Point of View

I can still hear my granny say, “Woe unto you doctors and lawyers.” Confusing Christ’s antagonists, the “doctors of the law” (Pharisees) with medical physicians and the “lawyers” (scribes) with modern-day barristers, granny turned our Lord’s “woes” upon Israel’s religious leaders into a divine denunciation of present-day “pill peddlers” and “pettifoggers.” Though granny reserved her scriptural-twisted anathema for the most uncaring physicians and unscrupulous attorneys, there’s still no justification for her misinterpretation and misuse of the words of the Master. Nevertheless, when I heard of Terri Schiavo’s death, granny’s words started ringing in my ears.

As prescribed by doctors and ordered by lawyers, Terri Schiavo was starved and dehydrated to death while the populace watched and politicians wavered. The state legislature, which refused to take a stand to save Terri’s life, did stand in a moment of silence following her death, adding new meaning to the old expression “deathly silent.” Our governor, the chief executive officer of Florida, assured us that he was incapable of helping Terri since he had been painted into a Tallahassee corner by a lone probate judge in Pinellas Park. And when the President and United States Congress attempted to intervene on Terri’s behalf, they were ignored and reprimanded by an out- of-control judiciary determined to prove its supremacy over the other two branches of government by putting to death a defenseless hospice patient. All in all, it was a less than sterling day in the life of our nation.

No sooner had Terri Schiavo passed away than shovelfuls of sentimentality started being heaped on our nation’s stain. Many who had previously favored Terri’s demise, arguing for her dehumanization and dispossession of life, were suddenly praising her as a wonderful human being and pointing out the good her life had accomplished; namely, illustrating for us all the importance of having a living will lest we, too, end up at the mercy of merciless doctors and lawyers. George Felos, Michael Schiavo’s lawyer who fought to have Terri’s feeding tube removed, described Terri’s death by starvation in such glowing terms that I fear for the future livelihoods of restaurateurs and grocers. And how about all of those brave politicians who finally breached the imaginary wall separating church and state just to assure us that their inaction on Terri’s behalf had actually hastened her heavenly arrival?

By shoveling mounds of sentimental mush upon our nation’s misdeed in the Schiavo fiasco we pad our consciences from the sting of guilt and hide our horrendous crime from view lest we be forced to face our moral depravity. Take, for example, a letter written to the editor of the Tampa Tribune the day after Terri died. The letter writer informs us that she does not “choose to share [her] stance on the Schiavo issue,” because “it is a personal and private matter.” Oh, how brave she is to refuse to take a stand in the public square for what’s right and against what’s wrong. Instead, she parades around in public adorned in the fashionable garb of privacy, that paramount virtue of our day championed by the Supreme Court in its legalizing of everything from abortion to sodomy. Then the letter writer waxes most eloquent in her inspired sappiness by penning the following:

“Today ... I simply choose to drop a thought into the universe. Choices: There will be times in life, when making them will not be easy and their wrappings will not be dressed in the tapestry of black and white, but rather gray and muddy. As a result, I have come to know that it will be the gray that truly redefines a person. It leaves us asking ourselves the question of what is really right and wrong.”

Abandoning “the tapestry of black and white” (right and wrong) for “gray and muddy” (nobody knows) does redefine people and nations. As soon as we discard God’s objective standards—eternal commandments written in stone—for men’s subjective ones—relative notions scribbled in clay—we lose all moral moorings and set ourselves adrift on the stormy sea of relativism. Tossed to and fro by oscillating public opinion and personal oscillation, each of us is left to navigate for himself what “is really right and wrong.”

Of course, living in the uncertainty of “gray and muddy” does have so-called advantages. First, it permits us to pad our consciences and do as we please. Second, it enables us to live with ourselves even when guilty of the most heinous crimes. For instance, as long as life’s beginning and end is seen as “gray and muddy” we can continue living with ourselves despite the fact that 46 million unborn children have been aborted in America and Terri Schiavo was starved and dehydrated to death.

However, if we ever come out of the “gray and muddy” back into God’s “black and white,” realizing that Terri Schiavo and 46 million aborted children were living human beings, our unconscionable crimes against them may prove too much for this nation to bear.

Don Walton is founder of Time for Truth Ministries and a full-time evangelist and conference speaker. For more information visit www.timefortruth.org.