Editor:
The contentious MAID issue is about the definition of palliative care; care which is based on the notion of compassion. Compassion is defined as: “sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it.”
Compassion allows us to understand that people of differing beliefs can also have faith and deserve care and mercy. Jesus didn't look for piety or scripture for justification; he had compassion and thus he led with compassion.
There are reasons we currently seem to be a 'culture without faith'. One major reason is that there is an inability of elements in our culture to accept people with beliefs different from their own.
Does this mean that those elements lack compassion or have an inability to reason? Certainly, it appears as though their compassion is selective so we would have to look at the issue of reason. If religious beliefs allow us to be lacking in compassion is it negating our ability to reason or be open-minded?
But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.
A recent email from the current Hospice Board intimates that MAID is the “hastening” of death. MAID is not the ‘hastening of death’. MAID is the compassionate care of an individual/choice irrespective of religious beliefs.
The claim that the World Health Organization (WHO) does not support MAID is strictly not true. The WHO is neither PRO nor CON MAID, but it is clear in how it defines health: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.” Let’s emphasize “social well-being”.
If it hopes to be “a Christian community that furthers biblical principles” the Hospice Board needs to start by being more “impartial and sincere, peaceable, gentle and open to reason”.
Peter van der Velden
