If You Loved (July 4, 2004)

In the movie Critical Care, a comatose old man is kept alive by artificial means as his daughters argue about disconnecting him. As the story develops and involves doctors, lawyers and hospital administrators, we see that this (possibly) brain-dead old man is a pawn in a game where millions of dollars are at stake.

He cannot communicate, and the only visible sign of life is that his fingers constantly tap the bars on the side of his bed. This activity is ascribed to random neural firing. But an aide, knowing that the man had served in the navy, wonders if he might be tapping out Morse code. Indeed, when he translates the taps into dots and dashes they signal, over and over again, the words, "If you love me."

The movie never tells us whether the message is a coincidence or the man's deliberate attempt to communicate. Most likely it is neither, but rather a message from God to all those involved the case. The movie makes the point that the actual decision whether or not to disconnect matters less than what is motivating the decision. “If you love me,“ and the sentence hangs there for others to complete. Let us assume that there is no money involved, no career at stake, no selfish emotions to indulge, no policy to follow. If you loved me - and that was the only thing you had to consider - well, then, what would you do? Disconnect or leave connected? If the answer is obvious, then do that.

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes, "The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering about whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did." When you "act as if you did" you not only do the right thing, you find also (maybe) that your good work has pulled some affection along behind it. Lewis continues, "As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less."

Play this game with yourself. Pretend that you loved someone, and were motivated so purely by love that all your natural self-interest was magically snatched away. What would you do?