When ‘Choice’ Goes Too Far: The Euthanasia Case Everyone Is Talking About
Cameron (00:00)
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co-host, Cameron McAllister.
Nathan (00:04)
and I'm your co-host, Nathan Rittenhouse.
Cameron (00:07)
I want to talk about a very sad case that took place in Barcelona, Spain recently. For those of you who haven't heard, there was a 24 year old woman named Noelia Castillo. ⁓ There's a good chance where I'm mispronouncing her name. That's not my intention, but Noelia Castillo had ⁓ by all accounts an incredibly difficult life.
multiple sexual assaults, abuse. She had one failed suicide attempt that left her in a wheelchair. And I believe that took place in 2022. so Barcelona is one of the places that has made, worked hard, campaigned hard to make euthanasia more widely available. Other places that I don't think would surprise anybody would be the Netherlands.
quite known for that. Luxembourg is another place. So she was determined to seek what's euphemistically called, I think, Nathan, end of life care. And so she pursued that. There was some pretty fierce resistance to this decision. There were a number of conservative coalitions, a Christian association of lawyers, her parents. Yeah.
Nathan (01:31)
well, and her parents.
Cameron (01:35)
Her parents begged her not to do this. I believe her mom actually was there when this happened. the procedure did take place. Her life was ended not long ago at all. so there has been, this has captured just attention globally.
Nathan (01:54)
Well, there's a sense
of which this isn't new but this is a sense in which there was a the decision of an individual Then the family says she's not psychologically, know in a good place to be able to make this decision and then the judge or the courts get involved and then the judge rules on in her favor for her Right to do this. So I think that's the Yeah, lots of variables
Cameron (02:20)
Yeah. And you can look into, there are the criteria that have been set up for somebody to qualify for this are, you know, they have to do with, you know, is somebody suffering from things like, somebody suffering from an incurable illness? But basically if you spell them out, is somebody in a very severe amount of pain, whether physical or psychic pain, though that's kind of
There are, you know, there is red tape and all of that. But I mean, what you said to me, Nathan, as soon as I brought this, this case to your attention was something along the lines of, if you don't have the doctrine of the image of God, it's really hard to mount an argument against this.
So I think that's what I want to, that's where I want to start the discussion here because I think that's right. So let's press into that a little bit, why that might be so, you know, just do a little bit of how did we get here? You know, we're a young lady who, who, we, you know, who desperately needs help and needs care gets killed by the state. And many, many, many people see that as mercy and many people are outraged that it didn't happen sooner.
Nathan (03:39)
Yeah, well there are a whole number of assumptions here that we'll have to pick apart. One of them is being just as, it's tricky because we're have to jump back between speaking about an individual and a broader cultural moment and issue and understanding. we necessarily have to do that, but we don't want to be insensitive to the actual individual that's involved in the family and the people who are grieving this. ⁓ But it does come down to an interesting, there's a quote that she had in one of the interviews where she said, ⁓
Cameron (03:51)
issue. Yeah.
Nathan (04:09)
I'm in pain. I want the pain to go away. And I recognize that I will leave behind a lot of suffering for my parents and for my sister. But she said the, the feelings of my parents or my father and my mother and my sister can't be the most important thing to me. ⁓ it really does have to come down to me. And so there's a, there is a sense in this that there is a, this is a logical conclusion of a hyper individualism.
that there isn't really anybody that I would trust to say, hmm, you know, here's what I sense and what I feel. And there isn't anybody that I would say, actually, if they're pushing back on, I love and respect and trust them enough to say, maybe there is a different perspective here. But it's not just that, it's then when you start using the legal system to make sure that you're not needing to take the advice of the people who supposedly love you most. That's a...
Cameron (05:03)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (05:06)
a two-fold maneuver here. One is that is we kind of joked about this idea of peak individualism, but then this is peak individualism with the legal system as a tool for me to continue to express my individual choices despite the concern of the people who love me best. And so if we have a cultural and legal system that is set up to actualize our individual free choices, and that is the entirety of the context in which we're making
Difficult or in this case life-ending decisions
Cameron (05:38)
Yeah.
