Transcript: Life Support

Video Transcript – Unit 05 - Life Support (David Feddes)

My grandma was over 90 years old and she still lived in her own house. She had some help with the artwork. But other than

that, grandma handled things herself. She had a hearty body, a sound mind and a kind heart. She often went to visit the old

people. As she put it, I guess he figured those old folks in their 70s and 80s needed a visit from a youngster who was only in

her 90s. A grandma loved people, she loved life and she loved her Lord. One night, grandma crawled into her bed and went

to sleep and woke up in heaven. Her body was found the next day, still resting peacefully in bed. Most of us would rather not

face death. But if we must, we'd like to go the way my grandmother did physically healthy, mentally sharp to the end, and

then a painless departure in our sleep. But not everybody's like grandma. As people grow old, some of them suffer crippling

arthritis, or they get hurt in a fall and end up in a wheelchair. Others come down with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia,

and their minds and their personalities deteriorate. Some suffer strokes that leave them disabled, some get cancer and slowly

waste away often with a lot of pain. when things like that happen, it's hard not to wish for death. And it's hard not to ask

whether there's any reason to go on living. This is a very old question, Why go on living? Job asked why is light given to

those in misery and life to the bitter of soul to those who long for death? That does not come? The question is just about as

old as the human race.

But modern medicine makes that question even more pressing. Why is that? Well, modern medicine has brought us quite a

few complications. One is simply that people live longer, fewer people die young. And the longer you live, the more likely it is

that you're going to get cancer, or stroke or Alzheimer's things that will put you into a very difficult and sometimes painful

process before you die. Another aspect of modern medicine is that we now have feeding tubes, ventilators, dialysis, and

other procedures that can save lives and save those lives even maybe when people would rather not be saved. That life

support technology can prolong death where people linger in a hospital attached to equipment. And so life support

technology can be a tremendous blessing when it saves lives. And it can also be a dreaded curse where people just linger

much longer than they otherwise would have. And life support technology just deals it forces us to deal with ethical puzzles

that people without modern medicine never had to deal with. My family knows both sides of life support technology, its power

to sustain life and its power to prolong dying. My wife Wendy and I had identical twin girls who were born prematurely. Both

girls were on ventilators that breathed for them.

Both babies had several emergency surgeries. Both babies were fed intravenously through feeding tubes. Both babies

suffered and cried a lot. But our daughter Rachel eventually grew healthy and came home with us. And our daughter

Rebecca remained in the hospital and became weaker and weaker. Rebecca lived more than five months, there were times

when she'd get a little better and we get our hopes up. But then finally she began to go downhill rapidly and irreversibly. As

long as there have been hope for Rebecca's recovery. We wanted to continue life support and other treatments. But when it

became clear that the ventilator and the other measures were not going to succeed in saving her life, that our little one was

going to die no matter what the doctors did. We knew the time had come for a decision. We wanted any treatment that would

save Rebecca's life, but we didn't want any treatment that would only prolong her dying and make it more painful. She clearly

reached that point. So we detached her from the respirator. My wife and I called Rebecca and sang to her as she quietly died

in her arms. You can understand them that I have mixed feelings about life support technology. Without life support, Rebecca

would have died. The day she was born, she would have been spared all the pain she went through during those five months

in the intensive care unit. However, without life support, Rachel would also have died and she wouldn't be the bright healthy

woman that she is today. Life support technologies bring us blessings, and they also bring problems and confront us with

decisions that previous generations never had to face. Years ago, nobody had to make decisions about restoring a heartbeat,

or using feeding tubes, and ventilators and intravenous antibiotics because there were no such things. But now more and

more of us are forced to ask, When should we use such treatments? When do they go from being a blessing to being a

curse? When is it best simply to let death take its course? Sometimes, it's hard to know. Along with this type of question,

another question is becoming more common. Some people go beyond asking whether we should withhold technology and

allow death, and they suggest that we should use technology to cause death. If somebody is suffering and is going to die

anyway, why not just end it all with a lethal injection.

Euthanasia, and physician assisted suicide seem like sensible options to more and more people. Now, we could just ignore

these matters if everybody were like my grandma. But not everybody lives long and strong, and dies at home in their sleep.

We have to keep asking that question of Job, but in a new light, why is light given to those in misery and life to the bitter of

soul to those who longed for death? That does not come? And we asked that question when people are hooked up to various

kinds of technology, and various life support methods that keeps them alive longer than they would otherwise have lived?

