The beginning of Lewis’ Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
At that moment the door was flung open and out came my father. His face shocked me full awake, for he was in his pale rage. I knew that in his red rage he would storm and threaten, and little might come of it, but when he was pale he was deadly. “Wine” he said, not very loud; and thot too was a bad sign. The other slaves pushed forward a boy who was rather a favourite, as slaves do when they are afraid. The child, white as his master and in all his finery (my father dressed the younger slaves very fine) came running with the flagon and the oyal cup, slipped in the blood, reeled, and dropped both. Quick as thought, my father whipped out his dagger and stabbed him in the side. the boy dropped dead in the blood and wine, and the fall of his body sent the flagon rolling over and over.
Lewis was a champion of democracy and stated quite clearly that individual liberty was of paramount importance in controlling the evils of man and of government. As we have discussed before the liberalism that originally gave us democracy has taken a turn toward totalitarianism. I attempted to express some of this in my dialectical treatment of Hebrews 11.
No sacrifice is adequate for personal redemption, except as one sacrifices, not just the ownership of goods, but also ownership of the right of ownership.
The power to own even life and death, even your own body, is no longer yours. It has been going on in Europe for a long time. Now New York is experimenting with opt-out organ donation. That means you — your body — is at risk.
The problem begins with rights. The statism of the Left has led it to abandon the right of the individual and translate it into the right of the collective through redistribution. This has gone way beyond the redistribution of tax dollars and no includes the redistribution of your very body.
The problem ends with life. The Left has been butchering people for most of the past century through its eugenics program. Whether it be Stalin’s type of eugenics or Hitler’s type, or the type that Sanger promoted, subsequently affirmed by liberal justice Ginsburg. With all the involuntary euthanasia that is winked at, is anyone here so naive as to think that it won’t continue into this new field?
This is where the Christian must be pro-active. We must speak against the politics, the legislation, and, yes, even the candidates, of this movement. We have been silent too long.
May 10th, 2010 | 9:28 pm | #1
From your personal website, it looks like your wife is a nurse. What is her opinion on organ donation? I cannot imagine that she shares this insane (indeed, incomprehensible) objection based on scripture.
May 10th, 2010 | 11:14 pm | #2
“…the redistribution of your very body.”
Glenn Beck would be proud. Lewis, and the author of Hebrews, maybe not so much.
May 11th, 2010 | 12:02 am | #3
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May 11th, 2010 | 5:32 am | #4
Curious,
There is a difference between what is mandatory and what is voluntary,
Chris,
Expected, and as always with no specific response to the content.
May 11th, 2010 | 7:34 am | #5
The Christian faith teaches us to give of ourselves for the sake of others; it does not teach us to take what belongs to someone else in order to give it to another. Christian charity gives and serves; it does not commandeer others for the sake of our own agenda, however good we may think our agenda is. When we take from others what they have not offered, that is called stealing, something about which God says, “Thou shalt not.”
May 11th, 2010 | 7:38 am | #6
There is a difference between what is mandatory and what is voluntary,
Indeed, but Curious was commenting on organ donation. “Opt out” donation is, by definition, not mandatory, so your reply is a non sequitor.
How, specifically, is my body at risk as a result of opt-out organ donation?
May 11th, 2010 | 8:00 am | #7
The presumption of “opt out” is that, if you have something I want, I have a right to take it, unless you tell me I cannot. It is one thing to ask someone to donate an organ, but quite another to presume to take an organ. When one donates freely, it is an act of charity; when one presumes to take, it is an abuse of the one upon whom you have made the presumption. It is more honest to go in through the front door than to sneak in through the back.
May 11th, 2010 | 8:10 am | #8
The Gov’t is as promised to us, so long ago.
8:10 So Samuel spoke all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 8:11 He said, “Here are the policies of the king who will rule over you: He will conscript your sons and put them in his chariot forces and in his cavalry; they will run in front of his chariot. 8:12 He will appoint for himself leaders of thousands and leaders of fifties, 10 as well as those who plow his ground, reap his harvest, and make his weapons of war and his chariot equipment. 8:13 He will take your daughters to be ointment makers, cooks, and bakers. 8:14 He will take your best fields and vineyards and give them to his own servants. 8:15 He will demand a tenth of your seed and of the produce of your vineyards and give it to his administrators 11 and his servants. 8:16 He will take your male and female servants, as well as your best cattle and your donkeys, and assign them for his own use. 8:17 He will demand a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will be his servants. 8:18 In that day you will cry out because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord won’t answer you in that day.” (NET Bible)
Exactly why should we expect better? The point of Govt is to take from individuals, and use in such a way as the King proscribes. The advantage we have with Democracy is that we get to chose our kings.
May 11th, 2010 | 12:59 pm | #9
the advantage is that we have been able to choose our kings, will it always be so?
the difference between secular and christian charity is where the value lies, inchristianity, a thing is given to a person of value, in the world, a thing of value is given.
if we do not keep our eye clearly on the difference, we will easily slip into redistribution for social collective good, which is not good as it creates by definition a new victim.
