When Christians fear death

I recently heard the story of a woman's final days. She was riddled with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. She was admitted to the hospital because the chemo had dropped her blood pressure dangerously low. She received multiple transfusions over the next few weeks, as doctors labored to stretch out her life. She was a professing Christian in her early 80s.

It's a debate that most of us will participate in by the end of our lives-when to say no to the chemicals and equipment promising another day or week of unpleasant existence. Research indicates that in modern America the vast majority of health care spending takes place in the last two years of a person's life, and that most of us spend those two years significantly incapacitated. It's a blessing, on the one hand, that we live to be 75 on average, instead of 45. Many of us can count on being kept nourished and comfortable in our final days.

But something seems wrong about spending pints and pints of much-needed blood on an elderly woman in misery, just so that she can be miserable a few more days. Even were the patient eight instead of 80, many of us might pause at keeping her alive to suffer.

On the other hand we are right to view death as an enemy, and to value all life highly. We don't want to give in without a fight, which would be a sin of hopelessness. But neither do we want to live in agony solely because we are afraid, deep down, that Jesus didn't mean it when he promised living water. That too is a sin of hopelessness. Compounding the problem is that it's much easier to think rationally about such things when it's not us lying in that deathbed, or someone we love.

Nor can we trust the medical profession, which already gives its assent to execution, be it a child slaughtered in her mother's womb, a comatose mother dehydrated to death in Florida, or a murderer on death row. It appears the American Medical Association is willing to traipse as far down the path of barbarity as its government is willing to allow.

No, we want doctors who are willing to exercise every ability and option in furtherance of human life. But that doesn't mean we ourselves want to exercise those options, I don't think. Most of us who have cared for a dying loved one recall reaching a point when we knew we should say: No more. It's an agonizingly gray point for many of us, which is perhaps why some can't put an end to the procedures. We try the elevated oxygen and the steroids and the blood transfusions, even as this person we love must be kept in a stupor of painkillers, because we are afraid of death.

Yet even in our healthy, wealthy society we cannot escape the call of Christ, which was unto death. Most of us will never face martyrdom or anything close (though sometimes we flatter ourselves otherwise). But each of us will likely face death, and so perhaps we ought to give some thought to what we believe about it. Do we really believe that it will lead to a life everlasting? Do we believe Christ pierced the dark veil, so that death will have no sting?

I don't know how to get at those questions truthfully when we are so removed from real peril. I can believe the right answers in my head all I want, but it's another thing entirely, isn't it, when you see those dark stains on your MRI, or have a gun muzzle pressed against your temple? All I know for certain is that I don't want to wait until the doctor is offering me the Faustian bargain of sustained suffering to realize that I'm not so sure that Christ spoke the truth. I don't want my children-or anyone else for that matter-to see fear in my eyes when that day approaches. I imagine our eyes trained on death can be a powerful witness far surpassing any words we might proclaim in health. I just pray that mine witness to faith, not fear.