Why go on living? That's part of the question. And then how do we deal with these various technologies in a wise manner in a

way that is obedient to God and respectful of human life? changes in medical technology and in the legal system force

almost all of us to deal with life support questions at one time or another. These days, when you're admitted to the hospital

for even the most routine procedure, you're likely to have to face questions and maybe sign Advanced Directives about life

support. And if you or someone you know has a terminal illness, or is in a nursing home, you have to think in advance about

whether you want certain kinds of life support or not. Also, even if you don't face these questions at the moment, you may be

one of the growing number of people who want a living will just in case you're ever in a situation where you're not conscious

or competent to express your wishes. And if Euthanasia advocates get their way, it may not be long before your doctor has

the authority to ask whether you'd like him to help you kill yourself. In light of all these realities, you and I very much need a

framework for making end of life decisions. How do we know what's best?

Earlier generations didn't have to decide about restoring heartbeat or ventilators or intravenous antibiotics, or tracheotomies,

or feeding tubes or other life support technology. But we face these kinds of decisions. And we also face that matter of

euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, not just withholding the technology to delay death, but using technology to cause

death. And we're going to have to make decisions for family members and for ourselves. And if we're pastors or counselors,

or leaders who others look to, we're going to be asked for advice on these matters. And so it's very important that we think

them through ahead of time, and be informed. The first thing we need to understand if we're Christians, and if we are

Christian leaders, is that we are not our own. Romans 14 says for none of us lives to himself alone, and none of us dies to

himself alone, if we live, we live to the Lord and if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the

Lord. And so our end of life decisions must be made out of our relationship to the Lord and seeking to follow His will. What is

your only comfort in life and in depth?

The Heidelberg catechism answers that by saying, I am not my own, but belong body and soul in life and in death, to my

faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. Now those words don't say anything about medical technology, but they are the starting point

and the orientation for how we make all decisions. Were not our own. We belong to Jesus Christ. This is what we must

believe. And this is how we must counsel others who are asking about these kinds of decisions shaped by not their own

opinions only or the notion that they get to do whatever they want, but by their relationship to Jesus Christ. I'm not my own.

For some people, those are not words of comfort, but words of offense. What's more appealing than being your own person,

pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, being your own boss, making your own decisions, the watchword of the

Euthanasia movement is autonomy. And that's just a word for saying, I am my own, I have the right to make my own

decisions, including the right to kill myself, or to have a doctor help me do so if that's what I happen to want. If your only

comfort in life and in death is that you're free to have as much fun in life as possible, and then ended all when you're not

enjoying it anymore. Well, then you'll want nothing to do with God. And you won't see any reason not to destroy yourself if

you don't enjoy your life anymore. However, the trouble with insisting that you are your own is that you're also on your own.

You're alone, with no Heavenly Father to comfort and carry you through your suffering. And no savior to welcome you into

eternal glory after you die. But if you give up on your insistence on being your own person, if you hand your life over to God,

and confess that you're not your own, but belong to Jesus, it changes everything. You're not your own. You're his and you're

not on your own. God is there to help you. God says in the Bible. I'll never leave you nor forsake you. Jesus says, I am with

you always. So when we put our faith in Jesus, we can be sure that the Lord is with us every step of the way, in our living,

and in our dying and in our life after death. In Psalm 31, the Bible records a prayer that can help us as we face terrible

troubles. Psalm 31 says, be merciful to me, oh Lord, for I'm in distress. My life is consumed by anguish in my years by

groaning, my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak. I am forgotten as though I were dead. But I

trust in You, oh, Lord, I say You are my God. My times are in your hands. Here's a person going through terrible trouble on

the verge of death, forgotten by many, but still recognizing that his times are in God's hands into the Lord is his God.

