Chuck Colson: The March of Death - A Culture Commits Suicide

BreakPoint ^ | 1/13/09 | Chuck Colson

[wagglebee]

Those who have embraced the culture of death had much to celebrate during 2008. By “culture of death,” I’m referring to those movements which would advance euthanasia, assisted suicide, abortion, fetal experimentation, and even population control.

Let’s take a quick look at the year gone by. I think you’ll see what I mean.

In the U.S., voters in Washington state approved the grotesquely named “Death with Dignity Act,” which will allow physicians to prescribe lethal doses of drugs to their terminally ill patients. Washington joins Oregon as the only states (for now) that have legalized assisted suicide. Two down, 48 to go.

Of course there was other significant news in the other Washington, Washington, DC, where the new administration began to set up shop in the White House—an administration that promised during the campaign to enact the “Freedom of Choice Act,” or FOCA.

FOCA will, in essence, eliminate most restrictions on abortion. Parental notification, informed consent, conscientious objection on behalf of healthcare providers, restrictions on late-term abortions, could well be things of the past. Not for nothing did the Catholic Bishops describe FOCA as “the most radical and extreme abortion legislation ever considered in the United States.”

And, of course, the new administration will do all that it can to promote the use of human embryos for stem cell research.

On the other side of the pond, legislators in the small nation of Luxembourg decided that the “right to death” was so important, that they stripped Grand Duke Henri of his constitutional right to veto legislation. Why? Because he dared to oppose a new euthanasia law. Well, I guess that’s better than what Europeans used to do when they didn’t like their monarch.

But it’s not enough that individuals can now legally find ways to kill themselves. No, now people can share their final moments with millions of onlookers. Britain’s Sky Network aired a documentary that showed the final minutes of the life of Craig Ewert, an American who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease. Ewert paid the Swiss assisted suicide group Dignitas 3,000 pounds to help him die. He had to travel to the little Alpine nation because Switzerland is the only country that opens the maw of death—excuse me—that opens its arms to foreigners who want to kill themselves.

And then there’s the horrible case of the 19-year-old Florida man who committed suicide while some 1,500 viewers watched online. The video spread all over the Web like wildfire.

Is this where we’ve really come to? When in the course of human events have so many made death their reason for living?

As Scripture says, God has set before us life and death. And our culture is choosing death.

As we begin 2009, the Church must renew its commitment to protecting the life and true dignity of every human—from natural conception until natural death.

But despite the euphemisms of euthanasia law and suicide organizations, true human dignity is not found in death (except in cases of great self-sacrifice). It is found in life! And in Him who is the author of all life.

[the invisib1e hand]

The next step is of course death by those considered too mentally unfit to live, mainly people who hold views that the current regime finds distasteful.

Yeah,yeah, yeah. We've all seen that movie, champ.

[the invisib1e hand]

Pardon me, but

We've had FReepers trolls AGREEING with the notion of a "duty to die"!

[usconservative]

"Daddy, why did Grandpa have to die?"

"Because we couldn't afford to keep him around anymore, Son."

I'm typically not a big Colson fan, but he absolutely nailed this one.

[sport]

I believe that your husband is right in his ssessment.

Once the Government takes over the medical profession as the people are demanding. I think that they will start with the worse cases and work their way down. Eventually everyone that cannot be worked will be killed.

[Gondring]

Illuminati have always [...]

Hoo, boy!

I guess it does go back to the Madonna...

Augustine wrote about it because it was something that cropped up, like all heresies, again and again.

Those durn heretical saints!

For some reason, self-pitying or cowardly people, mostly young, have always had a tendency to romanticize suicide [...]

Actually, that's not true. A. Alvarez details in The Savage God how attitudes about suicide have changed many, many times. At times, Western Civilization has found romanticized suicide ridiculous while at the same time finding suicide for financial ruin acceptable.

I notice that you have a certain fascination with suicide.

I suppose you'd prefer it if I went off topic on a thread about suicide. Or perhaps play the dishonest game of referring to assisted suicide as "euthanasia" to confuse the issue, trying to conflate them in peoples' minds.

Suicide is not good, it’s not poetic, it’s selfish, it will not make people feel sorry for you or respect you but will make them resent you and your selfishness, and, on top of that, you end up dead.

Wow...so glad you can tell me all about that. It's a few days past the 10th anniversary of a very dear friend of mine drinking a glass of potassium cyanide and water, so maybe I need a refresher on how it feels.

I will pray for you because I think there is more going on here than just a discussion.

True. It's a fight for whether others take control of our most basic rights, such as the right of self-determination of our lives and whether we can assist those in need. It's whether we cede to the government our right to get health care or if we must beg them for approval of our medications. It's whether we falsify our history or face reality.

It's also several years since a friend of mine faced excruciating pain when a medication was yanked from availability--by the FDA's politicized "science"--and escaped that pain via the release of death. She is another casualty of the left's march to control our lives--and one whose loss will never be counted. This is no game.

[Gondring]

You seem to be posting with absolutely no cognitive connection with the topic of this thread.

[sport]

They always have a change of heart when it is their time in the barrel.

