On Death and Dying – Part two

On Death and Dying – Part two

Journal – September 3, 1996

Instincts

Our genes have implanted in them a code that commands us to stay alive as long as we can.  (And yet, some creatures, as they are nearing the end of their lives, seem to know it, and to make provisions.  I mentioned the ranch dogs.)

[Ranch dogs, as they get old, and know that the end is near, will go back into the woods to die, there they will be killed and eaten by the coyotes.]

We now come to the hardest part of this essay.  How can we reconcile our­selves to the death of a loved one?  Say a spouse, son, or daughter, or a parent has been 'called', that is, it is discovered that he or she has a terminal illness.

Now, the loved one may be able to accept his fate gracefully, but what about us?  Are we ourselves able to accept it?

There is a lot of self-pity embedded in grief.  Are we going to be able to rise above our emotions – our denial, and accept the inevitable?  [To rise above our emotions’ implies putting Rational Man in charge.  I am not sure that ‘to rise’ is the right term - it might be better to say ‘to revert to’ our material world.]

How can we reconcile ourselves to letting a loved-one die?

If the death was sudden, we could probably reconcile ourselves to it within a reasonable length of time; therefore, it seems to me that we shouldn't need more than a month to reconcile ourselves to an impending death.

This will depend upon the emotional make up of the grieving party.  I know of two cases where wives hovered over coma­tose or completely paralyzed husbands for three years.  I think in both of these cases the wives weren't spiritually pre­pared to let the husband go.

In both cases, the husbands were kept alive by 'artificial means'.  Either would have died in three days without the artificial support.

I know of another case where the dying person was not comatose or para­lyzed, but had decided that this is the time to die.  Her loved ones, her two daughters, agreed to let her die.  They could have taken her to the hospital where she might have been resuscitated and given perhaps another 30 days of 'life', but they wisely did not do this.

When my sister and I put our mother in a private home we agreed that we were going to let her die – that we would not take her back to the hospital again to get a few more days of 'life' for her.

In the old days, people died at home.  It was standard procedure.  Now, in a terminal illness, it is back to the hospital.  We don't want to make a decision.  I think we had better begin to think about it.

If for any reason, you do not want the patient to die in your home, then place him/her in a private home or hostel where he/she can die in peace.

It seems to me that the goal of teaching a 'Theology of Life' is to prepare us for the end of life, both our's and our loved one's.  It is necessary to do this since the medical profession, with the connivance of the legal profession, has conspired to keep comatose and other terminally ill patients 'alive' solely for, what appears to me to be, monetary gain.

This cost is passed on to us, either in the form of taxes or in the cost of insurance.  None of it is free.

We can spend our dollars in this way, or we can spend them on medical research to help find cures for some of these terminal illnesses.  We can’t have our cake and eat it too. 

We don't for a minute begrudge health care for our old people.  Retire­ment homes need and deserve our support.  It is the waste of money on the comatose and others who would be better off dead that we should object to.

If a person has the means and can afford the expense involved, he certainly has our blessing if he wants to continue on as a ‘vegetable’; I only object to the tax-payer footing the bill.

Eliz Kubler-Ross – Death is of Vital Importance – 1995 – Stanton, Barrytown NY

1.   P137 – [All quotes.] If you live right you will never, ever be afraid to die.

2.   P106 – All of you are blessed and guided, if you are only honest and willing enough to look [for] Hitler [hostilities] within you, externalize it, and try to learn unconditional love – compassion instead of judgment – empathy instead of pity – and realize that this life in a physical body is a very short span of your total existence.

3.   P122 – You cannot heal the world without healing yourself first.

4.   P 118 – You can never help somebody by knocking somebody else.

5.   P 123 – Every human being consists of four quadrants:  a physical, an emotional, an intellectual, and a spiritual, intuitive quadrant.

Comments:  To 'live right' is defined in the second quote p 106

Re the 'four quadrants' – she seems to have gotten this idea from drawings patients make with 'Crayola'.  Physical is very important to her and to dying persons, but I haven't stressed it – Emotional is what I have been calling the Feeling Brain, and that includes the Spiritual, and, since Intuition is not Rational, it must be a part of the Feeling Brain also.

Intellectual is the Rational Brain and perhaps much more – I am sure it is the seat of the Culture – the Civilization.

She implies that it is easy to get rid of our hostilities just by wanting to do it – but she didn't get rid of hers until late in life (she resented her father).  No, Eliz, it is not easy to do.

But the intent is there – she tries to give unconditional love – but we feel the negative thoughts as she refers to hostilities as Hitlers – and elsewhere.  None of us is perfect.  [‘None’ means ‘no one’ – thus is singular.]

