February 14, 2005
Dear Subscriber:
I have not sent out a letter to this list since
November 17. I had hoped to be able to send out an
announcement in December or early January that my
commentary on Luke is finally indexed, but Luke is proving
to be a hard row to hoe. It may not be finished until next
month. My book deserves a good index. Of all books in the
Bible, Luke's economic message condemns both the economic
practices and the economic faith of the modern world.
Luke's call to faith in God rather than faith in mammon
hits the modern world right in the heart.
What motivated me to write this letter was "Million
Dollar Baby." You may have heard about it. Clint Eastwood
directed it. Eastwood is a first-rate director, and this
is his best effort so far. It will not surprise me if he
wins an Oscar for his work. It will surprise me if Hillary
Swank doesn't win the Oscar for best actress. Her
performance is spectacular. Even more important, her role
may be the best one that any woman has had for a decade,
and maybe two. The only role I can think of just off the
top of my head that matches it is Geraldine Paige's old
woman who wanted to visit her childhood home in "A Trip to
Bountiful." That was two decades ago. She won the Oscar.
The contrast between the two roles is worth
considering. "A Trip to Bountiful" is about a Christian
woman at the end of her life. She finds herself in a
difficult position, living with her son and daughter-in-law
in a small apartment just after World War II. She is
barely tolerated by her daughter-in-law, who resents her
humming of hymns as the old woman works all day in the
apartment. The daughter-in-law wants only her Social
Security check to pay the rent. The movie is about a
family's attempt to reconcile a troublesome situation
peacefully. It was written by Horton Foote, who I regard
as America's greatest playwright, ever -- not the God-
hating Arthur Miller. Foote is still alive, and probably
still writing, almost seventy years after he began his
craft. This has to be a record. He lives in the same
small house in the same small Texas town he grew up in --
another record.
"Million Dollar Baby" is about a very different sort
of woman. The character is a 31-year-old woman who wants
only to become a boxer. That any woman wants to become a
boxer is odd enough. That there are paying fans to see
women box is indicative that something has gone wrong in
modern culture. The role of women as warriors is
questionable enough in high-tech warfare, in which
conceivably some of them can do well behind the lines, such
as in cryptography. But boxing? Boxing is a bloody sport
where fighters risk killing each other. The athlete's goal
is to inflict more pain on the opponent than the opponent
inflicts on him. What is a woman doing in a boxing ring?
As the movie's script admits, the sport is a freak show.
Only late in the film are we told what the movie is
really about: the moral dilemma of assisted suicide. Clint
Eastwood plays the role of a loving, caring, protective
father figure who decides to play Dr. Kevorkian.
He goes to mass daily, then harasses the priest with
the same skeptical questions, over and over, after mass.
Yet he prays nightly for his daughter, who severed all
contact with him decades earlier. We are not told why.
The movie is about murder. There can be little doubt:
the audience is expected to side with Eastwood's character,
who gets away with murder. The script writer did not even
bother to cover up the fact that Eastwood's character would
have been under suspicion of murder as the prime suspect.
He leaves his fingerprints all over the hospital room. But
the authorities do nothing, and he makes a clean getaway.
He disappears successfully -- highly unlikely in today's
Social Security number-traceable society.
Richard Dreyfuss made a similar movie a quarter
century ago: "Whose Life Is It, Anyway?" The moral issue
raised is the same, yet it is never dealt with openly. The
issue is this: Should an adult in his right mind have the
moral and legal right to demand that others stop keeping
him alive? This is not the issue of active suicide: a
person's taking of his own life, i.e., inflicting the
ultimate negative historical sanction. It is the issue of
passive suicide: refusing to take active steps that would
keep yourself alive.
In wartime, there are suicide missions. We think
nothing of this. Volunteering is regarded as honorable.
In wartime, a wounded soldier may tell his buddy to stop
trying to defend him from the enemy and leave. An act of
heroism, we say. But if someone in a hospital bed tells
his physician to pull the feeding tubes out of his throat,
the physician refuses. After all, he may get sued.
Medical ethics supposedly prohibits tube-removal. It is
wrong to kill a patient in a hospital bed. After all, the
person in the bed isn't an unborn infant. Someone is
paying good money to keep the person in the bed alive, so
life in this case is precious.
This raises a crucial yet neglected question: Who is
paying $5,000+ a day to keep him alive. An insurance
company? Medicare? The person's family? Or, in the case
of "Million Dollar Baby," the Boxing Commission?
An old person in a hospital bed may want to go home
and die in his own bed. This is not allowed. This is why
there is a Kevorkian problem today. The individual who
wants to go home and die in his bed is not permitted to get
his wish. The state doesn't enforce it.
But what if the person is not age 80? What if he is
age 40? What if his decision to go home is, in effect, a
suicide mission? It will not directly save other men's
lives. But it will save society $5,000 a day for the next
40 years -- money that could be used to save other men's
lives.
The moral issue is never presented this way. The
decision to "unplug" a person in a hospital bed is always
presented as a decision about the sick person's quality of
life. Is a quadriplegic enjoying a good life? No? Well,
then, let him have the right to pull the plug. The issue
is never presented as an act of self-sacrifice to save
society an expense that must be paid for, and for which the
scarce economic resources could be used more productively.
This refusal to unplug will eventually bankrupt
Medicare. Because of modern technology, the health care
industry can keep very sick old people alive for an extra
six months. Half of all the money an American absorbs for
medical care in his lifetime is absorbed in the final six
months of his life. But the welfare state is messianic.
It is determined to heal. The result will be the
bankruptcy of the government.