My times are in God's hands. And that means I can't simply take matters into my own hands. As long as God gives me life. I

don't have the option of ending my own life. God says thou shalt not kill and that makes Euthanasia unacceptable. And God

also says, I am with you always. And that makes Euthanasia unnecessary. We can't think about life and death decisions, until

we know that our times are in God's hands and that the Lord Jesus is our supreme life support. As we trust the Lord, we must

obey the Lord. He commands thou shalt not kill. And this command is based on the fact that God created humans in his

image. You shall not kill, you shall not murder. That's one of the 10 commandments. And it's a commandment because

human life is sacred. All human life, unborn babies must not be killed by abortion, people with disabilities must not be killed,

because it's thought that their life isn't worth living. cancer sufferers should not be killed, because it's thought that it'd be

better just to end their pain. Alzheimer's patients should not be killed, just because they don't understand very much

anymore. All these still bear God's image, and God alone has authority to end their lives. Now, there may be Shades of Grey

in withholding or in withdrawing life support when somebody is already at the end of the life and not pushing technologies

needlessly upon them. And sometimes there are shades of gray and say, well, should I or shouldn't I continue having this

person on the respirator or having myself on a respirator? Those can be tough decisions, and there may be Shades of Grey.

But when a doctor kills a patient, or a patient kills himself, it's not an ethical shade of gray. It's as clear as black and white. It's

murder. And so while there are some very difficult and challenging questions to think about, we also have to face what is

absolutely clear that we must never actively and the life now as I said earlier, my wife and I made a decision to withdraw our

daughter Rebecca is respirator wasn't easy to do. But Rebecca was dying.

The respirator could not prevent her dying, it could just make her dying longer and more miserable. Once the treatment had

clearly become painful and pointless, we thought it was right to put a stop to it. However, it would have been terribly wrong.

Give Rebecca a lethal injection. There's a great difference between allowing death to take its course and actively killing

someone. It's okay to withhold treatment that's no longer best for a person. But it's murder to actually kill that person whom

God created in his image, and whom God alone has the right to call out of this life. But here's another question. What if

continuing life support would have given Rebecca a chance to recover and live, but with high risk of blindness or retardation

or other disabilities, because of all that she'd been through, wouldn't have been right to withdraw the respirator so that she'd

die and to keep a potentially handicapped child from surviving? Absolutely not. That would have been terribly wrong. If we

had done that, for that reason that we thought her life would not be worth living, we would have been waiting the value of a

life, not the value of a treatment. And that's wrong. It's one thing to refuse a useless and burdensome treatment when

someone is in the process of dying anyway, no matter what the treatment, it's quite another thing to refuse treatment for a life

that treatment might have saved. Just because that life was considered not worth saving. We sometimes have to make

decisions about whether a treatment is worth giving. But we have no right to decide whether a life is worth living. Any life

created in God's image is worth living. Those who want to legalize mercy killing talked a lot about quality of life. Quality of Life

is sometimes given as a ground for a boring Down syndrome babies and in some cases for withholding treatment from

handicapped newborns or even for actually killing them. But whose quality of life is that issue? Many people who have Down

Syndrome or other mental disabilities are very cheerful, and happy and affectionate people, they enjoy being alive, their

quality of life is high. Sometimes quality of life is just a way of saying that such people aren't appreciated by the people

around them.

Are we better off dead than disabled? That's a question that we're not even allowed to ask. We may ask, is this treatment

worth giving? We may never ask, Is this life worth living? Scripture says carry each other's burdens. And in this way you will

fulfill the law of Christ. So when we see somebody that we think, oh, their life is very hard. What should we do about that?

The answer is not well make it easier for him to die instead help carry the burdens. And so we need to keep this in mind.

Johnny Erickson Tada, a person who is a quadriplegic who has served the Lord in a mighty way for years and years says

instead of making it easier for people with disabilities to die, I would like our society to make it easier for them to live. And

Johnny and her husband Cam have devoted their lives to serving the Lord and to making it easier for people with disabilities

to live and not to die. God calls us to support others in their living and in their dying. Now, in concrete terms. This way, it

means we have to continue to remove any barriers that prevent people with physical disabilities, from enjoying the freest and

fullest life possible, and was listened to the many things these people can teach us from their unique situations.

We must value and love those who have mental handicaps, but are nevertheless image bearers of God, and people with very

special and sacred lives, we must offer them support and every appropriate form of education and opportunity. Again, if we're

wise, we'll try to learn things from them. That so called normal people might not be able to teach us I've had some wonderful

lessons and teachable moments in dealing with people who were labeled, disabled or even mentally handicapped, but they

had a wonder they had a love. They had a sensitivity to God's presence, and I learned a lot from them. We must treat those

who are aged or institutionalized in nursing homes or in geriatric units in hospitals, we must treat them with respect and

kindness. Our calling is not to question whether their lives are worth living, but to use every resource and opportunity God

gives us to make them feel that their lives are worth living. And when people are terminally ill when a cure is beyond hope.

