this morning in Sunday school. I hit the film. You know, somebody, oh, my goodness, nobody's listening to my goodness. So he just went out and took his life.

We know of Judas. Let's just go ahead and say Saul. Samson, more or less, I guess. Now, again, that's what I was reading in one of Scott Ray's books about that one. Very controversial one, but, you know, was it or was it not him committing suicide when he said, just go ahead and let my wife go?

All right, so we see, even though the Bible says there are suicides, nowhere is it condoned and nowhere is it considered acceptable. Nowhere. It's a tragic, sad thing when it happens. So then there are suicides in the Bible.

Whether a Christian Who Dies by Suicide Can Go to Heaven

Now, Dr. Foskey, in his notes, and it was a question I was going to ask anyway, and it's a question I want us to interact with a little bit today, and that is, can a person commit suicide, and you're probably already bracing for what I'm going to say, and go to heaven?

Yes, sir?

He doesn't say he's going to go to heaven.

Again, neither condoned nor accepted. Anyone else? I was around a group of people that didn't believe that. And that group of people believed that if he did escape hell, it would be a severe time in purgatory.

If he did escape it. But as far as he was concerned, he just took the fastest path to hell. So anyone else? Can a person commit suicide and go to heaven? Yes, ma 'am?

If they're on kidney dialysis, and if they stop kidney dialysis within three treatments, you're going to die. Because within two treatments, you can go back and start over again. But once you hit the third, you can't.

Okay, and in euthanasia, we're going to get to some of that. Just what you're talking about there.

Yes, I believe that person's going to heaven.

We're not into that person,.

So who are we to judge if they go to heaven or hell?

Okay.

Yes, sir, Tim?

Well, I mean, I think that our Christian ethics obviously is rooted in scripture. And in scripture, we're told the thing that sends people to hell is a rejection of Jesus Christ. So, and the scripture also showed us that it's important, you know, we're all going to die.

So death does not separate us from Christ. And that's a promise that we have when we're in Christ. So I think that the answer would be, is if anyone is in Christ,.

He's sealed.

And he will enter into the Lord, be with the Lord. And if they're not in Christ, whether they commit suicide or live to their 120th, they're not going to enter into. And I think that's where we have to land with what scripture says.

Okay, yes, ma 'am, Cindy?

And suicide is not written in scripture as the unpardonable sin. That is contributing to Christ's work to the work of Satan. And that's when Christ is walking around the earth. So suicide is not an unpardonable sin.

So if a person is a Christian and takes their own life, why wouldn't they go to hell?

Um, anyone else? I mean, I'm sure you must certainly can.

There is, I just want to follow up on what you said. In the history of Catholicity, Catholic theology, it has been very well documented that the teaching is suicide is automatically a mortal sin, which removes the grace of justification, which is why they believe they go to hell.

So this does come into our theology. And I hope I'm not getting ahead of you. But because we have a theology that grace abounds and cannot be forfeited. But they believe the very act of self-murder is a forfeiting of grace.

So that is, so that speaks to the distinction in our theology.

And it would go back to theological issues. If you believe that you can be saved and then sin and lose your salvation, have to go back and get saved again, that would vary on that. All right, were you sinning at the time?

Or were you not sinning at the time? And of course, the Pentecostal Church does believe that suicide is very, very serious. In fact, in their doctrinal, in their covenants, they are very close to saying that it is a mortal sin.

Very close to saying it. They don't say it in so many words, but it's very close. Now there's, you know, always remember another thing too. When you start looking at other people's, when you start looking at other people's denominations, I think how they view things, always remember, Christian folk can be very harsh and very critical.

Amen. We are well.

Testify.

Right.

We are extremely prone to that. Especially if it's something that we know we don't do, but we know we're doing something maybe similar to it, but still we're not doing it. We have sometimes get very insensitive to how we address a certain situation.

All right.

So we see then, so Christian views on suicide have been varied. Protestants, usually evangelicals, Charismatics and Pentecostals believe that suicide is self-murder. In many cases, some of them do believe it's self-murder and that this is an important aspect.

If you knew Jesus Christ, your Savior, then you ought to be happy in him. And so why would you commit suicide? There was an old radio show and I think maybe there might be a couple of you in here.

That can go back with me that far. And it was called,.

Who Knows What Lurks in the Heart of Man? The Shadow Knows.

The Shadow Knows.

See, I knew there'd be at least one. I wasn't going to call his name, but you know, because all right. So anyway,.

But you know,.

We do not know what's going on in the heart of an individual, even though we know it's deceitful and above all, and desperately wicked above all things, right? We definitely do not know what's going on there.

