![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/84\/2013\/07\/turing-mask-christian.jpg\" "\\"turing")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis is the twelfth and final entry in the Christian round of the 2013 Ideological Turing Test<\/a>. \u00a0This year, atheists and Christians responded to questions about sex, death, and literature<\/a>. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Since the dawn of humanity, the divine model for intimate love has been simply one of paradise: the incomparable union between two people. Compelling and enduring, our legal system has taken this cue for intimacy, defining the structure for marital partnership as limited to two adults.<\/p>\n But can\u2019t we dismiss this limitation as constrictive? Perhaps \u2014 but to do so is to dismiss the great value of love\u2019s constraints. We elevate love above all other states because it cannot be simply reduced to a mere feeling. Love persists in loving<\/em>, when it\u2019s no longer convenient, immediately gratifying or comfortable to do so. Like all acts of sacrifice, it is not done for the self, but for object of affection. Thus love, as still stated in traditional marriage vows, \u201cforsakes all others.\u201d This abandonment of all other possibility is how we have defined marriage \u2013 as well as its inverse, bachelorhood.<\/p>\n Is this a needless restriction of freedom? While the two-person model does include some measure of loss for the individual, it provides direct benefit to the spouse. Faithfulness to one person eliminates the sexual health risks of multiple partners \u2014 increasingly important in a day and age plagued by AIDS. This exclusive dynamic also heightens healthy interdependence in marriage, adding physical reasons to sustain ongoing emotional engagement with your sole partner. Marriage, in short, \u201cups the ante\u201d of a relationship through limitation of choice.<\/p>\n This allows marriage to demonstrate strength of commitment. The government provides incentives (from green cards to tax breaks) for those willing to commit to a lifetime. If \u201cpolyamorous marriages\u201d were sanctioned, gauging commitment level would be virtually impossible. We require a single \u201chome address\u201d (even for those with multiple houses) and a single party declaration (even for those with complex views). To extend the highest social value of love \u2013 one defined by selective, limited choice \u2013 to unlimited partners is to have virtually no \u201chighest\u201d form of love, and no actual selection, at all.<\/p>\n \u201cPolyamorous marriage\u201d would also create a logistical nightmare for the modern family. Even if custody rights defaulted to biological parents, adoptive rights transfers could create unlimited guardians for a single child, causing clashes in medical and educational decisions. Children would undoubtedly face severe attachment issues in childhood \u2014 a predictor of romantic security as adults. Polyamorous marriages could also prove financially devastating, particularly if the notion of simultaneous divorce were granted (as causes such as abuse may affect multiple spouses simultaneously).<\/p>\n Most importantly, polyamory prevents the need to develop the self to its utmost potential. When the burden of love is shared, a single person simply does not have to offer everything we need in a life partner. The trade-off is never truly experiencing the intimacy inherent with having all<\/em> your needs met by a single, eclipsing one. Marriage indicates a love so strong, it cannot help<\/em> but be single-focused, allowing you to devote all<\/em> of yourself wholly to another \u2014 something logically impossible to accomplish in more than one direction.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n During our time here, we\u2019re each gifted with one life \u2013 a single chance to use our senses, experience a fleeting thought or memory, feel warmth, perceive light, injure and recover. To revoke these rights through euthanasia amounts to nothing more than murder: the abrupt ending of a life that was never ours to give or take.<\/p>\n Not even dire medical prognoses justify euthanasia. Man can\u2019t possibly feel entitled to life-and-death judgment calls based on a consciousness modern medicine can\u2019t even accurately assess. Medicine\u2019s best guess at consciousness \u2013 the popular Glasgow coma scale \u2013 is a rudimentary attempt to divine what only God can (by using the rough and problematic standards of motion, speech and perceived pain response). We can\u2019t play God, simply because we don\u2019t have the capacity; as humans, we will inevitably make mistakes \u2013 and we can\u2019t afford to make mistakes with stakes running as high as human life.<\/p>\n Ancient history texts (from Herodotus, Hippocrates, and The Bible) include accounts of those who defied the medicine of their respective day. Modern accounts range from spontaneous remissions of cancer to regained consciousness after clinical pronouncements of death. Today\u2019s miracles are tomorrow\u2019s science, as we learn more about death, the human body, and the links between spirituality and recovery.<\/p>\n In cases where the patient himself decides life is not worth living, euthanasia plainly amounts to assisted suicide. While terminal patients certainly reserve the right to refuse potentially harmful treatments, to stop air- or sustenance-giving interventions is the moral equivalent of starving a child to death, or refusing to clear an infant\u2019s airways simply because they cannot do so on their own.<\/p>\n Even the practice of withholding medical care allows us to commit passive, socially-sanctioned, premeditated murder. Most health care rationing decisions (including the infamously proposed \u201cdeath panels\u201d) rest on outcome probabilities (age, advanced illness, etc.) and cost-benefit algorithms, despite being marketed as \u201cmorality.\u201d We roadblock treatment given to those who desperately need it most, skewing the data for treatment survival rates in the process \u2013 the same survival rates used to justify denial of life-saving measures.<\/p>\n I used to consider proponents of euthanasia as heartless, but I\u2019ve found they\u2019re more often sensitive \u2013 to a fault. The thought of watching someone enduring great pain rattles them to a degree they\u2019d prefer to end a life permanently rather witness \u2013 and co-endure \u2013 suffering. This \u201ccompassion\u201d is ultimately driven by a society exceedingly uncomfortable with physical pain, poor odds, and the dying process itself \u2013 and projection of helplessness, sadness and sense of injustice onto the patient as if it were his response. We euthanize to halt our own suffering. We tell ourselves patients have found the ultimate relief \u2013 but really, we have found it ourselves through their elimination.<\/p>\n As humans, we have the responsibility to care for one another in body, as well as spirit. Only when we extend this measure of compassion, hope and philanthropy to the human spirit will we offer the human body a fair chance for recovery and resilience.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n My faith is a reflective essay, interweaving the text of scripture, the depth of personal experience, and the universal implications of an explored theme.<\/p>\n Because of my belief that scripture is divinely inspired, close reading of the Bible\u2019s text becomes paramount in my life story. Scripture becomes the basis of any thesis I form about the world. My convictions hinge on the most accurate analysis of the literal Word of God \u2013 the original language and intent, the exactness of diction divinely inspired, and the preservation of its statements even amid human temptation to color them.<\/p>\n Like the reflective essay, my faith also incorporates first-hand, personal experience. The Bible didn\u2019t save me, and while I strive to fall in line with its standards, it doesn\u2019t forge choices for me. Within a dynamic relationship with God \u2013 as He illuminates the days of my life \u2013 I make decisions, slowly becoming a \u201cliving version\u201d of the scripture myself. And finally, as the reflective essay examines universal implications raised by the literature at hand, I apply my faith as best I can to the lost world around me.<\/p>\nPolyamory<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Euthanasia<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Bonus<\/h2>\n