Part 13: The Death of a Child
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Personhood and Relationship.
Personhood to God is inherently bound in the idea of relationship. The triune God, while One God, expresses Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—three unique persons, not just personality aspects of one person. It is in the nature of God to be a Person, that is, unique, identifiable, expressive, creative, and separate from other “persons”. In this way, God communicates, reveals, shares, and loves. In addition, in this way, God experiences the joy of closeness and the pain of separation inherently a part of being “not the same”. Only in this way is the “other” experienced. Only if there are separate identities having separate capacities and powers can there be relationship. Foremost among these separate powers is the ability to choose the degree and duration of closeness to the “other”.
One thing is very clear about God’s value of relationship: it does not require equality. Other than the triune persons of God communing with one another, God has no equal with whom to communicate. Jesus’ life is God’s statement that he desires relationship with us anyway. While we cannot understand God’s grace in lowering Himself to connect at our level with us, we can still accept such love and experience it. We can be in relationship with God our creator, but only because he created us as persons in His image, having capacities like Him for relationship. If God values us in our limited capacities, then by His example, we are to value greatly other human life that may not share in full human development.
Another aspect of God’s design for relationship is that we are being “grown up” into being more and more like Jesus. This life is our opportunity to enter into the family of God, and to grow from spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity through our relationship with God and one another. That is, “personhood” is not a static state. We are “persons” with a unique capacity for growth and choice. Our most important decisions concern our relationships. If we defy God’s natural design, we inevitably suffer. If we follow the laws of His created universe, we inevitably prosper. That is, our success as persons depends on our right relationship with God and His creation.
God of course is not interested in relationship with automatons. A “person” is someone having free choice, and the power to exercise it, regardless of consequences. A “person” then is someone entitled to live freely, and to make mistakes. Why? Without such freedom, deep relationship could not take place. God created us therefore with freedom of choice between good and evil.
If “freedom of choice” is inseparable from “personhood”, “love” is inseparable from “freedom of choice”. “Love” says yes to life, encourages life, nurtures life, and sacrifices for the sake of life. If our most important decisions concern our relationships, then the single most important characteristic of these choices is whether we choose the path of love or the path of self-centeredness. God by His Nature, chooses only the path of love. His love is so great that He sacrificed His very Self in the divine person of Jesus in order to restore relationship with us as humans. Who we are and who we are to be as “persons” is revealed by how much God loved us.
Finally, we know that God did not create us for temporary relationship, but for eternal life with Him in Heaven. God created each of us so uniquely, that we are for Him a continuing unfolding of discovery and delight as we continue to make choices even in Heaven.
In summary, God reveals his Personhood by His unfailing “Yes” to life. Our physical life in the created world reflects His “Yes”. In turn, this life is itself a precursor to a more profound primary “Yes” to eternal life. God so delights in life and growth that He uses physical death as a transition to still other higher levels of life. God does not choose “No”, but men and women do. If there is a final death, it is because we choose it, not God. For God, life is good because it permits relationship: Creator with created.
What does God’s idea of personhood say to us about whether the unborn fetus is a “person”? First, we know that each created fetus is a unique human being, being statistically impossible of exact replication. Our later experiences in life only add to the unique formation of our personalities.
We know that each unborn “person” has a destiny of DNA and God given purpose. This uniqueness of design and purpose will manifest successfully or not in how the person chooses to live his life.
We also know that the relationship God intends for us does not depend on our equality with God, but is focused on how we become more like our Creator as we develop in relationship.
We adults are very much like spiritual fetuses in our capacity for relationship with God. God views us not only worthy of life, but even attractive for relationship. Like fetuses not yet born into the “citizenship” of the material world, we are not yet born into the citizenship of Heaven. Instead, we live like unborn children in total dependence on God, unable even to speak at any level comparable to His intelligence or able to do anything comparable to His ability. God loves, protects, and nurtures us into spiritual maturity. By his love and protection, even at our earliest stages of growth, we become able to act with increasing autonomy and power. God “births” us into progressive phases of life, both physical and spiritual.
The love we show the unborn is similar to the love God shows us even as we gestate spiritually, awaiting our “birth” into Heaven. God enters into relationship with us even though we are still so small in development. We have His character structured spiritually into our eternal lives, and He preserves and loves us with the hope that we will live out our destiny to full development. Why? Because He delights in seeing us grow more into the son or daughter He created. Our “personhood” in God is not dependent on whether we are in the womb or outside it. It is not dependent on whether we consist of a few cells or millions. Our personhood is not dependent what we can do, or our ability to think. Our personhood is based on having been created by God for a unique purpose built into our very being at the instant of conception. Only a life lived reveals the fulfillment of that purpose.