Nathan (05:42)
This is again, this is another one of those sad but not surprised kind of spots that I find myself in.
Cameron (05:50)
Yeah. So I think the, have for a long time pushed forward a vision of human freedom that's predicated on personal autonomy. And we tend to look at the, let's call it the sunny side of that. I get to do what I want. You know, I can, I can achieve, can, I can be, or, you know, do whatever I want. I can, I can go out there and build a life, but not just any life, the life I want. There's a shadow side of course.
comes with its own set of problems, Nathan and I would say is because we're operating with a Christian anthropology. We'll bring that here in here in a second. But here's the, now we're in the shadow lands of that autonomy. So what if you're in a position where the life that you can build is going to come with severe limitations, whether those are physical, psychic.
Nathan (06:43)
Well, okay.
Well, hang on a second though, Cameron. Here's, here's, there's, there's another part of this and, to put it crudely, we, we have for a long time lived in a very materialistic consumeristic culture in which we just discard our broken toys. And when we start thinking of humans purely in, in that category, this is sort of what I think you get. And, and this is where, like, I know some people.
Cameron (07:04)
Ahem.
Nathan (07:12)
You've met people, you've run into people, there are a phenomenal amount of people who have had testimonies of living very meaningful, powerful lives in a wheelchair. There are people who have suffered horrendous abuse, we'll call it for what it is, horrendous abuse, inexcusable evil, and have found reconciliation and redemption and meaning and purpose and value in their lives and have gone on to live ⁓ splendid lives of meaning, purpose, deeply fulfilled.
Cameron (07:22)
Yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
Nathan (07:41)
and just a gift to the world around them. there's a sense in which has this young lady experienced pain? Yes. Is the only solution to this pain the end of life? And this is where we would like, there were, there's, so, I mean, not to preach here, but there's that whole other aspect and element of this of we're not talking about somebody who had terminal cancer and was for sure going to die in the next four weeks and.
Cameron (07:58)
Mm-mm.
Nathan (08:11)
We just quote, unquote, sped things up. did this lady face difficulty? Yes. ⁓ are there lots of other people who have found through a whole number of resources, the ability to move forward in life? I guess I don't see, I see these things as tragic and evil and horrendous, and I understand the brokenness and the pain, but I do live within a mindset as a Christian that there are redemptive and restorative.
Elements that are available to us in reality now even before we die so that it feels like they're that like that conversation isn't part of this either Which is just another level of sadness
Cameron (08:52)
Yes, and let's get there in a second, but also just to drill home the slippery slope that we're on. I think there are times where a slippery slope is indeed slippery and this one's slippery.
Nathan (09:02)
Yeah, people throw that
out there as like, you know, mean, the reason people talk about slippery slopes is because they're real.
Cameron (09:10)
There are real slippery slopes. This is one. So when you push peak individualism, you have this, this is a lady who experienced a great deal of pain, but what about, mean, there will be other cases with, with people who have less tangible circumstances to which they can point sexual abuse or you name it, but are still, they just feel, they just feel terribly and drastically unhappy. And they
Nathan (09:35)
Well, were you saying mental health
is a terminal illness?
Cameron (09:39)
Right. if, but yeah, so that just, that just shows you there are very, we're coming up with less and less philosophical. can, we can build red tape and you know, you can have committees that are set up and all of that. But the truth is if we're pushing this vision forward, there are going to be less and less measures that can be taken to restrain a person. they just, this is what I want. I want this, my desire for myself. And I'm the captain of my ship. I'm the captain of my soul.
You know, I, I call the shots and this is what I want right now. I think the only way you could kind of try to stall that in purely secular terms is you could call into question the person's judgment in some sense and say, well, they're not in there. If you can establish that they're not within their, you know, a healthy frame of mind or something like that. I mean, beyond that it's, it's going to be difficult. Well, in other words, this kind of thing is going to happen more.
And there are plenty of people who simply don't want to live.
