The Burr in the Burgh

According to this article from the Seattle Times, the UCC (sometimes thought to stand for "Unitarians Considering Christ") is now, at 1.3 million members, the largest American denomination to officially support gay marriage. But they might not bear that distinction for long. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), 4 or 5 times the size of the UCC, is set to take a similar vote this summer as well.

The Rev. John Thomas, President of the UCC, thought that it was appropriate the controversial vote took place on July 4th saying that they had "acted courageously to declare freedom." The UCC may consider their "Declaration of Independence" from the immutable law of the Creator to be an act of courage, but it seems foolhardy to me. What kind of church boasts of trashing Scripture as well as disregarding natural law? The reports suggest that some of the more biblically conservative members of the UCC may be taking a hike.

When the British surrendered to the Revolutionary Army in Yorktown, their band played The World Upside Down as they filed past the Americans. Sometimes I think I'm hearing those chords myself.

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According to Rick Warren in his The Purpose Driven Life, many of you do not need any more Bible study. That's what he says on p. 231:

The last thing many believers need today is to go to another Bible study. They already know far more than they are putting into practice. What they need are serving experiences in which they can exercise their spiritual muscles.

I couldn't disagree more. The problem many churches face is not an overload of Biblical knowledge, but a deficit of it.

A person could try to explain comments like this one away by saying, "Well, that's not what he meant. He meant that, essentially, faith without deeds is dead." Even if that were the best construction, it is still at best, a sloppy, misleading statement. All of us are prone to making unpolished statements that we later want to clarify. I understand that. Sometimes conservative Christians are guilty of relentless nit-picking, but the quote above is just one of a thousand examples of Warren putting his foot in his mouth, and one of the more benign examples at that.

Here's one that troubled me even more:

If you want to know how much you matter to God, look at Christ wit his arms outstretched on the cross, saying, 'I love you this much! I'd rather die that live without you.'
God is not a cruel slave driver or a bully who uses brute force to coerce us into submission. He doesn't try to break our will, but woos us to himself so that we might offer ourselves freely to him. - p. 79

There are several different ways that theologians have described the work of Christ upon the cross. These are called the theories of the atonement.

One is the Christus Victor theory. This is the notion that by dying and rising, Christ's main feat was to vanquish the devil. It was a cosmic battle and Christ is the victor.

Another theory is the idea of Forensic Justification. This is the view that the cross is chiefly about God the Father acquitting sinners because Jesus, His Son, took their penalty upon Himself.

And a third theory has been called the Moral Influence theory. This is the belief that the cross is mainly God's way of showing us just how deeply He loves us in the hopes that this display of affection will melt our hearts so that we freely embrace Him.

There is, of course, truth to be found in all of these theories. But of the three listed above, the Moral Influence theory is by far the weakest and least biblically attested. And yet, that is the approach Warren uses in the above citation. God does demonstrate His love by means of the cross, but Jesus' death is not a Hallmark card (caring enough to send the very best). It is a blood sacrifice to appease God's wrath for our sin.

The Purpose Driven Life makes some good observations here and there. But it is not a Christ-centered book. The clear gospel message is barely visible, buried and obscured with the anecdotes, principles for living, and rampant scripture quotations twisted from their context.


P.S.
St. James wrote: Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly (3:1)." Being a pastor of a Christian congregation and writing a book (or blog) puts one in the public eye. Some have said, "Leave the man alone. He meant well. And beside, his book has helped a lot of people." God can use very weak earthen vessels to accomplish His purposes, but that does not excuse a pastor from mis-using and mis-applying Scripture. It would be wrong and pastorally irresponsible not to point errors out.

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HIV-AIDS is a terrible disease. And it is spreading in Africa at an alarming rate. I hope that research will advance to find better treatments and a cure.

That having been said, the President of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Sudan spoke at my church last winter and he alerted us to an equally horrific disease that is much less well publicized. Malaria. He told us that in his country, the UN is reticent to provide assistance for battling malaria because most/all of their attention is on HIV-AIDS. He also informed us that hundreds of children die from malaria in his town every year, but not one has died of AIDS. Clearly, there is a need for helping people with both afflictions.

That is why I was delighted to read this story. President Bush is pledging $1.2 billion for fighting malaria in Africa. Over a million people die every year in Africa from malaria, most of them children.

