My Living Will, or Heaven Ain't So Bad

Some years ago I wrote a Pastor's Page advising people to make out a living will. Today I thought I'd tell you what mine is. I have written (by hand) and distributed these words:

In the event of my incapacitation, I insist that no medical measures be taken other than those designed to relieve pain or that have a strong likelihood of restoring me to full, independent, unmedicated health. Hence no breathing machines, feeding tubes, dialysis, resuscitation, or anything else that medical science may invent to delay the inevitable. I mean it. See with what large letters I write with my own hand. [The last sentence is writ larger than the rest. You may recognize it from Galatians 6:11.]

I want to persuade you of the rightness of making such a statement. My case:

(1) When I die I will be received into glory, not by any merit of my own but by the same grace that Jesus promised the dying thief: "Today you will be with me in paradise." Though it is sinful to try to hasten heavenly bliss through suicide, is it not foolish to try to postpone it through grasping at straws? Is heaven so frightful that we must avoid being sucked into it until the last possible moment? Especially when so many of those medical "lifelines" thrown to us from the shores of earth are just flotsam that enable us drown more slowly.

(2) The quicker we let go, the less we burden our children. They have jobs and families and burdens of their own. What used to be a few weeks of making grandpa comfortable have now become years and years of changing his diapers and hooking him up to tubes. I'd rather not do that to my kids if I can help it. Sure, the young have a responsibility to care for the old, and it builds character for them to do so - but don't the old also have a responsibility to make that care-giving period as short and simple and dignified as possible?

(3) The quicker we go, the less we burden the health care system. The cost of preserving (I know this is offensive, but I'll just say it) a human vegetable can run into millions of dollars, and that money is better spent on those who have a shot at productive health. The staggering costs of long-term maintenance will break Medicare someday. Our selfish clinging to earthly life makes medical costs go up for everyone, and renders insurance unaffordable. To borrow an image from global warming, I don't know if my "carbon footprint" will ever really damage the planet, but I do believe that my "medical care footprint" weighs down a system that will increasingly struggle to provide care for those who can actually benefit from it.

You may notice that I say nothing in my living will about my funeral. That is because I believe it is selfish for people to give post-death instructions about their remains. That is for the living to decide - why should we care about it if we're dead? When my soul is rejoicing before Jesus, I won't give two hoots if, for example, med school students are slicing up my dead body in order to learn how better to treat living ones. Won't bother me one bit - and if it helps them, well, glory to God.