Nathan (10:45)
Yeah, all right. So this might be an actual slippery slope, but history is jam packed full of rather radical and revolutionary moments in which you have had cultures that have tried to eliminate all forms of weakness and disability from within them. And because the, the, the think is that this, this person is not valuable, no good contributes nothing. And they're a burden to society.
and others around them. like I said, we're discarding our broken toys. So we look at that and we say, that's a holocaustic genocidal. ⁓
Cameron (11:24)
Okay, hold on.
Let me just interject to reinforce your point. If that sounds barbaric, yeah, you think Holocaust, it sounds outlandish. What about the elderly and the infirm in nations like Holland or the Netherlands or in Canada, many of whom report feeling increasing pressure?
to have their lives ended because they are what? Useless, a drain on the system, a drain on medical resources. So this is here.
Nathan (11:56)
So this like 15 years ago, my grandfather started saying, he said, I can't imagine. He's like, I see no logical way in which a nation that legalizes abortion won't start knocking off its old people. He's like, because it's an inconvenience. He's like, what are the reasons for, for an abortion is going to cut down on my personal autonomy. It's an inconvenience to me and my family. ⁓ the resources that it requires to maintain this relationship. He's like, flip all of those around in another direction.
And then take the sibling who said, well, my parents were comfortable ending the life of my sibling. Why shouldn't I expedite the last 15 years of my access to their retirement resources? Or you do it brought more broadly as a society of saying, look, social security, cost or XYZ, Medicaid, Medicare cost us this. ⁓ 60 % of somebody's, you know, medical expenses happened in the last six months of their life. This back to Jacques L'Oreal, efficiency is a fact. Justice is just a slogan. These are.
Cameron (12:32)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (12:56)
I'm not saying the sky is falling here. But the thing of it is that humans have all we're not it's I've said this before it's We've already been here in so many ways culturally speaking that the position that we find ourselves on is a is a We're not starting on top of a mountain and then hoping that we don't slip down it We started in the valley and have climbed out of that to build cultures based on the vision of human dignity and we're not wanting to lose
Cameron (13:08)
Yes.
Nathan (13:25)
the that has been accomplished. think people largely think Cameron, that we've had this fluffy ⁓ sense of human value and that maybe this ⁓ is a slide into a new future way of thinking where all of your so yeah, humane way of seeing the future where your social theorists would be like, no, we spent a lot of time trying to build structures and cultures and patterns of collective identity that don't treat
Cameron (13:36)
Yeah.
more humane.
Nathan (13:53)
humans as tools that don't treat them as inconveniences, that don't see brokenness as a reason to discard, that don't see mental health as a death sentence, that don't see disability as a... I mean, we just go on and on with the list. have been so many people working so hard for so long to grant dignity to those that from a naturalistic perspective, we would say, hey, you don't produce enough widgets. What value are you that let's just recognize that that's where we're coming from.
Cameron (14:23)
And let's also recognize that that view of humanity has an ancient pedigree. I still think one of the best books on this in recent years is Dominion because, you know, Tom Holland, when he was writing that, he said, I thought Jesus was a loser. And I love these, I think he uses the phrase these, these pagan giants. I thought, I thought I was, I deeply admired these, these pagan giants, these generals and these fierce warriors. And I thought Jesus was a wimp.
But then I began to, as I studied paganism, I began to discover just how alien this was to my own sensibilities, my moral sensibilities, which were shaped profoundly by the Christian vision of compassion and human dignity. So what Nathan's saying here is when we come to a place where we want to be more humane and just, and we want to honor human dignity, that is not something that we have progressed into. That is an achievement.
We can't take that for granted because if you look, yeah, what was one of the practices that ancient, that, you know, in the early church, Christians didn't participate in. They didn't expose their infants. That was one of those they picked absolutely. And they, weren't like the, you know, the Spartans who would pitch weak babies off of a cliff, you know, and again, if we're going to just speak in, in purely sort of real clinical terms,
Nathan (15:32)
Yeah, they went around picking up babies who were left out to die.