I feel sympathy for anyone dying from AIDS and believe they should be shown compassion and helped. But frankly, there is a very easy way to prevent the spread of AIDS. It's called chastity. But there is NOTHING you can do in Africa to keep from getting bit by mosquitoes.

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I highly recommend the annual Christian Worldview lectures held at the Schwan Center in Trego, WI every summer. It was a bit inconvenient to get to for me. I drove from Pittsburgh to Cleveland (to get a better flight) and flew into the Twin Cities. Then I rented a car and drove another 2 1/2 hours, in the pitch dark forests of nothern Wisconsin. But it was worth it.

The Schwan Center is a comfortable lodge surrounded by beautiful lakes and woods. I even saw a black bear. The food was exceptional. The speakers were scholarly and their presentations were very informative and beneficial.

If you have questions, put them in the comment box. Here is a brief summary of the lineup I enjoyed:

• Monday - The Confessional and Biblical Worldview (6 hours) by Dr. David Jay Webber of the Lutheran seminary in the Ukraine


• Tuesday - The Church and Science through the Ages: Seven Key Questions from the History of Science (2 hours) by Dr. Ryan MacPherson

Tuesday - The Purpose of Science: Sacred Cow or Sacred Calling? (2 hours) by Dr. Angus Menuge

Tuesday - Teaching Objective Morality to a Postmodern Audience (2 hours) by Dr. MacPherson


• Wednesday - The Crisis of the Constitution: From Biblical Absolutes to Evolutionary Humanism (2 hours) by Dr. John Eidsmoe


• Thursday - The New Polytheism (3 hours) by Dr. Gene Edward Veith

Thursday - Dealing with Constructivism and Pantheism in School Textbooks (3 hours) by Dr. Allen Quist


• Friday - Islam's Unrecognized Threat to Christianity and the West (2 hours) by Dr. Alvin Schmidt

Friday - Religions in America - Where Are We Going? (2 hours) by Dr. Mark Braun

Friday - How Christianity Changed the World (2 hours) by Dr. Alvin Schmidt

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Today, at the worldview conference I am attending this week, Dr. Gene Edward Veith spoke to us about a new book called Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by Christian Smith and Denton Melinda Lundquist.

It seems that the authors have concluded that the majority of American teens, including those who are active members of conservative churches, basically live by a creed which the authors are calling Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

The basic tenets of this creed are:

• God created the world.
• God wants us to be good.
• God wants us to be nice.
• The central goal of life is to be happy.
• God does not generally interfere in a person's life - except when one has a problem (this is what I call the Divine AAA Membership).
• And finally, good people go to heaven.

I'm sure that Smith and Lundquist are correct in their assesment of American teenagers. But, with Dr. Veith, I would not limit it to them. I'd say that is how a large percentage of adults think as well.

Except for the first two tenets listed above, none of them are Christian statements. Would it surprise you if I said that the main message of Christianity is not "be nice to people?" It certainly appears that most of the people who actually met Jesus didn't consider Him a nice person. Let's be honest, most of the people who met Jesus found Him offensive. His own disciples were frequently embarrassed by His shocking and unpredictable actions and utterances. If being nice means comporting yourself in such a manner that most people like you, Jesus was not, by that standard, a nice man. And neither are His disciples. Christ warned His hearers to count the cost of following Him for they will be despised by the world even as it despised Him.

The main message of Christianity, you see, is that we are all objects of God's wrath on account of our sin and that God's Son, Jesus, has atoned for our sins so that we may be eternally pardoned. And when this message is communicated, especially the first part, people do not usually thank you for it.

In Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, God's chief interest is to make you happy. The reality is that our greatest happiness is found on the far side of great sorrow. God has to make us unhappy (by revealing the gravity of our sinful condition) before making us truly happy (by absolving us for the sake of Christ). In other words, God has to kill us before He makes us alive.

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Well friends, I write to you from the woods of Northern Wisconsin as I am attending a week-long conference here. Today I heard a stimulating lecture on the Intelligent Design movement (ID) by Dr. Angus Menuge, professor of philosophy at Concordia University, WI. If you've ever heard Dr. Menuge then you know that he is not only very knowledgeable and articulate on this subject but has a lively sense of humor as well.

Dr. Menuge was one of over 15 expert witnesses who talked at the recent hearings in Kansas over the teaching in the public schools of alternative scientific theories about the origin of life. His testimony can be found here.

