Welcome to Out of the Question, a podcast that looks behind some common questions and uncovers the question behind the question while providing real solutions for biblical world and life view. Your co-hosts are Andrea Schwartz, a teacher and mentor, and Pastor Charles Roberts. Many talk of salvation as the beginning of a life without problems. Yet the Bible is not shy about describing the reality of suffering. Our modern humanistic society with its belief that no one should suffer ever and that every problem should and will have a resolution has become hardened to the point where suffering serves no benefit whatsoever. During our last podcast, Charles and I discussed a book entitled, Pagan America. And toward the end, there is a chapter that deals extensively about how common and accepted euthanasia and assisted suicide, which are related terms but not identical, have become something status governments now offer to patients rather than care and compassion. Charles, there are those inside and outside the Christian church who see helping someone end their life of suffering as demonstrating compassion. How did we get to the point where assisting someone in murdering himself, which is what suicide is, has become an act of care? I guess the outside part of that question is that how did we get to this point, generally speaking, and then specifically where something like assisted suicide euthanasia is considered care or concern or compassion. I think to the first part of it, to quote the words of Solzhenitsyn, men have forgotten God. That's why we have come to this point. He was referring to what older people said concerning the Bolshevik revolution and its butchering aftermath. And I think that largely is the same thing here, only in a slightly different format. From the very beginning, the contest has been between man's law versus God's law. And as Dr. Rastuni tirelessly reminded us, and as we have said many times ourselves in this podcast and others in the Chalcedon podcast world, that if man is the measure of all things, if humanism is the highest expression of religious faith, then that ultimately leads to statism and tyranny. And it's interesting that you use that phrase, the state takes this approach and views it as a means of compassion. But I think that the second part of that is that how do we get to where this is considered compassionate? It just goes right along with the rest of the downgrade from a biblical view concerning God and man. I'll go ahead and mention this here. In the Institutes of Biblical Law, There's the sixth commandment, which, for those of you who don't know, is thou shalt not kill. And by the way, it's not thou shalt not murder, it's thou shalt not kill. There's a reason it says kill in the original language. But Dr. Rastuni makes this interesting point regarding abortion, which is another type of so-called mercy killing in a slightly different context. He says that the demand for abortion is antinomian to the core, and he says it is a statist humanist position that ultimately leads to the destruction of man and humanity. So when you have man's law as the final arbiter of all things, because it has no other boundary than experience, and that's the other thing is that in the abortion debate, and I think also in this one, it's based on emotion and experience rather than the external objective, quote unquote, standard of God's law word. And so once we cross that boundary, then it's whatever I feel like is compassionate, or I feel like this would be the best way to handle this aging person who really doesn't serve any function in society anymore. And it's interesting, when we talk about man's law, I think it's very easy to forget that man's law is really elitist law. The ones who are in charge, the ones who believe themselves to be superior to others. So when we frame arguments like abortion, suicide, and assisted suicide into areas of independent and I should be able to make my own decisions. This is something that's been drilled into people's heads by a certain elite that want a certain outcome. And they're more than willing to use people in such a way as to have them think it's to their advantage. All you have to do is go back to the garden. And when the tempter presents to Eve this program, It's not so that he can benefit, it's not so that she will now and Adam will now be slaves to him, it's all for their benefit. And so what a lot of people don't realize is that the modern propaganda machine, and this is not new to our day, has always been get people to do what you want them to do so that you have to do less work in that regard, but so that they think it's a benefit to them to do it. Yeah, and we, in the book that you referred to that we have both been reading, in that section on euthanasia, one of the things that I was struck by is how far down the path of this evil that the country of Canada has gone. I mean, I knew that they had a very quote, liberal view of assisted suicide and mercy killing or whatever you want to call it. But I was staggered by the numbers and the things that have been going on from the point where, and it's sort of like this in every area where biblical morality is compromised. Oh, well, we're only, people should be allowed to go see, you know, dirty X-rated movies. It's on that other side of town where nobody goes. And then over time, it goes from there to your TV screen in prime time. The same with this. Oh, it's only going to be for a certain number of elderly people who are catastrophically ill to where even children are being encouraged to consider killing themselves under certain circumstances. And as Rustuni points out, this is statist and antinomian to the core. And any time the state is involved on its own terms with administering care and so-called concern for