Cameron (15:49)
These kinds of procedures make a certain amount of sick sense. If you just care only about efficiency and you care about, you know, you're a martial society, you care about military might, you care about the flourishing of the polis. Right. So this is a deeply kind of, this is part of the structure of the fallen human order of thinking for a long time.
Nathan (16:02)
Eugenics of any sort
No, I so I think I
think Cameron we're at a spot where we just have to say let's call a spade a spade and say this makes logical sense and It's a set of values that as Christians were not gonna play by Like you didn't have the early church out there camp painting for ⁓ Anti ⁓ Infanticide walls, they were just taking care of the infants, you know, it's a Like okay within the cultural assumption of values it makes sense, but we
Cameron (16:22)
It does. Yeah.
Nathan (16:43)
do actually legitimately have, I mean, you even see this in some of the early apologizes, like, yeah, we don't have sex with people we're not married to and we don't kill our babies. As just like basic starting points of different, a whole different value system that.
Cameron (16:55)
Isn't it
funny, Nathan, that if you read the ancient, if you read, you know, Justin or Cyprian or Polycarp, you read these people and the ancient works of apologetics, they're all about Christian behavior. They don't start with, well, here's the cosmological argument and here's our evidence for the resurrection. They have everything to do with justifying why Christians are different and why we, hey, we don't do that. Yeah, we don't sleep with multiple sexual partners.
We're faithful to our spouses. don't expose our infants. Yeah.
Nathan (17:29)
Right, well
Cameron, did you know Bart Aerman has a new book?
Cameron (17:33)
He does he really? Yeah, well, I that's that's what he does. All right.
Nathan (17:35)
So, but get this, this is the title. ⁓
Love thy stranger, how the teachings of Jesus transformed the moral conscience of the West. So this is slightly different territory for Bart Ehrman. ⁓ It's a little Tom Holland-esque. listened to, and actually I would recommend this to people, ⁓ Ross Douthat just interviewed him. You know, it's recording this during Holy Week, so obviously Bart Ehrman, not a big fan of, I he's been, I think, a helpful gadfly slash.
Cameron (17:49)
Yeah.
Nathan (18:05)
Thorne in the flesh of Christian scholarship for some time. ⁓ anyway, yeah, kind of sort of thing. But he's very honest in that interview that he's not a Christian because he's not not a Christian because of his scholarship, but because of the problem of suffering, which, interestingly, honesty that I think it is also linked to whether or not you think there's a physical resurrection. I think that we should tease that out sometime. But anyway, he's
Cameron (18:09)
be necessary to invent him if he didn't exist.
Mm-hmm. Good honesty there,
Nathan (18:32)
He's making the case and I'm sure there'll be pushback on this, he is kind of, mean, he's a historian and a scholar. He's saying that, so he likes the, he calls himself a Christian atheist at times ⁓ in the interview because he's like the, said the moral teachings of Jesus are revolutionary in that they, they include a, a moral, or compulsion toward the outside group. So he said that is actually unique in.
Greco-Roman, you don't find that in Greco-Roman philosophy or moral ethics that you would care for the somebody who's a different ethnicity, who's not part of your family, not part of your tribe, that it's the out network, lower, yeah.
Cameron (19:13)
or lower caste. Aristotle
and Nicomachean ethics, it's always a shock to the system for us to read, yeah, here are the virtues of the contemplative life and here's how good friendship works, but not for slaves. That's right. yeah, no, they don't qualify for the contemplative life or genuine friendship.
Nathan (19:26)
Yeah, they were born of lesser material.
But then to say that to have a moral obligation that transcends the genetic and material and economic unit that you see yourself in. don't know if I, it'd be interesting to see what the pushback he gets on that and how he develops out, but it does kind of feel like it fits in that Tom Holland kind of category of saying, no, they're, and these are both non-Christians saying, know there's something that's new here legitimately that comes in. And I think because of that impulse, Cameron,
Cameron (20:01)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (20:06)
There are still going to be people who can look at people who take their own lives by the hand of the state in the medical world. And we will ⁓ lament that and try to offer a, another way of thinking health in a healthy way about life, because we do have that impulse to say, well, you know what? That's somebody who's in a different country and doesn't even speak the same language that I do. And good for her as an individual. She's, you know, got what she wanted. Yeah.
we're probably not going to be able to fall into that groove.