The Intelligent Design movement is one aspect of the current scientific controversy over Neo-Darwinism. ID, in short, is the scientific recognition of evidence of design in all living organisms. The Neo-Darwinist ideologues refuse to admit that a controversy even exists in spite of a growing body of scholarly literature.

Not long ago, the famous British scientist, Anthony Flew, converted from atheism to theism because, as he himself stated, he determined to follow the evidence wherever it lead him. I applaud his intellectual honesty.

The ID proponents are not asking for the advocacy of any particular religious beliefs in the classroom, only that both sides of this legitimate scientific controversy be presented without bias.

According to Dr. Menuge, one of the individuals at the hearing disapproved of teaching the controversy for fear that it might "confuse" the children. As Dr. Menuge commented, that would be like deciding not to explain the two party political system of American government because it's just too doggone confusing.

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Scientists from Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh announced in a press release last Thursday that adult or post-natal stem cells have the same ability to multiply as embryonic stem cells. This is highly significant because of the moral problems associated with using stem cells from human embryos. Basically, this means that there are no advantages to using embryonic cells over adult cells, as was previously believed, and one would hope that research using the stem cells from human embryos would therefore cease.

One other huge advantage to using adult stem cells is that they can be taken from the patient himself which would eliminate the risk of rejection. Embryonic stem cells are foreign organisms which the patient's immune system would attack.

People in the pro-life movement have opposed embryonic stem cell research on the grounds that is is wrong to kill human beings for the purpose of conducting experiments on them, even if those experiments would ultimately benefit some people.

The conclusion is that in addition to being immoral (which is reason enough to stop), researching therapies using embryonic stem cells offers no unique benefits and may actually be the less effective strategy.

But don't take my word for it. Read this from some of the world's top researchers in the field.

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I knew it!! Tom Cruise is the Sith Lord!! Check this out.

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No. It's not. Not if by natural one means that death is the design of the Creator or that it's what is "supposed" to happen to us and thus OK. Every mourner knows that death is not OK. When God created Adam and Eve in the Garden, it was not His purpose for them to die. Death is a result of our sinfulness (sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned - Romans 5). And that's why we hate it. Because it is un-natural. And I'd suggest that God hates death even more than we do.

Russell Moore over at Mere Comments made me think of this with his post today entitled "Death is Not a Happy Ending." He alerts us to some insightful writing in the latest issue of Presbyterians Pro-Life. He quotes Terry Schlossberg's article about the death of Terri Schiavo. Schlossberg states that the Christian faith

"does not welcome death as a friend or as an escape from the burdens of this life. Scripture speaks of death as the 'last enemy,' that which is overcome by the Savior."

That is certainly true. And though I'm unaware of his personal beliefs, I have always found something appealing in the words of Dylan Thomas as he begged his dying father to fight death rather than accept it: "Do not go gentle into that good night.... Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

The Culture of Death is trying to redefine death, to domesticate it. The Culture of Death believes that death is nature's way of making room for life. The Culture of Death believes that a person's value is determined by his productivity so that when a person becomes a burden or a drain, then he should die. It's a "survival of the fittest" thing.

Of course, one must accept the reality that death is inevitable for all of us (except those alive at the parousia). And there are times when a dying person must be allowed to die - though not because it is his/her "right" but because it has become the lesser evil.

At the same as I say all of that, I confess that by His own dying and rising, our Lord Jesus has transformed death so that for those who are baptized into Christ, death has lost its sting. We are set free from the fear of death and, as the Apostle writes, we do not grieve as the world does.

Even Christians may occasionally contribute to this domestication of death when we emphasize that so-and-so has gone to a better place. That's true. And it is comforting. Jesus told the penitent thief, "Today you shall be with me in Paradise." And St. Paul does write that to be absent from the body is to be with the Lord. But we too often fail to recall the promised resurrection on the Last Day, though we confess it in the creed. Russell Moore is right to point out that "The final hope is to share in Christ's resurrection, and so to overturn the curse of sin and the reign of death."

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I'm so looking forward to this movie. Anyone have an inside line on whether the film is loyal to the book?

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Yesterday, I crossed the 10 thousand point in blog visits. More than 10 thousand in almost exactly three months. According to my stat counter, I currently get an average of around 100 unique visitors each day. That has been slowly on the increase. The only other pattern I have noticed is that my traffic usually drop significantly on Saturdays and Sundays. Thanks for reading and keep coming back!