We must not abandon them. At that point we can't cure, but we can still care. We must support hospice agencies that provide

pain control and medical support to dying people right in their own homes. And we must give personal encouragement and

kindness to dying people that we know. We must comfort them and help them to come carry their burdens at the same time

realize that they may have as much to offer us as we have to offer them. A person facing death, especially a Christian facing

death is often in a position to offer an insight and perspective that no one else can. I have learned a huge amount from dying

people on their hospital bed, who express their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we must support all human life.

Just to summarize, remove barriers for disabled people help disabled people reach their potential. Some of my friends are

involved in schools that help people with physical and mental disabilities and help them to really learn and make the most of

the skills and talents and abilities that they do have. We must show respect and love and help the aged and infirm, whether

helping them in our own homes as near relatives that were caring for or where that's not possible, and they need to be in a

facility, not abandoning them, but continuing to visit them and show our love and connection to them. Even if we can't take

care of them at home. We must provide care, even when we can't cure, we must learn from the disabled and the dying and

have yours open to what they have to teach us. And, above all, don't question if lives are worth living. Instead, make those

lives worth living. We don't just talk about life support as the technology that we support life. That's a big part of life support.

And we need to understand in all of this, that there is a purpose in suffering. One Euthanasia advocate said I have found that

there is no purpose in suffering. People who suffer never become better people as a result of it. The sufferings of Christ were

meaningless. Where has this guy been?

I have met many people who became wiser and more sensitive and more loving and more godly through suffering. And, of

course, I know Jesus Christ and His sufferings were not meaningless. They are the salvation of the world. But when you have

this perspective, that pleasure is the only good and pain is the only bad that sets you up to be an advocate of mercy killing

when life isn't a lot of fun anymore. God says the Apostle Paul, who was dealing with a thorn in the flesh that he couldn't get

rid of my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. That's what God told Paul and Paul

responded by saying, well, I'm going to boast all of our gladly about my sufferings, because that's when I'm the strongest in

the Lord. So suffering can lead to deeper faith, to warmer love to a stronger testimony. And in all of this, our ultimate focus is

knowing God and eternal life. It's not just minimizing pain, and maximizing pleasure. During the first few years that we have in

this life.

This life is just a beginning. As we make life support decisions, let's just review again, God does not require us to use all life

support technology, just because it's there, and milk a couple more days of dying and make the dying process longer. We

may refuse treatment, that's likely only to prolong the dying process. Now, advocates of Euthanasia tend to equate killing with

refusing extreme measures. But those are not the same thing. There's a huge difference between refusing extreme

measures of technological intervention and life support, and actively killing yourself or killing someone else. Now, it is helpful

to spell some things out in advance directives, you may want to have that written down. You may want to work that out with a

lawyer or somebody else and say how you would want your treatment to go if you were to become incapacitated. And it's

very hard to figure out every eventuality in advance. So basically, it's also wise to designate someone as a health care proxy

for you, someone with power of attorney, someone who will make decisions on your behalf if you're incapacitated. And this

has to literally be someone you trust with your life, because they will be making decisions about your life and death. And so in

our own lives, and as we advise others, we can suggest that they may have some advanced directives, and that they

designate who they would want to be making the decision about them.

The alternative sometimes is various family members squabbling with each other around a hospital bed, because nobody

knows the wishes of the patient. And nobody was designated as the person with decision making power by the patient. And

so it is important that we think ahead as believers in Jesus just because this is going to happen for a lot of us and we need to

think ahead, how to do it and how to advise others. I don't want to end on that though. For some people thinking about

sickness and death means thinking about the end, the end. But when your faith is in the risen Lord Jesus Christ, you believe

in the reality of life after death, you believe in resurrection. Death is not the end, death doesn't have the last word, Jesus

does. decisions about medical life support are important. But we need to keep all this in perspective, the Ultimate Life

Support is not medical technology, the Ultimate Life Support is the Spirit of God within us. The most important part of

preparing for death has nothing to do with advanced directives or medical technology. The most important part of preparing

for death is to be ready and eager to meet Jesus face to face for ourselves, and for those God calls us to help and advise the

main thing is to be able to say, my only comfort in life and in death is that I'm not my own, but belong body and soul in life and

in death. To my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. We must be able to say whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. We must

be able to speak to God from the heart and say, I trust you, Oh, Lord, You are my God. My times are in your hands and so is

my eternity.