A smile can mean pain so deep inside that we can't get anywhere close to it. So we see then that now, now according to the theology of the Roman Catholic Church, again, they feel that he has taken you from what they call the grace and the justification of the Eucharist and that no sir, you know, and if you do, and this is based upon who you are and what you are, if you do, you've got a severe time in purgatory.

We already talked about that. Now, the Methodist Book of Discipline, I was about to say the United Methodist Church, but I'm very careful adding church onto that anymore. But let's just say the United Methodists.

They say their Christian perspective begins with this. There's nothing including suicide that separates us from the love of God. I, pastoring, you get these calls that you don't want to get. You didn't ask for them, but you knew somewhere along the line they may be coming.

I remember one evening I got a call and this person was very distraught and said that this individual had committed suicide. Unbelieving, unbelieving to me because he was in the youth group, very active, seemed like just a, everything was going great.

He's a football player, except, I mean, when you look on all the outside things, why would he even think about doing something like this? Well, I was a young pastor. This is the first time this has happened to me.

I've had funerals where people die natural deaths, but not a suicide. So I figured I'd call up a couple of people that I really knew and that had been in the ministry for a while and knowing that they might have some advice to give me.

It's kind of like one of them Bible passages that you're having trouble with and you go to the commentary and find out they got problems with it too. This is what happened. Well, there's not too much you can do.

I didn't know what to do. I went to the family and the family was,.

You know,.

But before I went to the family and this where this hospital was, suicide stuff was in separate areas because they didn't want people in a waiting room screaming, you know, they did not want that. And I saw this nurse come by.

I said, nurse up. I said, I'm pastor, the individual that's in that family. It's in that room there. I'll never forget this as long as I live. I said, I don't know what to do here. I said, I'm just going to be honest with you.

I don't know what to say. And I remember it as clear as this day. Here's what she replied to me. My reply was, shut up. And that's what I did. What do you say? What do you do except express the love of God to that family expect and also make things as positive at the service and things that you can, by the way, if you look in funeral sermons and things like this and stuff like that, you don't get a whole lot of help with the suicide.

And you have to come up somewhere some way with something. And basically, it boils down to this. Give them hope. Give them hope because they don't have any at that moment. All right, let's say. A V .A. therapist friend of mine said this.

We have antidepressant. Anti-anxiety. Anti-inflammation drugs. But we do not have an anti-suicide drug. And we keep saying, well, we got drugs for everything. And trust me, I look up in my cabinet, I believe we do.

All right, I believe we have, you know, but what happens when, you know, but basically there is no really cure or anything that can necessarily prevent that. And that is way suicide is looked at. So by what standard?

Again, we go by this. We go by this thing of what standard, right? How do we base? What is our standard? We went, I think we covered this twice. Dr. Foskey put up on the board, you know, by what standard?

We can have the worldly standard, which says this is give you, but then when you get to that next one, murder of oneself, as we mentioned earlier, it gets a little more concise. It gets a little more personal.

Taking a one, maybe a taking of one's soul. So we see that. We see that in the Bible. Any questions, you know, along this line before we move on to the real doozy? Not that this wasn't one enough. Any questions, any comments?

Okay, let's move on then. To another situation.

We've already looked at that one.

Euthanasia, Voluntary, Non-Voluntary, and Involuntary

And that is euthanasia. And again, by what standard? It is very often, and I've read this also in Dr. Foskey's notes as well. We often are very merciful to animals when it comes to putting them down. I, as I said, my wife's family's from Kentucky.

And somehow or another, that makes me obligated to watch the Kentucky Derby every year. All right, so anyhow, but it kind of pays off. I have all those low-fat, low-cal things to eat in front of me, chicken wings, french fries, you know, all those things.

It's not going to affect any artery that I got left. And we watched the Kentucky Derby. So we were watching the Kentucky Derby last year. As you know, there was a horse who was doing just fine. He was coming around the last turn and all of a sudden down he went.

He was getting ready to advance to the first position. And he takes that turn, his ankle or leg turns the wrong way. And down the jockey goes and he goes and the jockey just barely saved his life because some other jockeys knew how to manipulate the horses to keep from trampling him.

To death. And I never would believe in my lifetime that the television will record his putting down. I could not believe it. I'm looking at my wife, I said, you're kidding me.

They're going to,.

Well, they're going to put him down. Well, I know that, but they're going to show it to us. So they thought nothing about it. Now, we didn't see the actual, you could hear it and you knew that it was going on.