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For the past two weeks, I have been teaching a Bible class on the Ten Commandments at my congregation. And naturally, one of the first things I wanted to do was address the fact that different groups enumerate the commandments differently. Did you know that Roman Catholics and Lutherans number them one way, the Protestants another, and the Jews yet another? So when people debate whether the Decalogue should be inscribed on civic monuments or displayed in government buildings, they will have to make a decision as to which enumeration to follow. One argument could reasonably be made, I suppose, that by choosing one listing over the others, an endorsement is being made of a specific church or religion.

In my digging, I uncovered an old Washington Post article about this topic. You should give it a look because it shows the three different ways of numbering the commandments. Does this mean there is some kind of discrepancy in God's Word? No. Reading the Biblical accounts in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, one finds that Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Protestants and Jews all have the same commandments. But since the scriptures themselves do not delineate how they should be numbered, there may naturally arise differing listings.

It appears to me that the main difference between the Roman Catholic/Lutheran numbering and the Protestant numbering is that the Calvinists and the more radical reformers wanted to place emphasis on the whole graven image part, presumably to condemn Rome's proclivity for statues. But since the Lutherans, while not praying to the saints, found no objection in 3-dimensional church art, they understood the graven image prohibition as simply part of having no other gods.

I'm most intrigued by the fact that in the Jewish tradition, the first commandment is not a commandment at all, but a statement of gospel: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." As a Lutheran Christian, I can appreciate that very well. The commands then become less imperative and more indicative. A Christian might understand it this way: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of slavery to sin and the grave by the death and resurrection of my Son, your Lord, Jesus Christ." In that case, the commands become descriptive of how God's children live, not just how they should live or must live. It's a statement of who we are in Christ Jesus. Or as our Lord Himself put it: "You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth."

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Here's something clever floating around the blogosphere. Book tag. Bob Waters over at Watersblogged tagged me.

The game is this:

1. Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose. I always enjoy Ambrose's Word War II books. This one in particular because he highlights the characteristics and virtues that not only make America great, but were the foundation for our victory in that great crusade. An excellent and engaging look at the everyday Americans who saved Western civilization (and France).


2. Tortured for Christ by Richard Wurmbrand. I read this one myself as a teenager. I don't recall it well enough to vouch for all its theology, but it really opened my eyes to what Jesus meant when He said, "Take up your cross and come follow me." As Bonhoeffer famously said, "When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die." Wurmbrand was a Lutheran pastor (Romanian Jewish convert) who was imprisoned and tortured first by the Nazis and then by the Communists. He later testified about his sufferings before the U.S. congress and, when some found his account hard to swallow, he stood up to remove his shirt in that august assembly to reveal his scars. Having been briefly to the Sudan myself and knowing that more Christians were martyred in the 20th century than in the previous 19 combined, I think today's youth need to read this book, or one like it. It's short too.


3. How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) by Ann Coulter. This one is to fulfill the humor requirement. Not only do I think Ann's perspective on politics and culture to be generally very clear-headed, but her acerbic wit slays me. Her bit on Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ is the number one best review essay I saw. She totally gets it. Her understanding of the atonement is refreshingly blunt. I quoted her in a sermon once. Her earlier book, Slander, is good too.


4. Table Talk by Martin Luther. This could also fit under humor, in a pinch. I'd more likely file it under wisdom literature. The Blessed Reformer offers pithy dinnertime comments on theology, marriage, politics, and beer.


5. Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel by C.F.W. Walther. It's a classic. And no one explains this better. Frankly, this book opened Scripture to me unlike anything else before or since.
   


6. Novels no human should fail to read: Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (substitutionary atonement); Lord of the Flies by William Golding (original sin); 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell (the threat of totalitarianism); The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (Jesus); The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (friendship); Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (grace); The Telltale Heart short story by Edgar Allen Poe (guilt); Merchant of Venice play by Wm. Shakespeare (mercy); The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (depression); A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (divine surprise).

The reason I hate making lists like this is because I know full well that five minutes after I post this, ten more books will come to mind. So be forewarned that there may be a sequel.

And now I get to tag someone. Your turn Preachrblog, Confessing Evangelical, and CyberBrethren.

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So, last night I watched a German movie called Run Lola Run from 1999 starring Franka Potente (who was with Matt Damon in the Bourne movies). It's a clever film about how the outcome of one's life can often depend on the minor details.