Unless. . . . Unless society finally concludes that
it's cheaper to play Dr. Kevorkian than Dr. Kildare. Then,
step by step, plug-pulling will be made mandatory. A
person's second childhood will put him into the category of
the pre-born. Come that day, the state's officials will
step in and pull the plug on their own authority, over the
protests of the person in the bed and his family. Such is
the dilemma created by Medicare and all state-funded
medical care. When the state can put a gun in the belly of
a voter and tell him to pay his fair share to keep another
voter alive, this voter may organize politically with other
voters to get the state to pull the plug. Such is
democracy. Vox populi, vox dei.
The movies never put the issue this way because the
screenplays are written by people who are deeply committed
to the ideal of the messianic state. Hollywood's answer to
"Whose life is it, anyway?" is clear: the state's.
In the movie, the priest tells Eastwood not to do
this. He tells him that he will be irrevocably lost if he
does. Not that he will successfully get lost, but be lost.
This, biblically speaking, is nonsense. Repentance is
always an option in history. The priest does not offer
counsel with respect to the moral issues involved -- for
Eastwood, the woman in the bed, the state, or society.
This, I fear, is not just Hollywood's version of priests.
On the issue of pulling the plug, the clergy seems baffled.
Like a giant squid, the messianic state has filled the
moral environment with ink.
This leads me to a consideration of the issue raised
by the characters played by Hillary Swank and Richard
Dreyfuss: the quality of life. Both of them are convinced
that they have no life worth living. I suppose quadriplegia
does have the effect of focusing one's attention on the
issue of the meaning and quality of life. If you are
literally a talking head, what good is your life?
I don't face this problem in the way that most people
would. I'm a writer. A writer, like a theoretical
physicist, can remain productive when paralyzed, though
probably not $5,000 a day worth of productivity (after
taxes). But what of the average person? Swank's character
was a poorly educated person. Dreyfuss' character was an
artist. When our work is no longer possible, and when we
can't go on the endless vacation called retirement, what
good are we to anyone?
The question is legitimate. Society's answers are
muddled.
What would you do of value if you were a quadriplegic?
With a war on, this is not a hypothetical question for
severely wounded vets. The Veterans Administration's
hospital beds are filling up with such people -- ignored,
warehoused for life, rarely interviewed on television.
They see nurses every day, who are trained to remain aloof
and professional in order to preserve their sanity. Their
families may show up for weekly visits, but for the next 60
years? Probably not. The girlfriends won't. What of the
young wives? Probably not.
What would you do of value under similar
circumstances?
I have a suggestion: pray. Hollywood will never do a
movie on this topic. But the churches aren't much better.
Across America, there is an idle army of potential
prayer warriors: in retirement homes, in "convalescent"
homes, in prisons, and in hospital beds. What if the
churches systematically organized these people? What if
prayers went up daily -- for people in the same environment
as the praying heads, for sick people in churches, for
community evangelism, and for peace? Paul wrote:
I exhort therefore, that, first of all,
supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving
of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and
for all that are in authority; that we may lead a
quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and
honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the
sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men
to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of
the truth (I Tim 2:1-4).
For anyone with his mind still intact, prayer is a way
to make a positive contribution to society. Prayer is a
work of grace. A quadriplegic is in a position to come
close a literal fulfillment of Paul's words:
Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every
thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in
Christ Jesus concerning you (I Thes. 5:16-18).
This is not Hollywood's solution. It is also not the
church's. Not yet.
If I were a pastor praying for church growth, let
alone my church's local social influence, I would organize
a program of mobilization and evangelism. Maybe I would
call it "Praying Heads." I would go into our society's
warehousing centers to recruit volunteers. I would go into
a local convalescent home to preach, but always with an
offer -- not an offer to "roll that wheelchair down the
aisle for Jesus," but to get listeners to volunteer for
daily prayer. This commitment should start out small: 10
minutes a day. Get people into a prayer program as you
would get them into an exercise program: one step at a
time.
I would organize it thusly: specific prayers for
specific people, beginning with people in the center. Then
I would widen the circle to include the local church. The
typical Wednesday night prayer meeting sounds like a
medical center anyway. Everyone seems to have a relative
or a friend or a relative of a friend who is sick. The
group is asked to pray, once. Then there is no follow-up.
Next week, it's someone else. The haphazard nature of
Wednesday night prayer does not do justice to Christ's
parable of the unjust judge.
And he spake a parable unto them to this end,
that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;
Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared
not God, neither regarded man: And there was a
widow in that city; and she came unto him,
saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would
not for a while: but afterward he said within
himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man;
Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will
avenge her, lest by her continual coming she
weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust
judge saith (Luke 18:1-6).
The churches are missing a tremendous opportunity.
They are not mobilizing the troops outside the four walls
of the church. They regard old folks' homes and hospitals
and prisons as places that absorb church resources,
unplugged drains that need constant refilling. This is a
mistake. Churches should seek to transform these centers
into prayer centers.
When I ministered to men in a level-5, maximum
security prison in Texas in the late 1990s, I told those
men that they had the most precious resource in abundance:
free time. I told them that they were in a position to
convert this resource into kingdom benefits through
systematic prayer.
I don't think the modern church has begun to mobilize
for battle. I don't think it has any conception of the
power or organized, systematic, targeted, specific prayer.
James wrote:
From whence come wars and fightings among you?
come they not hence, even of your lusts that war
in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill,
and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight
and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye
ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that
ye may consume it upon your lusts (James 4:1-3).
If churches would systematically recruit and then
mobilize the local armies of people with time of their
hands, creating full-time prayer circles and prayer chains,
there would be positive transformation.
We have not because we ask not. We need full-time
askers.
___________
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