More than one priest has told me that mercy killing is always wrong because life, no matter how hideous, is precious. And professional pro-lifers tell me the same thing.
For pro-lifers the words “quality of life” are poison. Life is infinitely precious, the quality of that life is of NO importance.
Good news for pro-lifers! As a fundamentalist preacher pointed out, according to Christian doctrine, no one will EVER die.
“The wages of sin is death,” is wrong. The wages of sin is eternal life.
It will be what one might call a low quality of life.
But that doesn’t matter, does it?
#1 by Mark on 01/14/2005 - 11:48 am
As a gay atheist I’ve often chided members of my familay (all devoutly Christian and all devoutly bent on saving my soul) that from a pro-life/Christian standpoint, abortion is an automatic ticket to heaven for the aborted soul. Yes, I realize Calvin and the Church taught differently in their day, but from today’s Christendom an aborted fetus’ soul enters heaven without the wages of sin to contest. So if all Christians were serious about everyone entering heaven, every Christian should be having abortions until the human race is wiped out on earth and instead fluttering their wings in heaven.
#2 by Bob Whitaker on 01/14/2005 - 1:27 pm
I did not write this piece to ridicule Christians. I wrote it to stop Christians from falling for every fanaticism somebody shoves under their noses.
I simply don’t have the same New Testament all these Jehovists do. Jesus kept warning over and over and over about the exact kind of twisters Pro-Lifers and anti-evolutionists on the right are, and the leftist anti-poverty types are.
I want to say, STOP IT! Stop worrying yourself sick about fetuses or six day creationism or whatever else the screamers have got you hooked on right now.
Good is good. Bad is bad. Pain is bad. Happiness is good. If you make a Mystery out of this, you are a fool, and an evil fool at that.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Would you like to be born into the third world?
A child would say if it hurts it’s bad. A theologian would say otherwise. Follow their example and you will end up the same Place they will.
Take your choice.
#3 by Mark on 01/14/2005 - 10:47 pm
“I did not write this piece to ridicule Christians. I wrote it to stop Christians from falling for every fanaticism somebody shoves under their noses.”
I understand why you wrote the piece and I agree with it wholeheartedly. I don’t know too many agnostics who fall for religous fanaticism though.
#4 by Richard L. Hardison on 01/30/2005 - 9:24 pm
Hi Bob! I’m finally back on line and catching up.
The problem with your thesis in this piece is the biblical definitions of life and death. Life is connection with God, death is the lack of it. The statement God made to Adam about the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil illustrates this idea well – disobedience of God’s law/commands leads to separation from God and, therefore, you are dead. Those who are consigned to the lake of fire after final judgement are, therefore dead by this definition.
The real point, that the church worries about things it shouldn’t, should be well taken. The mission of the church is not to create a utopia. but to reach those who do not know Christ. Society is in the condition it is in because of that little hated fact. Imagine the United Methodist Church suddenly losing interest in gun control and instead begins reaching the lost instead. The Mary Knollers? Persbyterian Church in the USA? Not this guy. Those groups, and more, are riven with the idea of heaven on earth rather than the Kingdom of God which can not be made by man, but can be entered by those who accept Christ for who HE said He was.
This country was founded by Christian who saw the dangers of Church inspired conflict and sought to separate the Church leadership from the reigns of power. The idea of church/state separation was foreign to the founders because they knew such an idea would mean the disenfranchisement of every sincere Christian in the country – the very people who made the revolution possible (the American Revolution was known as the Parson’s Rebellion in Great Britain). However, the church began to sicken shortly after the so called “great awakening” as Unitarians took over from the Calvinist Puritans (a process that surprises no one familiar with Calvinist doctrine and ideology). This was the same lot that gave us abolitionism and Lincoln’s war – by the 1850s there was no denomination with the moral strength to stand up to the government being taken over by heretics and functional agnostics who screamed for southern blood and freedom for the slaves – whe then quickly abandoned them when it was going to cost them money personally, much as modern leftists do.
Historically, agnostics are some of the worst religious fanatics alive. Man is their god, or whatever they choose to set up at the time. The current PC rage, evolution, psychobabble, the holocaust, Michael King (the real name of MLK), are simply the religious symbols these people have set up.