people, it inevitably over time devolves into a horrific tyranny. And it may be a soft one at first, but eventually it leads that way. And if people are not aware, if they're not quote, situationally aware of the circumstances, they will one day, if they wake up at all, realize I'm living in the middle of something that like a brave new world or 1984. And what's interesting about these soft approaches to things that the Bible clearly says are sinful, I remember hearing Dr. Rushduni talk about when the income tax was put into effect in the early 1900s, how it was actually celebrated by the majority of people because they thought, oh, this will only affect rich people. This will never touch me. And there were people who tried to say, no, there is no limit. If you read the 16th Amendment, you will see that there's no limit on how much the government can tax you. But since people at the time thought, well, only the rich will be the ones who affected, they were all for it and didn't protest it. So, let's say you have a populace that's aging and certainly the latter part of the 20th century, we had lots of people born after the war. There's no surprise that the label is baby boomers because there were a lot of people. Well, guess what? Those people have gotten older and they're probably more older people now than there were when Social Security was originally put in place. But everybody thought people only live to this age. They didn't really think people would live into their 90s. And so the whole idea of this might be a good solution to the problem of a higher population of aging and aged people who are sick and need assistance. This may sound like a good idea to some people who are looking at their bottom line more than they're looking at the dignity of what it means to be a human being. Yeah, and if I may, I want to quote from the book that we've been reading, Pagan America, The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Ages to Come, and referencing this business and how it has impacted Canada of euthanasia. He says this, Canada's euthanasia regime, like that of Belgium and the Netherlands, is simply a glimpse of what every post-Christian liberal democracy will eventually adopt in the absence of a civic life and a legal system shaped and restrained by Christianity. I'm just going to stop there for a moment. I don't know where this guy, well, I think he's Roman Catholic, but anybody who takes God's word seriously could not disagree with that. I mean, he's nailed it right there. But then he goes on, the morality, quote unquote, of euthanasia and assisted suicide rests on the idea that the only legitimate arbiter of truth is the individual. But once that principle is established, other factors like economics and the interest of the bureaucracy can come into play as long as, quote, consent can be coerced. So yeah, we got all these old people tottering around, and it's taxing the Social Security system. It's taxing all of our resources. So we need to get rid of a bunch of them, which, by the way, if anybody needs it pointed out, a bunch of them were gotten rid of in the past couple of years. And then you have the, and I think he gets into this in this book, in this section about the financial savings by getting rid of not just simply older people who, would wind up in medical care, but people who are, quote, terminally ill and other things like that. So it crosses a boundary from an objective biblical standard of morality. And by objective, I mean something that's outside of ourselves that has greater authority about what is right or wrong than just my whims or my preferences to which I am obligated to obey. Once that boundary is abandoned or set aside, then this is where we wind up with what they're doing in Canada and what increasingly has happened all over the formerly Christian Western world. And things that people do not consider, let's say abortion hadn't been legalized in the United States. So you take the number of children that didn't get to be born and now they're born. And since we're talking about 1972, 1973 as the starting point, those people would have grown up, they would have gotten jobs or created businesses, they would have put money into the tax base, and there wouldn't be this numerical disparity between those who are currently working, and those who are currently living off retirement. So, in essence, the generation that would have continued to fund things like Social Security and Medicare, etc., were killed. So, now we have this imbalance, and so the ruling elite, once again, trying to solve problems in a humanistic way, Well, immigration becomes the solution. Not only will immigration give them a voting base that will perpetually keep or they think will keep them in power, because they always underestimate God and his providence and his will, but that these people will become workers and workers will be happy at whatever price they're given for their labor. So when people embrace an idea because it serves their bottom line, and that seems to make sense, and we can even frame the abortion dialogue in terms of we don't want a woman to suffer a pregnancy she doesn't want. So it's put in the terms of this is going to cause her pain, and so we must, we must be about empowering women so that they never have to experience any consequence of their actions. Yeah, Dr. Rustuni, in that section on abortion and euthanasia, mainly abortion, in the long, long chapter on the Sixth Commandment, he talks about the fact that in the early days of there being social and political agitation to legalize child killing, abortion, that there were certain feminist groups that argued, in some cases, invading state legislatures to make the argument that men have no business discussing this because they don't carry babies