And Now… What Do I Say?

THURS., JULY 1, 1999, 2:24 PM
OFFICE, PULLIAM

You just have participated in an interesting and stimulating Masters oral, the “defense” of a study on Euthanasia. This is a controversial topic in your culture, and how I, as Holy Spirit, “representing” your Christian God, view this semi-medical practice also is not clear… and therefore controversial. So, you are wise in setting aside this quiet time, in a quiet place, to hear what I have to say… for I was with you.

First, I’ll emphasize again what you could call My Mantra – life is fundamentally spiritual. Earth life is a means of increasing, or diminishing spirit. Bodily death is of little importance, given this priority. The length of a life has little overall relationship to its quality, from My perspective. You son Michael died in mid-life, but his spirit grew significantly, and he came across a much more spiritually akamai person (and he would like that!) than many who lived many more years.

Euthanasia refers to a “good death” or an “easy death.” The conditions for using the term are that some condition of ill-health is not likely to be reversed (there aren’t very many Lazarus’ stories!), and death will come, in some predictably short and/or painful time. The patient doesn’t want to continue to live this way, and this is important. (Even if the patient is comatose, he could have expressed such a wish, to family members… even officially in writing.)

Remember, again, that I have been here in the earth way before the powerful medications, pain relievers, and procedures that now can help maintain life, of varying quality. Thus, in “olden times” “playing God” referred only to taking a life before it would normally pass on. Now “playing God” can refer to keeping a person alive by heroic measures. As I see it there are lives shortened “before their time,” mostly by means that I have indirectly helped to create (like automobiles?). And there are lives prolonged by medical means, beyond their “natural lengths.” And, as I said initially, neither of these is truly bothersome, for I am outside of time. A few “years” either way is usually of minor consequence.

My creation process has produced, by design, quite a number of differences in human persons. For example, there is a range in thresholds of pain. At one extreme are people who can stand very little pain. Their quality of life plummets when they must endure pain. And pain varies – some may be short term but severe… another may be long term and less severe. And if there is some “purpose” for pain it may be tolerated… or even overcome… by positive emotions and spirit. Thus one person can live with pain, even “enjoy” it, while another, with presumably the same type and level of pain, cannot live on with any quality to life.

Then here comes another of My concerns, for human beings and for this earth realm, which makes possible this unique form of life. There must be deaths to match the births that I, reputedly, value more than deaths. I see the need for a balance, if quality of life for most of you is to be maintained, let alone enhanced. (You note that there is some balance… that many people do die, in hospitals, from treatments and procedures designed to improve life. Chemicals that are useful in modern life also are toxic to some, rapidly or slowly.)

As I see the earth scene, a few cases of euthanasia do shorten what could have been a longer, more productive life. Still, I see it as a legitimate action in most cases – allowing or causing the death, which will come soon, to be as “easy” and “good” as possible. For those who have come to Me as servants in their earth life, the transition across can be, and usually is, a pleasant, even a joyous, one. There is often no regret, given the life conditions that are “left behind” and the relief that comes to family members when the painful (or handicapped) dying is over.