Bible Text: Genesis 2:7 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.  Genesis 2:7 

Before you issue a DNR (as in “do not resuscitate”) and/or pull the plug on life support systems keeping someone alive, better pause to reflect on Lindsey O’Connor.  She’s the mother of five children, including a toddler who almost never really knew her mother. And what happened to Lindsey to precipitate her near demise?  When baby Caroline was born, Lindsay suffered devastating complications including acute respiratory distress syndrome, which is often fatal in itself, along with pneumonia, a toxic blood infection, blood clots, kidney failure, and low blood pressure.

Her husband was told that she had sustained brain damage from oxygen deprivation. She fell into a coma and was hooked up to a ventilator and feeding tube. Heroic measures kept her alive against all hope.

Eventually friends came to say, “Goodbye”.  Standing with her pastor, one said, “So this is it?” He nodded. Another said, “She may see the face of Jesus today.” A best friend, looking at a barely recognizable body said, “Death is ugly, isn’t it?” and having said a tearful good bye, left deeply troubled.

Her husband issued an order not to resuscitate, then rescinded it, issued another, and rescinded it as well. Then one day, thinking it was the next morning, Lindsey woke up, to hear her husband say, “You’ve been here for 47 days!” Later that day she slipped back into the coma for several more weeks but eventually came back from the jaws of death.   (See “While I was Sleeping” by Lindsey O’Connor, Christianity Today, February 2004; 45-47).

Lindsey O’Connor will likely see her children grow up, finish school, marry, and have their own children, but had her husband followed the advice of friends including some medical personnel, having given her a few weeks to come out of the coma, he would have pulled the plug.  And she would have missed it all.

Speaking of what she went through, Lindsey says, “In spite of daily physical effects of the trauma, I’ve learned that radical obedience (in my case, having a baby at 40) is worth any cost, that prayer is inconceivably important, that miracles still happen, and I have a faith worth dying for.”

The past few decades have forced us to face some issues which previous generations were not concerned with—at what point do we cease to sustain life?  At what point do we say, “This individual is doomed to have a life not worth living, so let’s pull the plug”?  Lindsey O’Connor was a 40-year-old mother of five, but what of the elderly gentleman twice her age, say one who has lost his wife, has no family or friends, and no longer wants to live? Should we say that the quality of his life has so deteriorated, that to continue to feed him is a waste of resources?

Question: Was Lindsey O’Connor a complete person during those weeks when she was comatose, unable to express herself, unable to speak, unable to love, to care, to weep, and to laugh?  OK, then are the unborn equally persons, whole and complete, who have none to speak for them, who can only move, suck their thumbs, and received nourishment from a feeding tube called an umbilical cord?

Who has the right to play God and determine that those who have received the gift of life are no longer entitled to be able to sustain the same?  The whole, somewhat uncomfortable, issue demands that we face another question: What is a person? And when does a person become human?  Or when does a human cease to be a person?

Frankly, I’d prefer not to face that issue, but life today compels us to face the question.  Our failure to do so may mean someone else answers for us—someone who is not to be trusted.

Resource reading: Psalm 139:1-10