A Solution to Illegal Immigration

With respect to illegal aliens, [the problem] is indeed multifaceted. I believe that the problem would be very much smaller if we had taken care of business in some seemingly unrelated areas of civil rule:

1) Progressively get rid of all government welfare.

2) Progressively get rid of the minimum wage. Some people will not be worth [minimum wage] but might be worth $5.75. A minimum wage pushes these less-valuable workers into unemployment and government dependency, which is what the government wants.

3) Guard the border.

4) Require some penalty for second offenders who sneak in.

5) Stop foisting the enforcement of illegal immigration onto employers. This is the government's job.

6) Stop all government welfare, health care, maternity care, education or other benefits for illegal immigrants.

7) Redefine U.S. citizenship to exclude babies born of illegal immigrants.

8) Require English language in all civil proceedings.

9) Deny voting rights until the second or third generation of citizenship. That is, newly naturalized citizens would no longer have all the rights of citizenship, but their children or grandchildren could. Absorbing a culture takes time. We once were a largely Anglo-German-Christian culture. Thanks to massive changes in immigration law under John Kennedy, we are becoming a polyglot with inadequate cultural glue to hold us together. We are not going to make millions of illegal immigrants into productive, time-valuing, self-governing citizens. They are going to make us into a syncretistic, graft-ridden culture.

Not Too Late

Arriving at the meeting late, I was immediately attentive as the new resident was describing his feelings about a dying patient he had been caring for. Though not in a great deal of pain, the patient was tormented with a hole in his trachea--placed there to ease his labored breathing, it also rendered him unable to speak.

With blood samples drawn several times daily, a catheter in his bladder, a catheter in his arm vein, unable to eat, and isolated from knowledge of day or night in his intensive care cubicle, Mr. Beck had been undergoing exquisite torture for more than a month. Relatives called at rare intervals.

Now it was plain, the new resident said, that Mr. Beck would not recover but would die of his unusual lung disease in days or weeks. It had become harder for the young doctor to enter Mr. Beck's cubicle. So little could be done. Conversation was so one-sided, so frustrating for both as he tried to decipher words formed by Mr. Beck's trembling lips.

Further "therapy" usually meant adding to his already considerable discomfort. A suction tube could be put into his tracheostomy more often in a vain attempt to keep up with the pneumonia that was dealing the final blows to his lungs. Again, more torment for Mr. Beck from the spasms this induced.

Because of our practice of sharing night and weekend call, all of the other residents present at the meeting had come to know Mr. Beck. We all knew his torment and his prognosis. We also knew how the new resident was feeling.

There were no helpful suggestions for the patient's or the resident's plight. There were no measures being carried out in Mr. Beck's care that are considered "extraordinary medical care," no dramatic respirator with its controversial plug. Yet it is also true that the ordinary care being provided to Mr. Beck is extraordinary when compared with what was available a few years ago.

He was alive this far only because of the ability to monitor and correct subtle imbalances in his blood acidity and levels of various dissolved salts and gases. This "ordinary" care was also extraordinary in its ability to prolong his dying. At the moment, no one present was particularly proud of this medical prowess.

The meeting was a teaching conference on the topic of death and dying. As the guest speaker, a Christian minister, began to address himself to Mr. Beck's suffering, I began to be turned off by what he was saying. It was, disappointingly, the usual: Don't avoid the patient. Allow him to express his feelings, to vent his anger. Death is a part of life. The steps of dying as described by Kubler-Ross. How trite!

I began to yearn for him to address himself to the crucial issue--death as the gateway into the hereafter. Please, you are a Christian minister. Your expertise is not psychology.

Mr. Beck is dying. The issue is what is to become of him after he dies and this is what you can effectively speak to. This is, after all, your calling. You could add a dimension to this conference that is almost uniformly neglected in such conference. Saved and unsaved residents here could benefit by a consideration of Christ's offer of eternal life in Him.

Very shortly after my thoughts took this trend, I was convicted in my heart of hypocrisy. I, least of all, had the right to criticize anyone on this point, for Mr. Beck had been my patient before his care was assumed by the new resident when I rotated to the hospital's obstetrical service. I had known him when he cold talk. And talk he did. He had been an obstreperous patient, difficult to deal with.

Mr. Beck had known he was dying before I had. It wasn't plain to me until the last day he had been my patient, just before the new resident assumed his care. By that time he had withered in body and spirit.

I had continued to visit him daily after it was no longer my responsibility to care for him, but my visits had become more and more sporadic as I felt the same helplessness that the new resident had expressed. I could get out of seeing Mr. Beck in the situation I had had a hand in creating. The new resident could not.

Throughout all the weeks I had seen Mr. Beck, I had not witnessed to him about Christ, although I strongly suspected he was not a Christian. I knew that the long-term outlook for Mr. Beck was grim, but death was not pressing at the moment, so I let it slide. I had talked to patients before about Christ's answer to their problems, especially to alcoholics, but never yet to someone with a terminal illness. I had yielded to subtle pressures.

