Playing God

"Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive
    Officiously to keep alive" - Arthur Hugh Clough, The Latest Decalogue 

The Telegraph reports that a 'religious couple', who wanted to keep their brain-damaged baby alive, are "unrealistic.'' And note the Orwellian wording here, presumably the words of the Telegraph staff: the baby ''can be allowed to die." 

If the person who wrote those words were being honest, he would say that the baby will be euthanized. Passive euthanasia, that is, killing someone by withholding treatment or care, is still killing someone.

I've had several debates with a fellow Christian, ironically, who more or less agrees with the idea of withholding care or treatment in such instances. The argument is that if someone is not likely to recover, or will have ''no quality of life'', whatever that means, then they should not be kept alive by artificial means. I can't seem to get across to this person that by such reasoning, we will soon find ourselves in the same position as Britain or the Netherlands or other such post-Christian countries, in which the old, the very young, and other ill or injured people who are arbitrarily deemed to have 'no quality of life', will be sentenced to death, in fact. Of course it will not be described so bluntly; it will be put in neutral or passive terms such as that the patient ''can be allowed to die.''

When Arthur Hugh Clough wrote the poem from which I quote above, he was making a wry point about the un-Christian attitudes of many nominal Christians of the Victorian era in which he lived. At least in Clough's day, most people would have been ashamed or reluctant to ''allow'' a sick or injured person to die because their lives were deemed not worth living. Few people in those times would presume to play God. But since Britain and much of former Christendom is now post-Christian or post-theist, in fact, we will see all pretenses of respect for life dropped. 

And there are an amazing number of people who have no shame in declaring that we (society) ''can't afford'' to keep someone alive; it is all about 'cost-effectiveness.' Such open devaluing of human life is becoming much more open and brazen. 

I sympathize with the parents of the baby, and my prayers go out to them.

And what was it another poet said, about the bell that 'tolls for thee'?