Cameron (20:38)
I want to confront another largely unvoiced assumption of our culture, and then I want to talk about the image of God a little bit and how that changes this conversation fundamentally. we tend to assume these days, and actually various people have pointed it out helpfully. Jonathan Haidt would be the most famous who basically says in one of his great untruths that he talks about in The Coddling of the American Mind, it's, whatever hurts me makes me weaker.
Which is, you the opposite of, you know, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. But beyond that though, what he's, what he's bringing to light is actually more profound. We operate, and this is, I think the cause for a lot of the frankly, terrible fear and anxiety and also depression. We have cultivated an expectation that the good life is an easy life. Nobody has ever thought this in the history of the human race until recent years. So.
Nathan (21:09)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (21:36)
If you go along with that, and again, this comes about by cultural osmosis. Most people don't have this as a carefully spelled out philosophy. They just assume it. And so when life just lives, and I don't want to, see, I don't want to sound harsh. I don't want to sound like I'm being cruel here. Certain people have, let's just face it, the circumstances of certain lives are drastically worse than others. I mean, that is just true. Yeah. mean, look at people in...
Nathan (22:02)
Granted.
Cameron (22:05)
you know, the Middle East or, know, what, you know, you can, you can rattle off examples easily. Some people have terrible lives, but if you have cultivated a vision that says a good life is a life where things go well for you and you feel good and you really should feel good. And if you're not, then you are not, not only are you not having a good life, but your, your life is, is potentially something that you ought to, ought to consider ending. Even
Nathan, at the risk of being abstract, but this is thinking out loud, so you guys are nerds, you can handle this. I remember reading, you remember Marilyn McCord Adams, the philosopher who wrote, she writes very, she's got some pretty penetrating analysis on the problem of evil, but there are a number of things she says that I have a huge problem with, because they're massive assumptions. So she talks about, and so let's just go for, let's go for broke and go for some of the worst examples. She talks about something like a death camp.
She says the death camp, because she wants to, she wants to safeguard discussions of evil from gentle scenarios. And she wants to bring in the term horrors, you know, something it's so, so bad, so drastically cruel, so pernicious that she, here's her, here's her word. It is meaning shattering. It has the, it has the ability to destroy meaning completely. Now as a Western person, I have a lot of sympathy for what she's saying. That's because that's, that's the way.
Nathan (23:11)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Right. Yeah.
Cameron (23:32)
I as a modern person think, think, well, yeah, mean, if your whole life leads up to a moment where it's ended in torture or in a death camp or by a serial killer or by a gang rape or something like that, those are things that are so wicked that they can completely, they can swallow all the meaning of your life in one gulp.
But that's, and I wanna tread carefully here, it's hard for me to say this, that's a huge assumption. How would we know what is meaning destroying as human beings? We can look at earthly circumstances, but I that's assuming a kind of comprehensive God's eye view of all of this. And it's also, it's assuming that a good life must necessarily be a life of
ease and comfort and convenience. That's never been the case. am I saying that, you know, obviously I don't want that and I don't want anything like that in my own life. mean, I would be, you know, in terror over stuff like that. I mean, we all would, but if, if, if life has intrinsic meaning, that's, you know, that is meaning independent of our circumstances. And if we have value,
that's independent of our own achievements, our own capabilities, this conversation is profoundly different. So I've brought in some of the toughest stuff to try to make this as honest a conversation as possible here.
Nathan (25:09)
Yeah,
you're assuming that we believe in meaning.
Cameron (25:16)
Right.