One pressure was the precept of "not taking advantage of my position and the patient's physical and mental weakness to push my religion." People are especially vulnerable when they are ill. Physicians are in a unique position to take advantage of this weakness in many ways, if they choose.

I had disagreed with this precept mentally, but not often enough in action. When questions of our eternal existence and judgment for our life's actions are forced into our awareness by the threat of death, we are indeed weak. But man's weakness is no reason to withhold the Gospel. It is rather the reason to present it. There may not be another opportunity.

Another precept was "Never take away hope!" My supervising physician had once told me this in regard to terminal patients. A frank discussion of the hereafter with Mr. Beck would have strongly implied to him that I thought there was no hope for him medically.

I would not have been taking away hope had I presented the Gospel to Mr. Beck. I would have been replacing a vain hope in this life and its strengths and pleasures (obviously a slight hope in this case) with the hope of eternal life. That is hardly taking away hope.

Perhaps the strongest and most dependable pressure I had yielded to was "What will the others think?" The others were the nurses, orderlies, nurses' aides, technicians and doctors. There is little privacy in intensive care units. To present the Gospel to Mr. Beck would have to be public profession of a type I haven't often practiced.

To make it worse, Mr. Beck was slightly hard of hearing. I would have had to raise my voice. So I let it slide. And I had been critical in my heart of a Christian minister because in my opinion he wasn't living up to the name Christian. Then I realized that I, too, bear that name, and my responsibility was greater because my opportunity had been greater.

The minister was at the moment offering his services to the new resident to visit Mr. Beck. If that resident wanted him to, he would be glad to do so. I could sense that the new resident would assent to this.

Fearing that the minister might play psychologist and ease Mr. Beck out of this life with a listening ear and sympathetic touch rather than telling him the good news of Christ's atonement, I offered my services instead. I don't know that the minister would have played the role of death therapist rather than doorman to the way of life; however, the possibility that he might subject to the same pressures I had yielded to seemed real.

The reason for my being the one to "spend time with" Mr. Beck was the thin one that I had known him longer and had known him when he could converse well; therefore, I should have better rapport with him.

Within the hour, I was at Mr. Beck's bedside. If Abraham could arise up early in the morning to fulfill his unpleasant task of sacrificing Isaac, surely I could afford to put it off no longer. That I regarded sharing the Gospel of Christ with a dying man as such a chore rather than a privilege shows how much of a hold the gods of this world had on me yet. Relief! Mr. Beck was asleep, a rare privilege for him.

Two hours later I again entered the intensive care unit, this time after some prayer. As I came in the door a nurse told me, "Mr. Beck has been asking to see a doctor, any doctor."

To his cubicle I went, being careful to close the double glass doors behind me. Some privacy at least, though I was keenly aware of the partition behind his bed. It did not reach to the ceiling and the passageway on the other side frequently had visitors or hospital staff members standing around, easily within earshot of my voice.

"Hello, Mr. Beck." He immediately began to struggle to mouth words. He was too shaky to write. It was very clear what he was mouthing, but to be certain, I let him say it twice before I said it aloud to let him know I understood. He said, "Let me go."

"Mr. Beck, we're trying to. But it's hard for us."

Weakly, he nodded assent, then weakly shook a couple of the tubes leading from his body, in frustration at being held prisoner in life by them. I ask him if he knows what will happen to him once he dies. He indicated, "No." I asked him if he believed in God. Yes. Was he a Christian? No. Would he like to hear? Yes.

As simply as I could, I told him: Our sinfulness. God's righteousness. Christ, the way of salvation, by whom we become righteous because He paid the penalty we richly deserve. If we accept Him as God's Son, as the one who has paid our penalty, then we are received into God's presence at death. No one earns it. It is a gift.

As ineloquent as I have ever been, but all the elements were there. Would he like to pray with me? Yes. Aloud I prayed, laying out before God Mr. Beck's situation and suffering and our helplessness to help him. Briefly, it crossed my mind that some nurse or visitor might be looking or listening. The answer was swift: I must serve God, not man. If someone was listening, fine. Perhaps they needed to.

I asked Mr. Beck if he would like to receive Christ into his heart as his Savior. Yes. He closed his eyes in prayer. When he opened them a minute later, he was weeping. At least I think so, for so was I. Later, I left him and asked the nurses to please give him a half hour's respite from their routine of care. They understandingly assented. Obviously, Mr. Beck had been a trial to them as well as to us.

I visited Mr. Beck several times before his death eight days later. His suffering continued unabated. Satan extracts his pound of flesh. Mr. Beck certainly had been a help to me, and I tried to explain to him why and thank him. Will we meet again in heaven? Was it genuine? I hope so.


This article was originally published in The Presbyterian Journal in February 1976. The "Mr. Beck" of this story is not the patient's real name.