God’s model of love for us as spiritual “fetuses” is instructive for how we are to relate to the biological fetuses we create in the material world. We are not to view the fetus as a non-person because it may initially consist of only a cluster of cells. We are not to dehumanize or devalue the fetus because it is confined to a womb for a period of 9 months as it undergoes an astounding period of growth and differentiation. We are not to destroy the fetus because it is utterly without power and unable to assert itself against our power to kill it. We are not to see the life of the fetus as static and without purpose, but as a dynamic life moving through progressive phases of greater development and power. Most importantly, we are not to be blind to the ultimate purpose of this biological process: the human body being formed permits the development of a soul inseparable from the experience of the body. Stated differently, even as God loves us in our smallness and lack of development, we are to love the unborn. What God declares to be of utmost importance, we are not to treat as disposable trash. We are to demonstrate the same grace to the unborn that God demonstrates to us, for in truth, we are not far removed from the unborn fetuses we daily destroy.
Our culture is driven by the question: “What can you do for me?” Yet Jesus crafted his life around the question: “What can I do for you?” This difference is the difference between selfishness and love, and it characterizes the two camps in the abortion debate. The small, the infirm, the dying, the bedridden, the unconscious, the demented, the deformed, the mentally impaired, the voiceless, all have this in common: they need and require more than they can produce and give. Therefore, in a society driven by the “What can you do for me?” question, these persons lose value, and maybe even lose the right of life. Whatever legal or ethical justifications are created to justify destruction of these persons, ultimately the justification is that they lose in the “What can you do for me?” equation. Often, the most expedient justification is to deny that the human being killed or neglected is a “person”. Those lives being taken are biological “things” and not one of “us”.
Jesus’ embrace of suffering despite His obvious love of life teaches us the most important of life lessons: The avoidance of suffering is not the way to heaven. (EN 34) If our service of the voiceless and the helpless is our suffering, then we are to embrace it. We can embrace this suffering because God strengthens us to bear it, and because in God’s classroom of earthly life, we learn the lessons of suffering we will somehow use in the eternal life to come. Among the most important lesson in such situations is the ability to love more deeply. Today, many women choose abortion as a matter of convenience or secondary birth control. They avoid the “suffering” of delayed educations or careers, the responsibilities of parenthood, or the frustrations of placing a child for adoption. They miss the opportunity to grow in love, and they increase the misery of living out of selfishness.
What of the person who has almost nothing to offer to us in relationship because of mental or physical limitations? Edwarda O’Bara was 16 when she slipped into a diabetic coma, and suffered severe brain damage. Her mother brought her home from the hospital on May 31, 1970. Edwarda cannot talk, walk, or form ideas. She cannot move her body even to turn in bed. She requires 24 hour attention. Edwarda is now 51 years old, and her mother has cared for her in her home, virtually without other assistance, for all those years. For the first 25 years Edwarda’s mother left home only twice: for her husband’s funeral, and for another daughter’s wedding. She checks her daughter’s blood sugar day and night, every 4 hours. She shaves her legs regularly. She reads the newspaper to her, although it appears Edwarda understands nothing. She feeds her daughter by tubes. She suctions her throat, and turns her regularly in her bed. (EN 35)
Edwarda’s mother loves Edwarda because she sees in Edwarda more than the sum of her limitations and the total of her requirements for care. She sees Edwarda as dear, worthy and valuable because she is “Edwarda”. She has a name, a purpose, and a place. Her relationship with Edwarda is not defined by what Edwarda can do, but by who Edwarda is. I think that if you reduced all the reasons to the most simple statement, Edwarda’s mother would answer the question “Why do you do it?” by stating “because she is my child”. Edwarda’s value is in her relationship to her mother as her child, her daughter. Her value is not in what she can do, but in whose she is. So it is with us. We are God’s. He surely does not look to us for what we can do for him. We are utterly helpless to assist in running the Universe. He certainly does not look to us for intellectual stimulation or for creative exchange. We are utterly blind. He certainly does not seek us out for stimulating repartee or for some new insight. We are like babies babbling nonsense. If God were to explain to us why he loves and sustains us, I think His answer would be that of Edwarda’s mother: “because you are my child”.
What is the value or purpose of Edwarda’s tragedy, or the sacrifice of Edwarda’s mother for the last 35 years? There are no simple answers to questions like these, but one thing I see in this mother’s sacrifice is a reflection of God’s Spirit in her. In her, God’s character as Pure Love is revealed among us. I also see God’s imprint of value and worth upon Edwarda. She bears that imprint from conception and birth. Her mother sees that imprint by looking deeply with the eyes of love. As a result, Edwarda is part of a relationship shining in a dark and broken world. Killing Edwarda by assisted suicide, or by forced dehydration and starvation, is not the way into heaven. (EN 36)