The plot is simple. Lola gets a panicked phone call from her boyfriend, Manni, who says he's going to die in 20 minutes unless he comes up with 100,000 deutsche marks. It turns out he was supposed to deliver the money to a gangster promptly at noon, but on his way to the meeting point, he'd been scared off the subway by the sight of two police officers. In his fright, he left the bag of cash on the train where it was purloined by a homeless man. Now Manni is convinced that the bad guy will suspect him of stealing the money and will certainly kill him unless Lola can help him. His other option, he figures, would be to rob a bank before 12 o'clock. The rest of the film shows Lola frantically running from one point in the city to another to come up with the cash Manni needs.

What makes this interesting is that the film tells the story three times with three very different outcomes, all depending on the smallest of details. It's very creative, edited like a rock video, and surprisingly entertaining.

Another film that covers the same motif is Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. Two stories are told with the same characters and the same setup, but one detail early on totally changes the way things unfold.

It reminds me of a science fiction short story I read a long time ago (Asimov?) about a man who invents time travel and goes back to the age of the dinosaurs. While there, he accidentally kills a single insect, but that minor incident alters all of human history. I don't buy the evolutionary premise, but the idea is intriguing.

For instance, in college I used to go on Monday nights to sing hymns and read scriptures at a local nursing home. One night, a friend of a friend was visiting from out of state. If I'd missed going just that one time, I might never have met my wife, my son would never have been born and who knows how many other things would be different?

In our Gospel reading yesterday, from Matthew 10, Jesus told His disciples that their Heavenly Father governs the life of every sparrow and has numbered the very hairs on their heads. It's comforting to know that our benevolent God has the details in control.

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Something quick for Father's Day. Check out these two posts from Pr. Paul McCain:

Post 1 Why Dad is So Important

Post 2 The Truth About Men and Church

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Not if you belong to the United Church of Christ, apparantly. The UCC (sometimes facetiously called Unitarians Considering Christ) is about to debate a resolution on this very matter.

For two millenia, whatever Christians may have disagreed on, everyone would have at least been willing to say that Jesus is Lord. Some "conservative" UCC pastors have submitted a resolution to their July denominational meeting which affirms this traditional bedrock belief and requires all clergy to accept it. This may seem like a no-brainer to you and me, but some observers say they think the measure will fail.

This boils down to whether the clergy in the UCC believe that Jesus is God or not. Apparantly many of them do not.

See here for details.

Russell Moore over at Mere Comments summed it up eloquently: Still, it is sad to know that in the United Church of Christ Arius would be considered a moderate.

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Today, Scott Edmund Stiegemeyer (the first) turned 36 years young. I know; I know. You can hardly believe that I'm that old. I get that a lot. I was most recently carded at a restaurant less than twelve months ago. So although it absolutely positively stretches the limits of credulity, I am 36 years old today. And luvin it.

Actually, as I think about it, I really think of myself as nothing more than an overgrown teenager... for better or worse. I still like rock-n-roll (my son tells me to TURN THAT MUSIC DOWN). I still enjoy many of the same types of movies, television and books that I did when I was 16. Of course, at that age, I was an avid reader of theology and history.

Here's what I did:

• My wonderful wife and son took me down to the Three Rivers Arts Festival. I love that kind of stuff and bought a silver bracelet for my wonderful wife. We're planning to go back down in a couple of days to hear Aimee Mann.
  
  
• We went to my son's baseball game. He got a double, a ground out, a walk, and a strike out. He mostly played 3rd base and had a good throw to 2nd getting out a runner. His team won. Two wondeful people from my congregation showed up to cheer for my son. It was great to see you Joy and John.


• My wonderful wife and son took me to dinner after the game to Nakama, a Japanese steakhouse where I had miso soup, salad, hibachi shrimp appetizer, rice, veggies, filet mignon, and two glasses of my favorit beer: Guiness stout.


• Got home around 10 p.m. and opened gifts. A lovely day.

One major highlight: Eating deep fried Oreo cookies and a deep fried Twinkie at the Art Festival. Ain't life grand?

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You have to admit that this is a pretty ridiculous headline: Terri Schiavo Autopsy: Manner of Death Undetermined. Again, I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure we do know the cause of her death. Maybe being denied food and water for two weeks had something to do with it.