Christian Patriotism

I am very concerned by the very narrow notions of patriotism displayed by most Christians. Patriotism has become confused with the government and its military. Our primary citizenship is not to our nation but to the kingdom of God, though there is no NECESSARY contradiction between the two.

excerpt from a private letter

Euthanasia and Economics: A Doctor's Formative Experience

She weighed, I supposed, about 65 pounds. All of her limbs were withered and fixed into what is commonly called a fetal position. She was only in her early sixties. As a hospital resident doctor I had been called down to the emergency department to see her. She had been referred in from a nearby nursing home where she had been a long-time resident. It seems that the catheter that drained her bladder had become caught somehow during the process of routine removal for changing. It was my duty to discover a way to remove it.

She was a victim of a rare, incurable disease that causes the brain gradually to deteriorate over a period of years, usually beginning in middle age and always fatal. The judgment and intellect diminish along with the personality and control over the body. She lost control of bladder and bowel. She had not uttered a word in several years. Nor moved much. Nor seemed to understand. Nor swallowed food. She had been fed by a plastic nasogastric tube. Even now it protruded from her nose with the capped end taped to her skin.

I will never forget her. It was one of those experiences that I regard as formative in my personal medical ethic. The Word of God should determine what is right and wrong. Yet experience serves to bring the issues to my attention and allows a focus on the Scripture. The Bible instructs my experience. I am in the world. The Bible helps me be not of the world.

I discussed her plight with a urologist. He recommended a procedure from freeing the stuck catheter. It was the least painful we could think of. But it was not without pain. As I carried out the procedure, I discovered that she could still understand pain. She could grimace. At least, that is how I interpreted the contorted expression on her hollow face behind the tube and tape.

Her life had intrinsic value because she was human. She was formed in the image of God. I knew that the image of God did not refer to her physical appearance, whether or not it was marred by the consequences of Adam's sin. Yet was she still alive because we valued her or because we value our pretended omnipotence in the world? The technology that had preserved her physical existence is all commonplace nursing skill today. Special air mattresses do not qualify as extraordinary care. Nor does the practice of turning and positioning her frequently to prevent bedsores. Nor do catheters, nor plastic nasogastric tubes.

Yet plastic itself is so new my father recalls it as a novelty in college chemistry. Balanced liquid nutritional formulas were new when I was a baby. I remember easily the development of several types of air mattresses. Because we can, we muss. Because it is not extraordinary, we do it. Because someone else can be made to pay for it, we aren't even forced to think about is Scripturally. Even then her care was costing $18,000 a year. Had she lived another generation, she would have died when she was no longer able to swallow. Would she have wanted it this way? I never knew. There were no living wills then. I wish there weren't now. No family member evidenced interest or awareness. Opposition was rising at that time to the horror of abortion and its close relative euthanasia. At last evangelical Christians were becoming vocal against these evils. With interest heightened by this index experience and bolstered by numerous like ones since then, I have read our journals, newsletters, and publications. There is a persistent blind side in the anti-euthanasia effort. On this blind side are two errors.

One error is a failure to consider money. We are acting as if we are omnipotent when we pretend that we have the resources to provide what has come to be considered ordinary care. Those who would actively kill a sufferer are sinfully "playing God." Also "playing God" are those who believe that even sacrificial giving will satisfy the technological idols we serve, hoping to receive from them a prolonged material existence. The other error is that we overlook simple kindness of the Golden Rule variety. Would I have wanted to be treated as this patient was, even if no one had to be extorted to pay for it? No. Despite the simplicity of a nasogastric tube, I see it as no kindness as all, as prolonging death. As a human being with intrinsic value, the image-bearer of God, she had a right to expect of us bread. We gave her instead a stone.


Originally published in The Presbyterian Journal, February 12, 1986

The Pottage of Psychology

The Church is exchanging its birthright of scriptural admonition and help and discipline for the pottage of psychology. We needn't imagine that Jacob's pottage was tasteless and not nourishing.... Unless psychology is SQUARELY based on scripture (or science, which is in turn based on scripture), the price includes accepting human wisdom where God's is available and different. The price includes waffling on the issue of sin. The price includes not allowing the body of Christ to grow and mature as it exercises its gifts in obedience to God's direction, relegating all the "hard" problems to "trained professionals."


Excerpt from a private letter

Death with Dignity

Discernment is needed by conservative Christians concerned about the value of human life lest we become like the experts in the law described in Luke 11:46.

Medical efforts are not neatly divisible into heroic vs. non-heroic. Hope is a statistical probability in medicine which is almost never a zero. Hope to a Christian is never a probability and always 100 percent.

The use of complex machines or dangerous surgery highlight the issue but simpler measures are often where we need discernment. On occasions I have seen a $3.00 plastic IV tube transformed into cruel punishment of the dying.

It is true that there is no such thing as a life not worthy to be lived. It is equally true that there are treatments not worthy to be inflicted.


Excerpt from a letter to The Presbyterian Journal, August 18, 1982

The Most Potential

Abortion by definition takes life at its youngest and removes the most years of potential life, about thirty times more than all the other causes of pediatric deaths under one year of age. Pastors, physicians, or pro-life counselors who try to impart reverence for life, even if they succeed only 3% of the time, will save as many years of potential life as would the total eradication of all deaths during the first year of life!


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers