The Child in Us

From LifeDate - Summer 2005

The Child in Us
by Rev. Dr. James I. Lamb, Executive Director, Lutherans For Life

I like children’s books. They’re simple. Yet, they can proclaim great profundities without using words like “profundities.” For example, here is a very relevant quote—in light of all the discussion about the Terri Schiavo case—from the children’s book If I Should Die, If I Should Live, by Joanne Marxhausen. “God will decide when I should die, and the time will be just right . . . because God is very wise.” (Concordia Publishing House, 1975)

Big people think too much. Did you know that the number one reason given by people requesting assisted suicide in Oregon is that they want to decide for themselves the manner and time of their death? Instead of childlike trust in “God will decide,” big people come up with all kinds of justifications for “I will decide.” The “just right” time of God is thwarted. The wisdom of God is despised.

When you are a child everything is big. God is big. It’s too bad that as we get bigger, God gets smaller. Somehow we get the idea that we can be like God and give Him a hand at running the universe. Being “like God,” of course, is as old as the universe. Human beings were created in the “image” and “likeness” of God (Genesis 1:26). Then Satan came along with the clever addition, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil” (3:5 emphasis added). Now being like God is not an image we bear, but arrogance we display. The creature decides what is right and wrong and the Creator is relegated to the sidelines as a smiling, benevolent grandfather.

You know the story after that, and it’s not child’s play. Evil becomes good. Darkness becomes light. Perversion becomes normative. Now in these recent times, killing becomes caring. It is wrapped as being good and offered in the name of compassion by people who sincerely believe it is a proper way to deal with pain and suffering. But killing is never caring. Indeed, “to deal with suffering by eliminating those who suffer is an evasion of moral duty and a great wrong” (“Always to Care, Never to Kill: A Declaration on Euthanasia” First Things (February 1992) p. 45).

It needs to be said again and again because so many people still do not understand. The decision to remove Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was a decision to kill. It was not a decision to allow her to die. (See The Critical Issue page 8.) And even if it were made with the best of intentions, it was not a decision to care. But most significantly, it was a decision that belittled God and His timing and His wisdom.

I am not insensitive to families that have had to struggle with removing or not starting a particular treatment. It is not always a clear-cut decision, and it is never an easy decision. Everything that can be done doesn’t necessarily have to be done. We can allow a terminal disease, for example, to run its course. God is not belittled in such situations. On the contrary, we commend our decisions to Him and trust in His wisdom and fall back on His grace.

My concern is about the increased loss of the “child” in us as God’s people. We need to be reminded that we have a BIG God! He has written the rest of the story through His Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. Because of Christ we know there is no circumstance beyond God’s power to work in and through. As long as God in His timing gives life, God in His wisdom can give that life meaning and purpose regardless of how things may look to us. It is simply never okay to kill someone “for their own good.” It is God’s good that we must trust in and His love in Christ we must rely upon. And the good news is that there is nothing in life or death that can ever separate us from that love! How do we know these things? I defer once again to the children. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”