and they don't know what it's like to experience pregnancy, even a crisis or problem pregnancy, as they would call it. And Dr. Rustini makes the point that on that logic, then we could have no laws against murder unless everyone involved with passing the law or setting the law had himself or herself been a murderer. And so it's all reduced to experience. This is what determines everything, my experience, my personal emotional gut reaction or level or reaction to things. And when we get to that point, when there's no, again, like I said a moment ago, outside superior standard of morality to which we are obligated and which we must obey if there is to be peace and justice and a truly cohesive society, then you wind up with a society in total chaos. And unfortunately, people have lost the capacity largely in our culture today to take a long-range view of these things so they can only see the immediate outcome or what I got to get my immediate desire satisfied, which is to get rid of this pregnancy or to make sure that grandma is not suffering anymore. in the nursing home or whatever the case may be. Besides, I could use the money that she's leaving me or he's leaving me. All these factors come into play that are based on personal preference and experience rather than a standard of truth that says no. this is always wrong, this is always right, and you violate this law at your own risk and the risk of your society. And that's the only thing that Dr. Rossini makes in talking about abortion. And I don't remember, my edition of the Institutes is one of the early ones with the, this is the 1970, this is the fourth printing, 1977. He makes the point that the subject of abortion and its legalization is not just something that affects women. He said it is actually something that all humanity needs to be concerned about. Well, because a certain percentage of those who are aborted are women, and the other half are men, and when we talk about a strong civilization and a civilization based on the family and the trustee family that actually bolsters and is the cornerstone of a healthy society, yeah, this is a devastating blow against the family when you take the natural instincts of a woman and turn them into her looking at the child she carries for whatever reason as a burden, as an enemy, and I've even heard it described as a trespasser. Yeah, and that's an inversion of all of God's truth. And again, and this is a follow-up on our last couple of episodes, this is what we're faced with in our culture today. As Van Til talked about and Dr. Rush Dooney, the people who practice evil and embrace an evil unbiblical worldview become epistemologically self-conscious. And Van Til was the one who used the phrase, that is the descent into the void. And this is the explanation for the fascination with the dystopian TV series and horror movies and things like that that we've also talked about, is that it leads humanity to this point where, and there's something else I wanted to bring in, because we've referred to assisted suicide. the French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, he was the one who famously said that when you understand humanity's predicament, then the only legitimate philosophical question is whether or not we ought to commit suicide. Now he's saying that from the standpoint of that there is no God, And even if there is one, we couldn't know anything about him. So we are these useless, meaningless people who we're faced with the option or the responsibility, and it's an impossible one, to try to make sense out of everything with no God and no standard. And that's one reason that all of those people who followed that way of thinking in existentialism tended to be very pessimistic about life generally, and their writings reflected that. So that question of Camus is one that ought to haunt everyone who denies God's truth. And the articulation of this type of philosophy is another means by which Satan has attacked God's creation, meaning in this case, human beings. It's also interesting, too, that the theme of many science fiction-type films is that there's somebody or some entity who wants to totally annihilate the human race. Isn't that interesting? I wonder who that would be patterned after. Well, it would be patterned after Satan, of course. So even in these expressions, these unbiblical, non-Christian expressions of entertainment, we find these things reflected, as somebody referred to it, a revelation of the method. In this case, I mean by that, the method by which Satan is using yet another avenue, supposed entertainment, to legislate, to populate an idea that people ought to be thinking seriously about getting rid of themselves. And one last thing, I remember as a kid growing up, You know, kids can be very unkind to each other. And it was a saying you'd hear once in a while, people getting into it, kids getting into an argument, well, why don't you do the world a favor and go kill yourself? See, there's something to that in the sense that this is what Satan wants all of us to think about. So back in episode 183, I interviewed a Christian woman, Stephanie Gray Connors, who has made a name for herself in terms of being willing to debate and advocate for the unborn. The discussion I had with her back then had to do with in vitro fertilization and how that is an assault against human dignity and certainly against the word of God. But she wrote another book, dealing with the whole idea of assisted suicide, and she entitled it, Start With What? Ten Principles for Thinking About Assisted Suicide. Now, first and foremost, before we get into what that title, Start With What, means, as I mentioned at the outset, the Bible talks a lot about suffering, and the suffering is not described or promoted as something that has no