Here’s the latest Dual Citizens episode. I talk about the mess that is Brian Houston’s fall from grace and the poor handling by the Hillsong board and we also think about the euthanasia bill currently before the NSW Parliament.
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Thanks again, David. Your perceptions are most interesting, flashes of light in a dark world.
On the moral lapses of pastors, I can only say that we are all sinners and we have forgiveness available if we will repent and believe. I am not to judge what those in the spotlight have or have not done.
The issue of euthanasia is closer to home for me. I am a committed Christian believer and also a specialist medical practitioner, in fact, a pain physician. I know a lot about pain and the suffering it can cause. I also know quite a lot about how to relieve pain and suffering.
The first thing to be acknowledged is that there isn’t a pain on the planet that cannot be relieved, in fact, abolished, by the means that we doctors have available. Ipso facto, it is unscientific nonsense for any doctor to think that euthanasia is the best, or even an optional, form of management for any patient to whom we have a duty of care. Nonsense.
The injunction to “first, do no harm” is as old as Hippocrates and has served the medical profession well for all those centuries. By what belief does a modern-day doctor feel justified in rejecting that age-old standard of professional behaviour?
Those are medical aspects of the challenge we face. The ethical aspects are much more important.
Who can believe that they have the right to extinguish the life of another person made in the image of God? Who can legitimately claim that their beliefs can justify the killing of another living, thinking human being, someone with feelings and emotions much like their own?
Who has the arrogance to set themselves up as superior to those they would much rather kill than cure? Only someone with inadequate knowledge of pain medicine and absolute contempt for the sanctity of human life. For them, morals and ethics are meaningless concepts. We should pity them.
Thank you, David, for balanced biblical reflection.