May 11th, 2010 | 6:43 pm | #10
I would most certainly want to opt out. I would not like for NY’s policy experiment to spread to other states. I find it threatening to the inherent sanctity of a person. One should treat another person’s body as untouchable unless you have explicit permission to touch. This is something we all practice while the person is alive, so why not continue that after that? That is why I defend the opt-in approach to organ donation.
May 12th, 2010 | 5:45 am | #11
Nickp,
Not exactly. It now becomes a broad social mandate. A few opt-outs only allow for exceptions, The norm becomes control and ownership.
Does the government own these new “positive” rights to your body after death? What about 1 minute before death? or 10? Or 30? Or 24 hours?
May 12th, 2010 | 7:59 am | #12
Colin,
Not exactly. It now becomes a broad social mandate. A few opt-outs only allow for exceptions,
“Social mandate” is not equivalent to mandatory, and your “few opt-outs” will be precisely as many or as few as people choose. Opt-out is not coersion, no matter how you try to spin it.
Does the government own these new “positive” rights to your body after death? What about 1 minute before death? or 10? Or 30? Or 24 hours?
I am unworried by this particular attempt at slippery slope argument, and exactly the same slippery slope was invoked when opt-in donation started to become the norm. What if you opt-in and the hospital really, really wants your organs but you aren’t quite dead yet?
There’s nothing new about government claiming some rights to your body. IIRC, you are in the UK, but in the U.S. we are still required to register for Selective Service. Governments, yes even conservative ones, have a long traditional history claiming ownership over the lives of their male citizens and have sent many thousands of them to die involuntarily. Collecting organs from my corpse is, in comparison, an intrusion so minor it’s barely worth mentioning. The people who really don’t want to donate, as opposed to just not caring, will almost certainly opt-out.
The second half of the NY legislation appears to positively increase individual liberty and ownership of one’s body by preventing families from exercising a veto over the wishes of a person who wanted to donate, so even if we were agree that “opt-out” has some negative effect on liberty, I suspect the overall effect of the legislation is neutral.
Perhaps opt-out will enourage people to think more seriously about organ donation and will increase the rate of donation. Perhaps it will cause a backlash and reduce donations. The joy of federalism is that NY can experiment and the other states can observe what happens. But something to speak out against? Not for this Christian. I will continue to have an organ donor sticker on my driver’s license whether my state chooses opt-in or opt-out.
May 12th, 2010 | 8:50 am | #13
If a stranger came into your house, picked up something that belonged to you and said, “I’m going to take this, unless you stop me” — would you be okay with that?
Charity is a voluntary act. “Opt-out” moves away from charity toward coercion. It unduly shifts the burden from you having to ask, to me having to object. It says, “I am going to take this from you unless you stop me.” This is not how civilized people should behave toward one another. It is how oppressive people exercise power over others and is an abuse of authority.
No, if you want something from me, have the decency and respect to ask me for it. Knock on my front door, don’t try to sneak in the back.
May 12th, 2010 | 9:19 am | #14
Greatly amused
Gov’t has historically, back to the OT, had the ability to take what ever it wants from you. At any time, for any reason it chooses to enforce.
Have a problem with that? Paul didn’t.
May 12th, 2010 | 9:36 am | #15
Jeff Doles,
Live organ donation is charity of the most amazing kind. Postmortem organ donation is rather different than your analogy.
The fundamental disanalogy is that organ donation occurs after you are dead. Will you own your house after you are dead? Will you own anything in it?
You won’t. All that will belong to someone else. By default, it will be your closest relatives, but the law allows you an opt-out: you can write a will directing those things somewhere else. If you don’t write a will, you don’t get to keep them. They’ll be given to someone else according to the law.
After you are dead, your body will not belong to you, because you won’t own anything. It can’t be taken away from you. The current default seems to be that it belongs to your next of kin, with numerous legal restrictions on its final disposition, but changing that default or adding one more restriction, won’t necessarily impinge on your liberty or your charity; you’ll be dead, after all. In theory, it may well impinge on your relatives’ liberty to dispose of your body as they see fit, particularly if they oppose your decision to donate organs. In practice, I doubt that hospitals will respect wishes of a dead man who wished to donate, if it means antagonizing living relatives.
May 12th, 2010 | 10:31 am | #16
Just because a man is dead does not give strangers the right to help themselves to what was his. Nor does it give them a right to disrespect him. Whenever others presume to take something from a man unless he objects, it is a disrespect to that man.
If someone wishes to donate their organs, they are already certainly free to do so. If he does not wish to do so, the burden should not be on him to object; it should be on those who wish to use his organs to ask properly and honestly.
Increasing public awareness about the need for organ donations is a worthy objective. PSA’s to let people know, and even to encourage people to check the box to donate are fine. Even asking people to be an organ donor is quite fair and shows respect to the person. It is open and honest. It is knocking on the front door.
But to presume to take the organ and make it incumbent upon a man to object if he is not willing — that is a disrespect for the man and an abuse of his humanity. It is trying to sneak in the back door to take from someone else.
So, let those who wish to see an increase in organ donations do the work of public awareness and education that encourages people to donate. But the “opt-out” method is the lazy way of bureaucracy and tends toward oppression.
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