benefit. So I'll just read a couple of passages, which I'm sure many of our listeners are familiar with. James 1.12, blessed is the one who perseveres under trial, because having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. John 16, 33, I have told you these things so that you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world. Luke 14, 27, and whosoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. Psalms 119, 71, it was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees. And I could go on. So if we look at suffering, whether it's mental suffering, emotional suffering, physical suffering, Without demeaning all the reality of what a person in any one of those states experiences, as you said, Charles, we have to repair back to thou shalt not kill. So if that's the basic premise that we can't deviate from, and this is where Stephanie's book comes in really handy, Instead of asking the question, why, which is what so many of us do, why is this happening to me? Why is God allowing this? Her perspective is, start with the question, what? All right, this is my circumstance. what do I do with it? A good example for those who may be familiar with her is Johnny Erickson Tada, who when she was a young woman, jumped into a pool and became a quadriplegic. She is now advanced in years and has basically lived her life answering the question, what now? And so, since the chief end of man, according to the Catechism, is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, and understanding that God foreordains whatever comes to pass, yes, the human tendency is to say, why is this happening to me? But I have seen so many examples of people and families who have gone through things that nobody would wish on anyone, but nonetheless, they took place, and seeing God glorified and people come to faith because of the witness of such people. Yeah, this raises the issue in terms of the persevering under suffering about how the person who is going through some suffering, let's say it's a severe medical condition or something like that, yes, there is that personal battle, that personal struggle. I mean, the passage you quoted from James 1.12, blessed are those who endure when they are tested, and when they pass the test, they receive the crown of life that God has promised those who love him. And the word life there and crown of life is Some of our listeners will know there are several different Greek words that are translated with our one English word life, but this is the specific Greek word zois, which doesn't refer to biological life. It means a special spiritual life that's imparted to us by God's Holy Spirit when we are brought into his covenant family. And so there's that, but there's also the issue of, you know, we don't suffer alone. if we are within the boundaries of God's covenant family and community. And we have an obligation, and if not that, a debt to those who are suffering, because none of us are really quite free from it. We all have our own personal struggles and suffering. And I don't necessarily mean it could be something not quite as big as a severe, maybe terminal medical condition. It could be just struggling and suffering because of inclination to sin or dealing with something like that. But I think that for us, the main point I want to ask about that or say about that is that insofar as we deal with that ourselves, and if it's a personal thing, then we work with that with the Lord. But insofar as it involves our family or the larger Christian community, whether that's your church or some other version of an extended Christian community, you know, the example that's given to us by our Lord is one of compassion and care. And as we have had occasion to remark, the whole system of hospitals and mercy and care for those who are sick, that is a biblical program. The pagan world didn't know anything about it. And here again, we get to see the compassion of the state versus the compassion of God's standards. You know, because in ancient societies, the state's version of compassion was to, you know, throw the babies outside the walls of the city and let the dogs eat them up because they're not wanted. You know, the older person would just be put aside if not encouraged to kill themselves. In other words, again, the individual becomes the standard of everything in the humanist society, as opposed to a standard like what we're told in Scripture, that we are to be concerned and care for others who may be enduring suffering. And part of that maybe is helping them understand what James 1.12 and the other passages you quoted say to encourage them. This is the point I really want to emphasize in our discussion. Galatians 6 says, bear or carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. So it's not like, well, I don't know that there's much I can do to eliminate that person's suffering. But you know, Charles, there's a lot we can do to alleviate the suffering. A lot of people become full of despair because they can't put a meaning to their suffering. Like, what's the point of all this? Ultimately, I think people commit suicide, not so much as that life is difficult, because many people have difficult lives and have not committed suicide. But when I think of the people that I know, or family members of people I know who have taken their own life, Obviously, there was a sense that their existence would be more meaningful if they weren't alive anymore than if they were. And I think it's a real failure of Christian love not to interact with people who have difficulties and helping them see that their life has meaning by the very nature that they were created in God's image. But maybe we can serve as the impetus to help them see that none of this happened outside of God's ordination. And some might say, well, if