by | Jan 25, 2024 | Uncategorized
As a Christian physician, opposing medically assisted suicide wasn’t enough. I needed to understand why people decide to die.
When I began research for my book on physician-assisted death, I set out to answer the question Why not?
The question is not theoretical. Even a decade ago, not long after I had finished my training as a doctor specializing in intensive care medicine, serious conversations were beginning about the possibility of legalizing physician-assisted death. I realized that “where causing death was once a vice, it was soon to be a virtue”—as I shared in a previous piece for CT.
Ever since my country, Canada, legalized MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) in 2016, I have tried to demonstrate to my colleagues and fellow citizens—beginning with, but going well beyond, my faith convictions as a Christian—that intentionally causing someone’s death contravenes and violates their incalculable worth. So long as we are committed to upholding the intrinsic value of persons—so long as we insist that their value does not merely derive from their usefulness to others or to themselves—it is inappropriate and unethical for us to seek or to offer physician-assisted death.
More than that, relying on our own sense-experience and human faculties, we cannot confidently claim to know what it is like to be dead. Therefore, it is unwise and imprudent to seek and (especially) to offer physician-assisted death. Both these reasons, I think, count quite strongly, and seem to provide a very good answer to the Why not? question.
Is the case then closed? Not quite, I think.
For to respond effectively to this issue, we must not only address the Why not? question. We must also respond to the Why? question. We must address the deep, underlying motivation for seeking or offering physician-assisted …
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by | Jan 25, 2024 | Uncategorized
The landmark abortion ruling is dead. We have much to do to make sure babies live.
For 50 years, the overturning of Roe v. Wade (1973) was a focal point for many abortion opponents. That goal was accomplished in 2022 when the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision returned abortion law to the states.
Chaos and confusion have followed the end of Roe as much as victory and celebration. Pro-lifers like me had been marching for life and calling for the overturn of Roe for so long. The movement was hardly prepared for what would happen next—what is now happening—in 50 different states with 50 different political contexts; legal histories; levels of medical preparedness, access, and expertise; and overall dispositions toward the needs of women and unborn children.
The reality of a post-Dobbs world is that there is no longer one big political goal. There are 50 or 500 or 5,000 smaller goals. Pro-lifers face unprecedented opportunities to promote a whole-life, pro-life ethic through a variety of policies—medical, financial, social, and educational—that will encourage those making decisions around abortion to choose life and help communities support those lives.
Creating a more pro-life America post-Roe will require work on many, many fronts, particularly since the percentage of people who find abortion morally acceptable recently increased, and abortions are actually on the rise. Changing hearts and minds is the most important work. But changing laws can help too.
States now have the opportunity to pass their own abortion-related legislation. This patchwork approach makes it imperative that legislators developing laws to protect unborn children and their mothers are well-informed. They must seek out the expertise of health …
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by | Jan 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
Following Jesus’ example, many lived simply, humbly, and selflessly to uplift the poor and marginalized, and their faith in God nurtured their hopes for liberation.
This year, India celebrates its 75th Republic Day, a holiday commemorating the nation’s constitution coming into effect in 1950. While the efforts of towering figures like reformers Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru are widely celebrated, the courageous participation of Indian Christians in the freedom struggle often goes unrecognized.
Following Jesus’ example, many lived simply, humbly, and selflessly to uplift the poor and marginalized of India, and their faith in God nurtured their hopes for Swaraj, or self-rule. From sheltering dissidents to mobilizing women, educating youth to building institutions, these Christian stalwarts contributed in diverse ways. Their work dispels the myth that the Indian independence struggle was solely a Hindu-Muslim endeavor.
Below are five Christian leaders who dedicated themselves to the cause of Indian nationalism and of overcoming British colonial rule. From Kerala in the south to the Punjab in the north, these men and women of faith were driven by a deep patriotism and a desire to see their motherland free.
1. Sushil Kumar Rudra (1861–1925)
When Kasturba “Ba” Gandhi, otherwise known as the wife of Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi, returned to India from South Africa in 1915, she and her children were welcomed by Sushil Kumar Rudra, a second-generation Bengali Christian and the first Indian principal of the prestigious St. Stephen’s College in Delhi.
Rudra had traveled to Bombay (now known as Mumbai) specifically to receive the Gandhi family, and he hosted them in Delhi while they awaited Mahatma Gandhi’s arrival from London. He had also been the man largely responsible for convincing Gandhi to return to India.
As principal, Rudra encouraged …
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by | Jan 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
Marginalized minority groups receive New Testament translations. “If Jesus delays his return, they will say: Christians preserved our culture.”
Home to the world’s fastest-growing church, with up to an estimated 1 million Christians, Iran has many underground fellowships that had previously worshiped in the Farsi language. But according to a 1991 survey of new mothers in Iran, only 46 percent reported Farsi as their mother tongue.
Minority Gilaki, Mazandarani, and other citizens can now read the New Testament in their own language, thanks to the publication of 12 new Bible translations. Far from a Persian monolith, Iran has 62 distinct languages, according to the Korpu translating agency, 9 of which number more than 1 million speakers.
And God’s concern for Iran goes beyond their individual souls.
“Translating the Bible is God’s way not simply to save people,” said Yashgin, a Korpu exegete-in-training, “but to return glory to humiliated minority peoples.”
Now living in Turkey and a Christian since 2007, Yashgin requested anonymity to protect her believing family back in Shiraz, 525 miles south of Tehran. A member of the Qashqai Turkic minority of Iran, she fled the country after two brief detentions in jail for her faith, connecting with Korpu in 2017.
Seven years later, she helped birth the first Qashqai New Testament.
Yashgin said she was mocked as a child over her accent and Turkish name. (Minority Rights Group (MRG) states that Iran represses its minority languages, mandating Farsi alone in education and civil affairs.) But studying the Bible, she learned that God called Israel as a minority people (Deut. 7:7), and translation, she said, proves the truth of John 3:16.
God loves the world, not just the majority.
“No one cares for us more than our mother,” Yashgin said. “God showed us he cares also, by speaking …
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by | Jan 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
Personal discipleship and spiritual formation are hardly irrelevant to the rough-and-tumble of public debate.
As another election year begins and Americans brace for what will undoubtedly be another contentious presidential race, Michael Wear’s new book, The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life, has an important message for us: If politics is causing you to stumble, care less about it.
It’s an intriguing message from a political consultant who now runs The Center for Christianity and Public Life, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing more robust Christian presence and resources to political life in America. After all, politics has defined Wear’s career, beginning when he somehow managed to finish his undergraduate degree while working for President Barack Obama (first as an intern on his presidential campaign, then in the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships).
You might expect, in an election year, to hear calls to whip ourselves into a greater fervor because the stakes are so high. But Wear has written a book that urges the exact opposite. If there’s ever a conflict between political victory and moral faithfulness, he argues, we ought to choose faithfulness every time.
Rejecting silence and subservience
Indeed, the central contention of The Spirit of Our Politics is that undisciplined political fervor and a desire to defeat our political enemies is poisonous for our spiritual health. We must first seek the kingdom of God before aspiring to participate in political action.
Wear is deeply concerned that the toxicity and rancor of American politics are seeping into American churches, leading to the use and abuse of Christianity as a blunt instrument in political discourse and furthering a mass epidemic of shallow faith defined less by trust in God and …
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