Physician-Assisted Suicide

Assisted Suicide—A Quadriplegic’s Perspective

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Culture is so easily influenced by the entertainment industry. This is why I am sounding an alarm about a very dangerous message in a film released earlier this summer. It’s simply titled Me Before You.

Future Resurrection and the Right to Die: Using Strong Theology in Response to Shifting Societal Values

Monday, November 14, 2016

In times of pain, suffering, and loss of control, appeals to compassion and autonomy can make the “right to die” seem reasonable and attractive, and PAD seem forgivable—or even sanctioned. Despite the appeal of PAD, believers can be trusted to discern its wrongness when we make loving and impassioned appeals to historical Christian theology. Every believer can wield a sanctified moral reasoning that cuts carefully and humbly through the noise and appeal of popular notions of love, compassion, and autonomy.

Dying with Dignity

Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Bills to change the law to allow euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide continue to be presented to parliaments throughout the western world, on a wave of overwhelming public support for “the right to choose and have a dignified death.” While it is unlikely the debate will go away, we can still hope for a more honest one.

A Biblical View on the Sanctity of Life, Part 2

Friday, February 24, 2017

In the 23 years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), I have watched its most celebrated ideals erode and crumble under a double standard. I had the honor of serving on the National Council on Disability when the ADA became law, and ideally, it was intended to guarantee the basic rights of Americans with disabilities. Many saw the ADA as a law which would help move society beyond the premise that one is “better off dead than disabled.” I am amazed, however, at how much people’s fears of disability have eroded the most basic of human rights, especially now that so many more people are surviving disabling conditions. And when society’s fundamental fear of disability provides the framework to legislate policy, the outcome can only result in a double standard.

Me Before You and Physician-Assisted Suicide

Friday, March 3, 2017

When an idea or concept needs a push in popular culture, Hollywood often makes a movie about it. With the power of emotional drama and a film score designed to tug at the heart, Hollywood has the power to advance ideas that we would otherwise reject on moral grounds. Its most recent attempt uses the book-to-movie love story Me Before You to create sympathy for and acceptance of euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS).

Him Before All: Wisdom to Inform Bioethical Conversation

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Bioethical dilemmas are being explored everywhere. Moral questions embedded in the application of medical technology are not reserved for elite medical roundtables. Rather, ethical decisions are the prevailing substance of entertainment. Stories do touch our souls.

Him Before Us: Wisdom to Inform Bioethical Conversation

Friday, March 31, 2017

The prevailing cultural narrative, woven into routine dialogue and highlighted throughout the entertainment industry, turns on how the individual alone must define what is good using one’s internal moral compass. The frame of reference for making optimal moral choices is exclusively located within the uniqueness of the autonomous person, who applies private and personal criteria to achieve happiness, wholeness, and significance.

Thinking as Christians about Love, Compassion, and Suffering at the End of Life

Thursday, July 18, 2019

As I have reflected on those conversations, two aspects stand out: 1) their questions represent the public, secular views about death and dying popularized in American culture; and 2) they were more interested in avoiding physical pain than in thinking Christianly about the problem. I want to briefly describe the view they seem to have absorbed, and the consequences we already see from legalization of both euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS).

The ‘Slippery Slope’ of Euthanasia

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

One of my favorite parts of getting around Washington, D.C. is the Metro system. The zzzip of the Metro fare card that opens the turnstile, the flashing lights that announce the incoming train, and the garbled announcements of the upcoming station create a vivid collage. Even more, the long entrance/exit rides, such as on Rosslyn station’s 270-foot escalator, induce a bit of vertigo. The wide stainless steel divider might tempt brash or drunk riders to emulate their childhood prowess on the playground slide, but large discs mounted at strategic intervals along the divider deter all but the most foolhardy. It is dangerous to descend that slippery slope.

You Think What You Consume: Implicit and Explicit Messaging in "The Good Place"

Friday, September 24, 2021

The Good Place is a popular comedy show that follows four humans and their experience in an imagined afterlife where people accumulated points based on their good and bad actions on earth and were then sent to either “the good place” (effectively heaven) or “the bad place” (hell) depending on how they lived. As the main characters experience all that the afterlife has to offer, the show consciously addresses a number of moral and philosophical questions revolving around what it means to be a good person and how one can live a moral life.

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