Is Human Life Sacred?

The USA pays lip-service to the notion that it is.  In my opinion, any nation who spends half its income on war does not believe it.

Biblical Background

Re Cain and Abel – Gen 4:10-11 – KJV

And [Yahweh] said, “What hast thou done?  The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.  And now thou art cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand.”

I think that bible scholars have found that this story was imported from the Canaanites.  It is relatively late, but the message is clear.

From Joshua 7:24-25

“…all Israel took Achan… and his sons and daughters… and they stoned [them] with stones, and they burned them with fire after they had stoned them with stones.”

There isn’t a bloodier story in the bible than that of Joshua.

Lev 20:10 – Begins a long list of transgressions which incur the penalty, ‘he [they] shall surely be put to death.’

Torah – The Hebrew Law

Joshua is a much older story than Cain and Abel.  Also, the story of Lamech is very old.  We don’t know why it was incorporated, but it does illustrate the way the ‘law’ was before Moses.  (Gen 4:23-24)  Notice that Yahweh has nothing to say to Lamech.  Notice too that in Gen 4:14 ‘people’ will want to kill Cain.  What people?  I will include in the Appendix, a sermon called ‘Children of Cain’.  It is about the propensities of the human toward violence, ie, violence is in our genes.

Notice that all the murder and mayhem in Joshua was commanded by Yahweh.  A similar situation has existed throughout the history of the Church.  Lots of murder and mayhem, but always because God wanted it done.

Watch out for the ‘smart remarks’.

(See Is 11:9[1], and Is 65:25[2] – In the kingdom of God ‘they will neither kill nor hurt in all my holy mountain’.)

I had this book almost completed when my hard-drive failed, thus destroying all my files in one fell swoop.

Fortunately, most of it was on floppies.  Even so, what is left is not organized – in a sense, I have to start over. 

Premises

Can we accept the following theological premises?

1.)   God loves us and wants us to be useful servants.

2.)   Life is a gift from God.

3.)   Life may be pleasant or unpleasant, or a mixture.

4.)   Pleasure is, to a certain extent, under our control.  As Abe Lincoln said, ‘We can be as happy as we want to be.’  Long before psychotherapy, we recognized that attitude is of more value than all of the other ‘aids’ available to us.

5.)   If life is not pleasurable, and cannot be made pleasurable in any way, then we have the option of terminating it.

6.)   Hope is a very real part of the Christian faith.  Christians are encouraged to hope, but we also must be realistic.  We do not hope for the implausible.

7.)   Faith is central to the Christian Religion.  We have faith that God will look after us.

8.)   God might cure a terminal illness, but he is not likely to.

9.)   We believe that we have ‘a home eternal in the heavens’.

10.) We believe that we shall meet God face to face, and that if we are repentant God will forgive our sins, and accept us into heaven.

11.) We believe that there we shall meet our departed loved-ones, that we can hold them in a warm embrace, and that they will recognize us.

12.) We believe that God is a forgiving God, and whatever we do in good faith will be acceptable to him.  [Are the Jihad acting in good faith?]

13.) We believe that people who want to go to heaven – who believe that there is a place where love abounds – who want to put aside violence as a way of life – who will accept life the way it comes – are going to be there.  Heaven is for all of God’s children.

Paul’s Theology of Life

I Cor 15:42 b-44, 48-50

6.   “What is buried is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.  It is buried in mortality, it is raised in glory.  It is buried in weakness, it is raised in power.  It is buried a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body.  If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.  As was the man of dust, so are all those who are of dust, and as is the man of heaven, so are all those who are of heaven.  Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.  I tell you this brethren:  flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”

I Cor 15:53-55 (Paraphrased)

7.   “This perishable nature must be exchanged for the imperishable.  When the perishable becomes imperishable, then shall it be:

8.   Death is swallowed up in victory.

9.   O death, where is thy victory?

10. O death where is thy sting?”

11. Paul refers here to Isa 25:8  “He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces [every face].”

II Cor 5:1

12. “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Minor emendations by HS Rodgers.

Paul teaches that the physical body is exchanged for a spiritual body.  I don’t think Paul teaches the resurrection of the physical body.

I Cor 15 stresses the resurrection from the dead, but it does not say ‘resurrection of the body’.

The resurrection of the physical body is implied in the story of the resurrection of Jesus, and is included in the Apostles Creed, and has been accepted by every generation as a part of the Faith.

This belief doesn’t exclude the possibility that Paul’s spiritual body will look and feel like a physical body when we greet our loved ones on the ‘other shore’.

Rom 8:11  Paul is probably not teaching ‘The resurrection of the physical body’.