they're not Christians, well, why are they going to want to like a God or love a God who did this? Well, because the God who did this is sovereign God over everything, so their problem isn't that they're under the dominion of a sovereign God, their problem is that they haven't bowed the knee to that sovereign God. And I think we can help them with that. And I think that's an area where when people wanna go out and change the political sphere, have they looked around at the people who they come in contact with who are hurting, who could use time spent with them, who could use hearing the latest things that were happening in their life. In other words, help get rid of the despair by replacing it with the meaning. So, oh, I can't move around like I used to, but you can pray. I can't do the things I was independently able to do. Well, thank you for giving me an opportunity to help you. See, that's loving one another in a way that the modern world doesn't advocate, and on top of it, the church doesn't emphasize enough either. I think you're totally correct on that, and I think this is something that shows a failure on the part of Christian families and households to teach children these principles. You know, children by nature sometimes are especially afraid or they're intimidated by the elderly, but that is something that people have to be taught to understand. Well, Grandma looks this way and talks this way because of X, Y, and Z. You know, there are, I've seen and know of many godly Christian families where they have great ministries through their children to older adults and whether it be in a retirement home or assisted living facility or something of that nature. I remember when my kids were young, since we didn't have grandparents at least at one point living close to us, we would go to nursing homes, assisted living places, and we would always say we were going to go visit the grandmas, because traditionally there were more women there than men. And I remember my youngest daughter coming out one day and saying, they are so beautiful. Their hair is so silver. Isn't it pretty? And there was nothing more fun to watch, because I would bring them and then I would kind of back off to watch the old and the young talking together. And there weren't this barrier of you're just a kid or you're just an old person. And we talked to people, women in their 90s who had raised five sons who are now all doctors and she was very proud of them. And it dawned on me, these people had a life. before they were there. And some of them were very sad because they didn't get to see their own children. And the scripture is clear that you should take care of your own. So when people bought into this idea, oh, Social Security and Medicare will cover all this stuff, did they ever think that they would get old enough to be the recipients of that and to see how, in many cases, how empty it is? Yeah, and this is something else that people really need to get a handle on, and in the larger category of situational awareness. We find ourselves in our society today dealing with these issues that we're talking about, and whether we're talking about assisted suicide, euthanasia, abortion, or the implementation of an unbiblical economic and financial system that goes back to the early 20th century, if not earlier. These things don't just happen at random. They are part of the plan on the part of ungodly people, in this case, who don't want to follow a biblical standard. God's Word tells us, just weights and measures shall you have. Well, at one point, our order of economics and money followed that system. Some people would be quite surprised to know that it's only been fairly recently that the gold standard was removed from the backing of our money. I don't want to stray off into that subject, but I'm just saying the situation we find ourselves in regarding the elderly, those who are suffering, the zeal for assisted suicide, these are part of a larger strategy. and be discerning. Understand there's a standard by which we are supposed to live according to God's law word. And even though most of the original 13 states that made up these United States were more or less committed to that standard, it wasn't very long before they completely veered off of it. It wasn't all at once. It might be this area or that area, whether it's the economic system, whether it's how children are educated, whether it's how we define a family. And so we get where we are today. much like the alcoholic who doesn't wake up two weeks earlier and decides, I'm going to become an alcoholic. No, it's a slow, progressive process of leading to this point of physical dissolution. We have the same thing in our culture, in our society. But there's a way back. This is not just merely talking about how bad things are. Our whole premise here is that if people would turn to God's law word, if they would reach out to the Lord and ask for His forgiveness and for His guidance, the Lord will answer them. And we see this time and again in the pattern of Old Covenant Israel, the Old Testament church, where these people continually fell away from the covenant God made with them, and maybe slightly different dress, they were dealing with the same issues we are today. So in the book that I referenced by Stephanie Gregg Connors, Start With What, she really lays out her thesis by using stories about people she's encountered, people she heard about, and how by asking themselves, what am I going to do with what God has given me? And as I was thinking about this, I realized that My family had been blessed by interaction with people dealing with such things. So I'll start with one that people may be familiar with. The man's name was Charlie Wiedemeyer. And Charlie Wiedemeyer was somewhat of a sensation in high