[This Just In]

Read OUR posts. You’re making an ass of yourself and the whole FR is watching (boy, I’m sure glad I’m not you).

[Turret Gunner A20]

And how abhorrent it would be to overcome your ignorance!

Not as abhorrent as your being snotty because someone happens not to know all about a certain person whom you obviously think of as some kind of godlike oracle. Or is it that you are too good to waste your time being civil about the whole thing???

[This Just In]

“One can’t do anything for somebody like this except pray...”

This is true. I must say that during that conversation, and after he expressed his belief, I did not say one thing. I searched his face in trying to detect any hint of a joke. When I realized he was serious, I was speechless.

[This Just In]

“...absolutely no cognitive connection...”

And of course, you can’t substantiate your position, so you must resort to that lame “cognitive” ad hominem delivery. Wow, another impressive comeback.

It is ironic that you seem to disregard cases such as Terri Schaivo, whom expressly wanted to live, but was killed by the attending physicians, her husband, with the support of the government.

Your double standards are as glaring as a billboard advertisement fixed with floodlights and a siren.

[Goreknowshowtocheat]

If you have seen the trend toward HMO care, you know that death is often the treatment of choice..You simply die in committee while they “consider” whether or not the treatment you need can be justified by the premiums you might eventually pay to the carrier...”We are so sorry that your father died as we were near approving his surgery” Regards, HMO

[This Just In]

Well, to answer a number of your “cognitive” accusations, let us examine the posts.

“Anyone can climb those stairs. People do it all the time,” you mock, eh?”

And you said, “absolutely no cognitive connection”, eh? I didn’t even post that statement concerning stairs.

Let’s all take a look at Mr. Lane (I wonder if you bothered to ask permission from the family before using Mr. Lane’s story and name).

You accused me, among other things, of being a “leftist” “state-control-loving mind” “degeneratively ill” shouting person. How amusing, considering the fact that you linked to and sited an EDITORIAL from THE NEW YORK TIMES. Here are some gems from the editorial:

“Incredibly, there is a real chance the Supreme Court will side with Tennessee. The courts conservative majority has been on a misguided “federalism” campaign, denying Congress’s power to protect the environment, combat gun violence and discrimination.”

Did you all read that, Freepers? Whose talking about “control” here? And read this insightful fact:

“Mr. Lane who had had minor run-ins with the law before”

Gondring, you have accused me of lacking “cognitive” skills in reading this thread, which is about SUICIDE, and yet you site Mr. Lane’s incident, which is (and pay close attention, FReepers) about ACCESSIBILITY for the DISABLED. I’ll go further in stating that the editorial is using these disabled individuals (as I stated before) to push their own anti-American (remember the “federalism”) agenda.

In closing, I will point out one thing in order to tie, unlike Gondring’s free associating, Mr. Lane’s incident to the thread. Gondring slanderous insinuates that I believe:

“...anyone can commit suicide at will”

If Mr. Lane can crawl up the stairs to the courthouse, he has the ability to commit suicide. So, using Mr. Lane’s, as you took the opportunity to do so in making an irrelevant point, example does not support the thread concerning suicide.

Now, who’s “absolutely” lacking in “cognitive connection”?

[brushcop]

you could say it was murder because he killed someone; himself.

Exactly right, self-murder. No one gives himself life, it is not his to take away as in self-murder. To sacrifice one's life to save another is a different subject. It is also murder to take the life of the unborn or partial-born and one will be held accountable to God, whether he believes it or not.

[jonrick46]

"Funny how mankind made it for so long without Christianity if it is necessarily homicidal and suicidal by nature."

We must understand that the modern age has given rise to technology and its awsome power. Fortunately, the Christian influence has worked to quell evil hand of man with the tools of technology. Mass slaughter throughout history has not been the case.

In 1982 the Syrians bombarded the city of Hama, killing 25,000 people.

The partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 caused 1,000,000 deaths during the mass migration.

Mao's land reform efforts in China between 1949-53 caused 5,000,000 mass executions.

Should I go on?

What part of Christianity had its hand in these horrific events?

[Puddleglum]

Leaves out death of a civilization via contraception

[SLB]

I would like to invite all FReepers to this web page:

http://www.fightfoca.com/

[This Just In]

“Exactly right, self-murder. No one gives himself life, it is not his to take away as in self-murder. To sacrifice one’s life to save another is a different subject. It is also murder to take the life of the unborn or partial-born and one will be held accountable to God, whether he believes it or not.”

Precisely.

[Goreknowshowtocheat]

You have a great thought.. Cultural suicide by abortion is the main reason we are losing our heritage. We creat a vacuum with a low birth rate into which the hordes from other cultures flow into. With us, it is our neighbors to the south creating havoc in our streets, schools and hospitals. With the Europeans, their neighbors to the south are Islamic, a culture far removed from the 21st century. Europe is on the verge of cultural collapse with no birthrate in site.

[dforest]

Choosing assisted death is just the beginning to where we are really headed with this. That will happen when others get to choose it is your time to die. Like abortion of adults who are too sick, old, and costing money. Government healthcare ought to move this right along.

The path to the ultimate evil.