Who remembers the old comedian, Jerry Clower, Christian comedian, Jerry Clower. Him and those, him and those Ledbetters. You know, I mean, he could go on and on, but he talked about, he did this, he talked about this guy one time that was a horse, was a horse carriage driver.

In other words,.

He basically carried horses from farm to farm, from place to place, wherever they needed to go. And so one day the guy loaded up the horses and he took off. He's driving on down the road and everything and he gets, and he's getting ready to come around a curve and this car swerved over to his lane.

He had to swerve and of course the trailer turned. He turned, the horses go turn and go rolling down the hill.

And he,.

The cab turns over and he breaks his leg trying to get out of the cab. He jumps and he makes it, but he breaks his leg in the meantime. Just a few moments after that, one of your traffic patrolmen, motorcycle patrolman come by and he said, he looks around, he says, what happened here?

And the guy says, well, guy run me off the road. My horses are down there and stuff like that.

And I don't know what,.

He says, okay, not a problem. So guy goes away from me for a minute, goes down to, goes down, starts looking around. Next thing he hears,.

Boom!

A few minutes later,.

Boom! Okay.

Next minute,.

Boom!

And I sit there and the guy, officer comes walking back up, guy's holding his broken leg, officer come walking back up and he says,.

Well,.

And the guy asked him,.

He said,.

What'd you shoot those horses for? He said, well, they had a broke leg. Man looked at him and said,.

Man,.

And he looked down at him,.

Said,.

What's wrong with you? Man said, not a thing in the world. I mean, he was in pain, he was in agony, but yet he wasn't willing to die for it. And sometimes euthanasia, as we start thinking about this, and this is a very, and it's getting worse of a controversial subject.

Every legislature, when it meets, and we're going to look at a few minutes at a couple of other things.

That are,.

That are there in euthanasia, but there are legislative bodies that meet every year and the AMA is really putting pressure and more pressure, more dollars, more lobbying into. We need more authority when it comes to death.

Now,.

If that doesn't, I don't necessarily say concern you, it kind of scares me. How much authority do you give someone such as a doctor in medical control or authority? How much of that authority do we give them over us?

This is a very big debate that goes on.

Well,.

Euthanasia. All right, what is it? It's the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering.

Now,.

There are certain things in life, I can put it to you this way. Before any dentist is going to crank up that drift, and go in any of these teeth, he better find that novocaine quickly.

Otherwise,.

We're going to have a fight on our hands,.

Right?

We do want, we do not like, let's just face it. Is there anybody here that just enjoys pain?

No.

C .S. Lewis's great book,.

You know,.

He called it the joy of pain. And of course, he read about his wife who went through so much that she did a very, a very illustrative book that brings up already back in the 50s and 40s, the euthanasia situation.

And so, we see then that as far as euthanasia goes, it's a practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering. In the 70s, there was this movie called Logan's Run. Logan's Run was based on a society that you could live till you were 30.

And if you made it to 30, then you were obligated to go on this thing called the carousel. You went into this big, I mean, it looked like a fair ride or something. You went in, they strapped you in. And if you could get out or if you could escape, which you would, eventually you would be unsnapped and you'd be kind of in an air vacuum.

If you could get out of that air vacuum, then of course, you could live past 30. Okay? However, it wasn't the whole plot of the movie was based upon this. Someone discovered that no one ever gets out of carousel.

And thus, Logan's Run. He was running away from the authorities, running away from the carousel. In our society today, we are not very far from carousel. Now, we're looking from a Christian viewpoint ourselves, but out there in that other worldview, that humanistic worldview, who values nothing, who basically says life is just, well, this goes poof, it goes in the ground, it's all over, forget it.

I mean, just be glad you were around as long as you were. So we see euthanasia then as a practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering.

Now,.

There are three types of euthanasia. One is voluntary, two is non-voluntary, and three is patient related. So give you just a second there on that one. Yes, sir.

Can you define the difference between voluntary and patient?

Yes, I am. I'm going to go through them right. I'm gonna go through them right now. Thank you. Thank you.

All right.

Voluntary.

Excuse me.

Voluntary is conducted with the consent of the patient. This is known usually as PAS, physician assisted suicide. And this is what the physicians and the medical community.

Is pushing hard for.

And we're going to look at some of the scenarios and some of the issues that are involved with it. One of the biggest issues that's involved, this subject of euthanasia is called economics. Why should we be spending all this money to keep somebody that's not going to be functional or they've done good in life,.

But, you know,.

They can't get out of this bed. They're just going to be here. We're going to have to feed them. We're going to clean up after them. We're going to have to provide some place for them to stay. And most of them cannot afford that because many of them are baby boomers who thought Social Security was going to be enough to get them by for the rest of their lives after age 65.