school and college. And he ended up moving to the Bay Area where I live. And he coached a high school. And in the process of coaching, it became obvious that he was losing some of his physical abilities, and he was eventually diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease. By the time my husband and I met Charlie, he was already in a hospital bed having difficulty speaking and his wife had gotten really good at reading his lips. So Charlie lost physical capabilities, but he didn't lose mental capabilities and he continued to coach. the high school football team. And it's kind of an interesting story, there was a documentary done on it, they eventually made a TV movie on it. But here's the thing, when Charlie first was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, he wasn't a believer. But God brought one of the nurses who had something to do with taking care of him because he needed round-the-clock care, and he became a believer. Now, the life expectancy for somebody with Lou Gehrig's disease wasn't very long, but Charlie lived 30 years more and ended up having a ministry where he would be an encouragement to other people, share the the positive effect God had on his life, never complaining about what situation he was in, he went to prisons, he went to schools. Now, he eventually got his reward and passed away. But I would say Charlie Wiedemeyer had much more effect than the average person, if you're just going to look at numbers alone. And in the course of our own life, my husband had certain physical difficulties that were hard to deal with and he didn't know if it was gonna mean that he couldn't go ahead and make a living and provide for the family. And Charlie was an incredible encouragement. Charlie Wiedemeyer may have asked why at some points in his family, But really, when you say, what was the purpose of this? I can look back now and say, wow, what an amazing thing God did through suffering. And that's not to demean the difficulty of taking care of somebody with Lou Gehrig's disease and the various constraints and obligations that magnify. So we don't have to say suffering isn't painful, but what do we do with what God has given us? And again, it comes down to the issue of who is sovereign and what is the standard of law and justice. And when God's law tells us, thou shalt not kill, that has a whole range of applications, not just simply the act of murder. I guess, I mean, we could argue that suicide is itself murder, and it does apply there. The point of that commandment and all the Ten Commandments is that they apply not only to individuals. I mean, if it's against God's law for me to kill myself or me to kill somebody else unjustly, then it's also against the law for the state to do that, or for a local municipality, or for a mob And I think this is the failure on the part of many Christian theologians and churches to understand. I was reading an article just recently about, it was on a popular Reformed Christian website, and the person was interacting with a book that had been recently published by a Reformed scholar, and the need for Christian ethicists, Christian theologians and professors and teachers who are experts on Christian ethics. And I had to marvel at, well, God has given us those standards in his word. Where is the lack? Where is the need? I mean, I had to take a class in Christian ethics in seminary and it was interesting enough, but I mean, mostly what we talked about were unchristian standards of ethics compared to Christian. And then even the ones that were Christian sometimes were somewhat suspect because they weren't always grounded in God's law and his truth. Okay, Aristotle may have had something interesting to say about ethics. He wrote an entire book called the Nicomachean Ethics. But as interesting as that may be, I want to know what God's Word says about it, because that's the only true standard. Could I not learn something from other people who suffer from illness and disease? I mean, Christians are not the only people who have had to deal with this. Maybe, but the issue again comes down to where do we find the absolute truth of standard of living, and where have we seen proven time and again throughout human history where that standard, if it's followed, has been the most beneficial to all human beings? Now, I want to say One more thing about this. You mentioned this in terms of people's backgrounds, and they reach a point in life where they're maybe no longer, quote, useful to others. In so many words, we were talking about that. I don't know why I thought about this, but it reminded me of this great, I think it was actually released in the 1930s. Yes, here we go. He's referring to a motion picture again. The movie Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn. And I don't know why I remember this. It's a great movie in many ways. They don't make them like that anymore, as they say. But there's a scene in that movie where Robin Hood is out in the forest with a bunch of these poor down and out people who have been sacked and robbed and horribly mistreated by the sheriff and the officials. under King John, and they're starving. And so Robin Hood, whatever we think of his methods, he's provided them food. And so he's walking around greeting these poor folks. And there's this one point where this elderly woman comes up to him and says, God bless you, Robin, for what you're doing. Now, what was interesting about it is that he didn't say, oh, you're quite welcome. He said, thank you, mother. She wasn't his mother, but that was his form of address to this woman. You're quite welcome, mother. So it was a recognition that this woman had a life that included bearing children, raising a family. He didn't know probably, I mean, okay, it's a motion picture, right? But it's just a general idea that there's a worth to this person other than just being down and out and elderly. Thank you, mother. That was what he said to her. Interesting. So to go back to the scriptures, and you know, I've highlighted a few. But I think of this one scripture, and I'll tell you why it had special meaning. 