Nathan (25:17)
I mean, I agree with you that there is meaning and purpose and I think this is where we're going in the conversation with the Imago Day. But I have talked to people who say, me one good reason that I should stay alive. And if you're coming at this with a purely materialistic, naturalistic impulse and you don't believe that there's a meaning to life,
That's a it's a it's and so it will in those conversations the the thing that I have done in the past is try to is try to ⁓ Get them to doubt And say look you don't see any meaning or value to your life right now, but I do because I have a big vision of Reality and a God who loves you. You don't believe that you don't see it. You don't believe there's meaning value your life I do I see it and so I would I would like to loan you my faith just for a little bit here
Cameron (25:41)
Yeah. There's not much to say. Yeah.
Nathan (26:11)
for you to doubt whether or not you're 100 % certain that your life is meaningless and purposeless. And then get some serious help immediately. But there have to be those of us who say, what if there's more? What if there's more? You're not seeing the whole picture here. There's more to this and another way is possible. And that I think is the work of the Christian because we do have this, let's make it tragic.
The toddler who dies when they're two years old, that life still had profound meaning. Not only in the network of the people who loved and cared and birthed and I mean the whole, but in and of itself, there was a actual value to that life that was given to it. ⁓ And like you say, we can't say what it was or what it wasn't necessarily. We can have some indications and guesses of that, but ⁓ the person who dies at two or 102,
the chronology of the years that you spent, unless you get into some really weird like, the person who was 102 probably paid more into social security than the two-year-old did. Like any attempt to, it just becomes crude and sounds gross to say out loud.
Cameron (27:28)
Mm-hmm.
Here's how, let's start talking about how the image of God, the Imago Dei reshapes this conversation. Now I mentioned this a little bit ago on the podcast, but we just have to keep saying this.
If you tie the image of God to some form of human capability, a lot of people try to ground it in rationality, for instance. I've heard people try to ground it in creativity. Well, know, our creativity is what, that's where you see us really most imitating our creator. You're making a mistake. It's not grounded in any kind of human ability or achievement. Those human capabilities can be outworkings of the image of God, but it's not where it's, that's not how it's grounded. Yeah, it's grounded in
Nathan (28:11)
Yeah, there you go. Byproduct.
Cameron (28:16)
the divine conferring of the image of God on human beings. it's God's initiative completely. So when you do that, now you have a vision for the dignity and worth of every human being, including the most marginalized, the most vulnerable, and...
you every person, people in every stage, social station, every category, they're all included there. When you, so when that grounds you, you've got, there's, there's, there is, this is an anchor that will save you from going in the direction of what Nathan called basically cold logic. And it is cold logic because if just looking at human beings,
devoid of that assumption, it's pretty inevitable. I mean, this is what people down the ages have drawn the conclusion. Some people are more equal than others. And if we want to build these pyramids, if we want to build the railroads, if we want to do this, if we want to pull this stuff off, we're going to need some, I think of even, you know,
Chernobyl, know, when there was massive, there was all this nuclear damaged equipment from a reactor that had exploded everywhere and they tried to get robots to move this stuff off the roof before they could build the enclosure. And eventually they said, well, the robots aren't working. We need biological robots. So send in human beings who are in a more disposable category. Yeah.
Nathan (30:04)
Disposable.
Cameron (30:07)
I mean, that makes sense.
Nathan (30:12)
So Cameron, can I switch this here for a second? Take everything you said. Um, and, and then let's, let's bring some conviction back into it. Cause cause we don't want to sit here on our high, high handed hobby horse and look down and as I can't believe people are doing this, let's think about this for a second. I was who, who are the people around you that if they came to you and said, Cameron, here is a, we love you. And here's a choice with your physical body that we think you should make.
How many of us would sign up for, mean, down to like haircut. ⁓ I have a grandmother who reminds me weekly that I need to trim my beard. ⁓ know, like I, there are micro versions of this that I already inhabit of don't you tell me what to do with my body. So there's a sense in which all of us swim in this atmosphere of an element of our autonomy independent of any sort of communal or
Cameron (30:56)
Yeah, sure.
