It is a recurring nightmare:

Months or years from now, long after we have won the battle to keep Terri alive, her painful and agonizingly slow therapy reaches the point where she is finally able to think clearly and speak for herself. It is a great day: all who have prayed for her and followed her dramatic, near-tragic saga eagerly await her first words. And then they come:

“Why didn’t you let me die? Why have you made me endure this pain and suffering? I wanted to die! I still want to die!”

Then I wake up.

Until today, you would have searched this blog in vain to find any mention of Terri Schiavo and the nightmare that she and her parents are actually living. It’s not that I haven’t followed her real-life – and possibly real-death – story, it’s just that I didn’t have anything to add that hadn’t already been stated. Maybe that is still true: maybe others have expressed what I’m trying to convey here. But I haven’t seen it.

What follows is not an indictment or accusation of anyone who is fighting and praying for Terri. By comparison, I have done little for her. And, as far as I know, no one has lost perspective in the battle. What I am saying is meant only as a reminder, not as a rebuke; a caution, not a correction.

I hope Terri has the chance someday to speak for herself. The idea that her bottom-feeding husband has the right to murder her is comprehensible only in a godless society such as ours. What was the sin of Sodom? Oh, yes: “she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy” (Ezek 16.49). Our job is to care for those who are unable to care for themselves and to protect them from the predators of the world, not kill them off because they’re inconvenient, in the way, or “non-productive” members of society.

But then there’s my nightmare ending. If that were to happen, then Terri would suddenly go from being a cause in the eyes of Christians to being an enemy and someone to be resisted. From darling to damned in a matter of minutes.

I have no reason to expect anything like this to happen. Even her alleged comments to her husband don’t mean anything. Life looks very different when you’re clinging to it rather than experiencing it vicariously on television. In all likelihood, if Terri is allowed to live (what a strange predicament!), she will be thrilled and thankful.

But the Christian community must see past Terri and remain focused on the bigger issue, which is that life is valuable and not to be dismissed casually. Right now that principle has a face – a lovely, endearing face – but the principle has been around long before Terri and will be around after her, too. We are not fighting for a life but for life itself. Terri is important because she has life; life is not important simply because it happens to belong to her and is threatened at the present time. Terri’s life is no more – or no less – important than the lives of the thousands of children dying in the Sudan. Life is the issue.

All life is valuable and important. We must fight for Terri because her life is in immediate danger. We would do well to remember, however, that the issue is life in general, not “just” Terri’s in particular. We have to stay focused on life: Terri’s and everybody else’s life, too.


2 Cor 1:13