2 Corinthians 4, 8-10 says, We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. Now that passage of Scripture was a favorite of a young man that I came to know named Michael. Michael lived a year and then had a heart transplant. As a result of all the things that happens to someone after a transplant with their immune system, at the age of eight, he contracted cancer. ended up traveling from Philadelphia, where he lived, to California because the best doctors were at Stanford Hospital, they were told. And so, it was an unusual situation. When somebody's had a transplant, you don't want their immune system to be beefed up because you don't want rejection. But when someone has cancer, you do want their immune system. So Michael had two things going along. And then in the midst of all that, he suffered some strokes. He had a need for operations. Many blood transfusions, was probably pricked more than most people in their lifetime ever will be because of all his medical procedures. But that was the verse that animated him. And here was a young man, he only lived till he was 16 years old, but when he was talking to doctors or other people waiting for procedures, he felt he had what he had and all the various ailments so he could relate to people and share with them the love of Christ. When he died, they had to have three memorial service times because there were so many people who had been affected by Michael's adherence and joy of life. Was it difficult at times? Absolutely. Did his parents and his brothers go through difficulties? Absolutely. But having the opportunity to hang around with this family, my family always said we got way more out of it than they did. So, what is the next thing that happened after Michael died? His family decided to fund a project, and they got other people to do it as well, producing something called the Here's Hope New Testament. And so, they got a bunch of those printed, they had Michael's testimony in it, and they distributed it to families who were going through difficult times. They call it Here's Hope because that's exactly how Michael lived his life to the point that when he was about to die and he knew he was, he was like, don't be sad, I'm going home. This was a young man who was mature beyond what we would normally say a 16 year old. my family, I personally got to be influenced by this person, so that suffering takes on a different view. Without the circumstances of his life and what his family had to go through, which were difficult, God wouldn't have been glorified in the same way. Yeah, and of course, if the people who would look at him as something other than what God would look at him and the followers of Christ would look at him, he would have been done away with pretty quickly or some other terrible thing like that. And this then becomes the humanistic standard of judging whether a person's life has any value whatsoever. And I think what you just mentioned is a very important thing that, as we wrap this up, I want to stress to our listeners. Because we don't know. These podcasts, they go out. We have our regular listeners, I suppose, but there may be, under God's providence and grace, somebody who hears this particular one, and maybe they're struggling with some issue relating to suffering in life. In Christ, there is hope. The message of the kingdom is a hopeful message. And this is something that, in its day, when the message of the kingdom was proclaimed by our Lord, was contrary to all thinking. The pagan world was a hopeless world. But the world of God's law, of God's truth, is one full of hope and an expectation of triumph and victory. Indeed. And then having the mindset, as someone maybe who's not going through suffering, or your suffering correctly is categorized in your mind, not as significant as others, don't be afraid and don't hesitate to sit beside someone who's in a messy situation and be there initially to listen and then eventually to have compassion and help direct people to God's view of the situation and let them know that The reason they're still here is because God has so ordained it, and there is something for them to do, and that taking their own life, not only is it in violation of God's law, but it doesn't even serve the purpose that they often think it will. And I've had opportunity to talk to people whose loved ones, husbands, sons, daughters, have taken their own life. And oftentimes, when the people who find the dead person, whether the person hung themselves or whatever, there's this feeling of how come I wasn't aware of the fact, because you hear it all the time, that this person wanted his life or her life to be over. Well, the compassionate thing is not to say, I'll help you do it. The compassionate thing is to be there with that person, letting a person know, you matter and the best way to let people know that they matter is by acquainting them with their creator who made them and why he made them. I hope our listeners have appreciated this discussion and recognizing that there is a way beyond the unbiblical state's view of the meaning and purpose of life, and to quote a phrase that we like, it's God's law or chaos. Out of the Question podcast at gmail.com is how you get in touch with us to contact us, make a suggestion, ask a question, and we look forward to that, and we hope you'll join us next time. Thanks for listening to Out of the Question. For more information on this and other topics, please visit calcedon.edu.