Nathan (31:09)
Philosophical or theological we don't want to hear it from other people so let's all admit that we have adopted that to one degree or another and Then just hold that open-handedly before the Lord and you get that think when Jesus tells Peter there's gonna be a time in which you're gonna stretch out your arms and be led where you don't want to go ⁓ That's that's a reality of of aging and making ourselves vulnerable and being part of community
and being part of a vision where we're made in the image of God, not the image of our imagination. And that matters, makes a difference. Then there's the challenge and the conviction here of if we are going to be really serious about people being made in the image of God, then this will need to necessarily reflect itself in a whole lot of other categories of life. Not just the end of life care, not just the unborn, but everything in between there as well. And so I think there's room for those of us who want to be consistent in the application of our theology in all categories.
to again, not jump too quickly to some of the conclusions that we would just be absorbing from culture. And then the other side of this is that we have to keep in here as part of the balance is that death is not the worst thing. We also, because we believe people are made in the image of God and that there's a dignity, don't have to try to keep everybody alive by all means necessary forever. Death can bring about a peace.
It's the Lord who determines when that happens. ⁓ But there we don't have to cling white knuckle to every so I'm saying the opposite of being appalled by euthanasia is not to say that we have to insert a tube into every cell of every human in order to sustain the maximal brainstem function for as long as possible. No, a good death is a real thing. Euthanasia is a good death, literally. ⁓
but it's been co-opted into think of a premature one through a medical system. And we want to leave the door wide open for genuine good deaths. And to think about that as a viable option that is part of the way that the world has been designed and currently is. death is the enemy, it's been defeated, it's the core of the gospel. But until that time comes, this is the reality of the world that we live in.
Just three little things that I want to be continually challenged there by Cameron. ⁓ where, where is my individualism manifesting itself in a, in a non-Christ like way? Where is my, ⁓ where am I inconsistent in my application of, of the Imago day? And then where do I not have a properly balanced vision of death and what's possible? My, my dad came back from being with a family as a, as a older member was passing and he said, you know, it's interesting that you said for the Christian.
Death is such an interesting and sweet time of life. And that's a very Christian way to look at what we see happening there. And so when we put ourselves in the Lord's hands, we can do that rather than having a bunch of judges and lawyers and other people involved in protecting my personal right to not be here. There really is another way possible. And we want to ⁓ be part of reminding the world that.
Cameron (34:04)
⁓ Interesting. Yeah.
Absolutely, and I think on a concluding note, also want to say that suffering is not something that we need to endure alone. Especially this is where if you're a skeptic, this is where I'd like to introduce a little good doubt for you. If you look to Jesus, this is where we have to see the whole trajectory of his life leading up to his willing, his willing
walk toward the cross and Calvary where he died for our sins and also suffered tremendously, excruciatingly for the joy set before him. If that's true, that means you're not alone in your suffering. There's one who's gone before you. I've always been kind of one line that C.S. Lewis uses here that kind of took my breath away the first time I
Nathan (35:03)
for the joy set before him.
Cameron (35:24)
I read it was he talked about how on the cross Jesus transfigured suffering and gave it a new profound depth and dignity. And so in our suffering, we, those of us who follow Jesus and those who are interested, intrigued by him, looking to him, this is the God who does not look down dispassionately on the sidelines, but one who has entered into human suffering, knows it from the inside out. There's something just mind-boggling about that. That's deeply mysterious and it's deeply powerful. You also see the depth and the shape of the love of God there as well. This was a very sad episode as we talked about this
Nathan (36:21)
And we'll see it more.
Cameron (36:22)
This girl, we will and
Nathan (36:23)
I see no reason for this not to be.
Cameron (36:25)
yeah. But it's important to talk about it. I mean, these are some of the most relevant issues right now for us to be thinking through as Christians and for us to be, as Nathan said so well, living out and living out consistently. Because I can tell you, I will tell you, I'll go out on a limb here. think Nathan would be right here with me and this I'm just following the example of the early church.
Political campaigning and all that is going to be important. I'm grateful for those associations of lawyers. I'm grateful for those coalitions. You know what's going to be more important? Living this out consistently so people see an embodied alternative. That's going to change hearts and minds. That's always how it's worked. That's how it works with human beings. So the challenge is there. Let's do that. The world needs it.
Nathan (37:15)
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