From the introduction to David VanDrunen’s new book, Bioethics and the Christian: A Guide to Making Difficult Decisions (Crossway, 2009):
Many Christians firmly committed to moral absolutes and troubled by attempts to blur distinctions between right and wrong have found themselves genuinely puzzled by ethical choices that medical technology has thrust in their path. However clear certain matters of abortion or assisted suicide may seem to them, they have found decisions about remedying infertility or discontinuing treatment for a dying relative to be ethically confusing. Under the surface of several high-profile and seemingly easy bioethics issues are a host of matters that appeal to cherished values in conflicting directions and therefore offer no immediately obvious moral answers.
Most Christian couples, for example, have no qualms in principle about seeking medical help when they are unable to conceive children over an extended period of time. These same couples, however, usually also have a sense—even if they struggle to articulate exactly why—that there are boundaries beyond which the quest to have a child should not go. But what precisely are the moral issues at stake, what are these boundaries, and what are the ethical consequences of transgressing them? Most Christians concur that assisting a suicide is morally evil, but they also shrink from the conclusion that they are obligated to do absolutely everything to preserve their own or others’ lives as long as possible. But where does one cross the line between allowing death to take its natural and inevitable course and becoming complicit in someone’s death due to failure to fight for life? Scripture provides no explicit instruction about making such determinations and oftentimes trusted pastors and counselors offer conflicting advice. In such situations moral action is doubly difficult: Christians need not only the courage to do what they know is right but also the insight and wisdom to figure out what is right in the first place.
The Purpose of This Book: Bioethics in the Midst of the Christian Life
The present book is written to address these problems. It explores how ordinary Christians, in the midst of the lives that they are called to live in Christ, may come to a better understanding of how to respond to the bioethics questions that confront them, their families, and their fellow believers in the church. This book is not a diatribe against contemporary woes such as the culture of death or the dehumanization of medicine (however much of a concern these things are). Neither is it a rousing call to social and political action on the part of Christians concerned about troubling cultural trends (however beneficial such action might be). I would be grateful if this book proves helpful for understanding contemporary bioethics culture wars and useful for those involved in public debates about bioethics, but these are not its chief concern. Instead I hope first and foremost to offer encouragement and guidance for Christians who seek, in the face of the morally confusing options presented by modern medical technology, to grow in the knowledge of Christian truth and in their practice of the Christian life in ways that prepare them to make personal bioethics decisions with godliness and wisdom.In light of this I hope to address several overlapping audiences. This book is for all sorts of thoughtful, ordinary Christians who seek to be faithful as they confront issues of life and death in their individual and family lives. It is also intended to help pastors, elders, and counselors who will be increasingly solicited for help in making bioethics decisions. I have also written to facilitate moral reflection among physicians, nurses, and other Christians who work in the health-care system, for whom some of these issues are professional as well as personal. Finally, I hope that this book will be useful to students who are being introduced to this discipline of bioethics.
You can read online for free the Table of Contents, the Introduction, and Chapter 7 (“Approaching Death: Dying as a Way of Life”).