I'm one of those baby boomers that kind of had that in my mind until I turned age 45 and realized I was in trouble. If I was going to retire and retire comfortably, I was in a lot of trouble. And I needed to do something about that.

All right, so we see the involuntary is conducted with the consent of the patient. This is known as physician suicide. This is someone who is able to say, OK, I can get this doctor. He can come in and instead of me having to go through all this pain of liver cancer or kidney cancer or prostate cancer or or whatever, whatever it may be.

I just mentioned cancer because it's so dominant in everything that's around us today.

Now.

This is legal. In Belgium. And Luxembourg. And Netherlands right now. And I know we sit there and say, well, good grief, that's that's Europe.

That's that's that's.

That's the other side of the world.

Well, look at my next one.

In the US. California, go figure. I mean, if it's going to have something wrong with it or illogical or evil with it, it will come from California. Very likely. And so we see Oregon, Washington, Montana and Vermont has passed bills that allow that right now in their state.

And this is where the big push is coming. From other states to allow this to happen. It is very heavily being lobbied and promoted in Florida. And why would you think.

That would be?

Yes, sir. Oh, you know, I mean, you can live in Antarctica and you're going to retire in Florida. I mean, or Iceland. And you're going for that. Well, probably you'd want to write Antarctica or Iceland.

You probably want to retire in Florida. But that is true. Especially I know when I go down south with my son and we were around Clearwater, we're around Tampa, we're around all those little sub areas around there.

It's nothing but block after block after block after block of retirement people. And these people have to have most of the time somewhere in their lives before they pass on very intensive medical care.

So some of them choose now that if I want to, instead of go through all that. In other words, I went to the doctor. He told me I had six months at best with chemo, et cetera, et cetera. So I tell you what, to save everybody the problem, to save everybody this situation, I'm just going to call a doctor in.

That's how I'm going to. We've had people move to these states just to have that done. Now, I don't think I want to die that bad. And I don't think anyone ever sitting in here this afternoon is it has got on our mind right now.

You know, I just I just think I'd like to die. I doubt it. I doubt it because we want we have there is something God put in us that we want to live. And it's called life. We want to live. You know, we want to be part of something.

So we see then that the voluntary is conducted with the consent of the patient now. OK, so let's move on from this point. Non-voluntary. This is conducted against the will of the patient. Excuse me, when no one is available, you say, well, what does that mean?

Somebody want to tell me what you think that might mean? Conducted against the will of the patient when no one is available. That that would pretty well be one of them. Yes, sir.

Correct.

There's no one around to help them. There's no one around to do certain things. Yes, that would that would be another. That would be another part of it.

We.

Yes, sir. That could be. And keep in mind, they have the permission to do that if there's nobody to give them not permission right now. Today, this afternoon, as we as we gather here. Certain places have certain authority that if there's that, if they that if they need that bed and it means you've got to kill that person, we need to be it.

I know this is not a pretty picture of our society at all. But it don't take long after looking at the news yesterday. Our society is not in a very good position anyway. When it comes to making decisions or doing such things like that, I tell you, when you go away from the standard of God's word, you are doomed.

As a nation, as a country, you are doomed as an individual. You do you get away from that. That's the only standard that there is.

And believe me,.

I know there's interpretive standards of that, but it is the only standard that is so conducted against the will of the patient when no one is available now. You say, well, how can that be? You would be.

Surprised, and you would also be appalled to find out how many people that are in nursing homes and facility care centers that have nobody, nobody. That's deep. Nobody at one of my churches one time the individual came to me.

So pastor, I just want to talk to you. Sure. So I got a. I got a good friend of mine. Send a nursing home.

He all this.

He didn't have any kids. His wife's passed. He has no brothers. He has no sisters. As far as I know up, there is no immediate or non immediate family that he's even associated with. And he says. What do you think?

I could do. To help me, I said, well. I said, why don't we start now? He says, OK, what would we do? I said, let's go see. Let's go sit with. Go play cards with. Maybe some checkers with him. Maybe there's a TV program.

He likes now. Watch it with you. Find out what he likes and things like that. We did that when it was over. He said, I see what you're saying, Pastor. And that's what I'm going to do. And he'd get off work every day, every day.

And get him a Coca-Cola and a Snickers bar. Even though he had no teeth to chew it with. But he could still put that Snicker bar away. I'm sitting there. How does he do that? But but anyway, every day he would do that.

And as the man came to his final day and passed away, he was sitting there with him and he come and he called me. He said he's passed away, Pastor. I guess we're going to have to do a service and things.