Michelle Malkin, once more, sheds light on a cloudy subject. She writes, "Terri Schiavo, a profoundly disabled woman who was not terminally ill and who had an army of family members ready to care for her for the rest of her natural life, succumbed to forced dehydration at the hands of her spouse-in-name-only.

We know she died of dehydration. And we know that she was severely brain damaged. What the 39 page autopsy did not answer is what caused Terri Schiavo to collapse 15 years ago. We will probably never know that.

The autopsy does not tell us what degree of awareness Terri experienced. But some will ask, "wasn't she a vegetable?" Experts have reminded us that an autopsy cannot determine the existence of PVS.

Supporters of Michael Schiavo now mock those "extreme right-wingers" who wanted to keep Terri alive. I guess they forgot about the legions of lefty Democrats who also defended her life such as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Joseph Lieberman, Nat Hentoff, Lanny Davis, and Alan Dershowitz. Only extremist left-wingers think this was a right/left debate.

Some good thoughtful comments from Captain's Quarters, who wrote:

Terri had never requested to die, not with any transparency or formality. All we had for witnesses on her state of mind was a husband who waited until after he had won a substantial lawsuit to recall a conversation in which Terri made an offhand comment about not wanting to live on a respirator, and two of his relatives who corroborated him. The husband had a conflict of interest in the matter, having started a new relationship with another woman and fathering two children. On the other side, Terri's parents and siblings were willing to take over her medical care and the responsibility for its costs.

Amd most of all, as the coroner affirmed yesterday, Terri was not dying.

Despite all of this, Florida decided that it would deliberately kill Terri on the basis of her husband's wishes, without any living will or formal indication of her state of mind....

And when the state decides to kill someone who isn't dying on their own -- as opposed to stopping artificial breathing/cardiac support for those who lack any ability to survive without it -- it should have more substantial oversight before doing so, and it should have more to rely on than an estranged husband's belated recollection of a superficial, general conversation as its basis.

Why do you suppose 26 national disability rights organizations spoke in favor of preserving Terri's life? Because, if we don't check ourselves, this really can become a slippery slope.

Other good insightful commentary can be found at Polipundit and Gatewaypundit.

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Y'know what? Terri Schiavo died of ... drum roll ... DEHYDRATION. The announcement was made today that she had severe brain damage - which we already knew.

Look here to read the official autopsy report. It's in pdf.

The report does specify that Terri's brain was quite atrophied. I'm not a doctor, but I wonder how much of that may have been the result of dehydration.

In any case, I don't see how this news changes the moral status of what was done to Mrs. Schiavo. As Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life states, Terri didn't die of an atrophied brain. She died of the atrophied compassion of her husband.

We'll hear a lot, I'm betting, about the Persistent Vegetative State (PVS). Lifesitenews.com reports that, "In a March 31 article in MedPage Today, Dr. Michael De Georgia, head of the neurology/neurosurgery intensive care unit at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, warned his readers against a PVS diagnosis, saying that it "cannot be confirmed by autopsy." Dr. Mouhammed Kabbani, a neurologist at the University of Missouri, concurred, saying "an autopsy can show the degree of brain damage and how much brain tissue survived the injury", but that "it cannot by any means tell about the patient's clinical status."

Again, remember that the dear woman was not brain dead. She was not dying (anymore than any of us). She was not in pain. No machines were keeping her alive artificially. She was severely brain damaged. I'm glad we got that cleared up.

Thanks to prolifeblogs.com for reporting on this.

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In England, a man named Leslie Burke, is suing the government to ensure that they will not withhold food and water should he need it administered through a tube. Did you catch that? This man is concerned that his doctors will dehydrate him against his wishes. You see, the government's point is that it is just too doggone expensive to keep all these hopeless patients alive. Mr. Burke is currently able to feed himself, but his health condition is such that he may well need a feeding tube. And he is afraid the tax-supported National Health Service will kill him. I wonder what would have ever given him that idea. The terrifying thing is that the British government is fighting him over this. Apparantly, they would like to reserve the right to starve him to death - against his wishes - if he becomes a burden on the taxpayers.

Michael Schiavo argued for the right to murder his wife and it was granted. He wanted Terri to have the "right" to die. Well, what many Americans refuse to see is that the line between "right" to die and "duty" to die is imperceptibly fine. Today, we say we want to kill the hopeless cases for their own good. Tomorrow, we will say we want to kill the hopeless cases for OUR own good.

Read the article here. Thanks to Michelle Malkin for pointing this story out.

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