Gilbert Meilaender, the well-known and well-regarded ethicist from Valparaiso, has written a measured and provocative piece (yes, it is both) for the latest issue of The Weekly Standard. The article is entitled “Stem Cells and Torture: What a society can and cannot afford to do when its survival is at stake.” Particularly soul-stirring for me is the way in which Meilaender frames the whole discussion around a Christian ethic which teaches that how we live, not how long we live, is what really matters.
For example, he says about the recent debates over embyronic stem cell research:
However great the promise of such research for relief of suffering and prevention of death, the fact that we continue to suffer and die is not an emergency. It we take to describing that sad fact of life as a crisis or emergency, there will be no end to what we might contemplate doing in the cause of medical progress.
Surely this is profoundly Christian and profoundly right. The fact of suffering and death is lamentable, but not an emergency, certainly not a crisis that must be attacked by any means. The world is a sad place, almost unremittingly for some, at times for everyone. We ought to relieve suffering where we can, but death will come to us all, no matter our wealth or technological sophistication. Suffering is not to be avoided at all costs.
Meilaender goes on to reference yet another brilliant quote from C.S. Lewis.
On October 22, 1939, at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford, C.S. Lewis preached at evensong. To anxious undergraduates, many of whom would soon face death, and all of whom must have wondered what they were doing studying mathematics or metaphysics at a time when their nation was in moral peril, Lewis said: “If we had foolish unchristian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we though we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon” (emphasis mine).
I don’t know about you, but Lewis’ realism rings truer for me, and actually sounds more comforting, than all our busy efforts to change the world, like, right now.
And then there’s this last paragraph from Meilaender that merits careful meditation.
Life, and our shared way of life, are always fragile and insecure. That is not a crisis; it is human history. And during our share of that history it will always be true that how, rather than how long, we live should be our central concern.
Not how long, but how. Reminds me of carrying crosses, seeds dying in the ground, and the wisdom of a man who knows this world is not his home.