1-17-2016 Bioethics Part 41

The speaker begins with a prayer and mentions that they will be discussing death and dying in this session of their study on bioethics. They share various questions and perspectives on death, including whether it is a sign of an alien power in our world, if it is an enemy or a friend, and if it has dignity or is an affront to human worth. The speaker also mentions that the topic of death has become more complicated in modern times due to advancements in medical technology, such as life support, physician-assisted suicide, and organ transplantation. They emphasize the importance of taking time to consider these ethical questions and how Christians should view death. The speaker acknowledges that there may not be a strong Christian perspective on death and encourages further exploration of this topic. Well, let's pray. God, we pray that you would give us this morning as we come to worship and learn and pray and sing. Hear your word, respond to it, partake of the gifts that you've given to us. You would shape us through the power of your Holy Spirit, in Jesus' name, amen. So today we are beginning the end of this long study on bioethics, although this section will by far take longer than any of the sections that have come before it, because having gone through a wide range of bioethical issues this morning, we start death and dying. The sheer size and scope and importance of this is almost overwhelming. I spent a good chunk of my week just trying to figure out, how the heck do I start this thing, and where do I go? I'm going to read a few things that will give us kind of a perspective about just what we're dealing with. The first one is a series of questions that come from a book called On Moral Medicine. It says, if life has been sanctified, what of death? If life is for all people under the power of God, is death the limit to that power? Is death a sign that there is an alien power in our world? Is death the enemy or a friend? Is it simply a sign of our powerlessness, God's powerlessness? Is death quote-unquote natural, dying as part of living? Our concept of death, of what death is, naturally affects our disposition towards it. Should we fear it, welcome it, accept it, fight it? May we pray for it? May we complain to God in the face of it? Does death have dignity as a necessary and welcoming limit to living, or is death an indignity, an affront to human worth and human hope? We could add about 10 billion more questions to that, but those are a good start. Psalm 90 says this, part of it, verses 10 through 12, the years of our life are 70 or even by reason of strength 80, yet their span is but toil and trouble. They are soon gone and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. David Van Drunen, who we've used throughout this study and who we found very helpful, says this, reflecting upon the brevities of and difficulties of life is not an attractive activity, but scriptures exhort us to take time to step back from the distractions of everyday life and to consider our lives as a whole. Despite the joys and opportunities that many people experience, Psalm 90 reminds us that earthly life is short and hard and will one day end. That is somewhat depressing, perhaps, but the psalmist informs us that taking stock of life and death in this way will give us a heart of wisdom. It's been pretty interesting to see the faces of people, both secular and religious, who have asked what we're studying in church and when I respond, oh, we're about to study death and dying, it doesn't matter how secular or how religious they are, they all kind of respond in the same way, which is something akin to, what? Why would you do that? Why wouldn't you talk about anything else in the world? Why spend your time, which is precious, talking about death and dying? Some people have even said, initially, that it's not just something that we shouldn't talk about, but that nobody wants to talk about it. Which I would probably, to some degree, agree with, but regardless of whether we want to talk about it or not, we not only should, but pretty much have to talk about it. Religions have died since the beginning, but how we die has become much more complicated. Let's just think about it. Please give me, and it could be anything, something that has made death more complicated today than it was, let's say, two or three hundred years ago. Life support, okay? How does that complicate it? Let's just give a few examples of how life support might make dying more complicated. It's not clear when death occurs? Choosing, yeah, so now we bring choice into this, what we would call, you know, the kind of man-on-the-street terms, pulling the plug, right? When do you do that? Should you do that? Is that even morally appropriate? Good, so life support is one way, what is another way that makes dying more complicated today? Physician-assisted suicide, that's right. Why would that make it more complicated? Morally? Right, is this something we should even participate in, anything else? Just the sheer fact of its existence makes it more complicated, even if you don't have to use it, because somebody is going to be tempted to use it, and if you don't know why anybody would be tempted to use it, you've never really been that sick. Neither have I. But all you need to imagine is the worst pain you've ever felt in your life, every minute of every day, and you know it's not going away until you die. Why not just end it? Anything else? Organ transplant, yes, that's the one I have written down on my sheet, were you looking at my notes, Brian? Yeah, I know, I'm pretty transparent. So what makes organ donation and organ transplantation, why does that complicate the dying thing? Life from death, yep, good. Where did the organs come from? Can we sell our organs? Can we buy organs? It's technically illegal right now, just so you know, but it's been up for debate for about the last 40 years. Should we be able to grow organs? At MIT, this week, they figured out, and soon it's like initial phases, they figured out how to take some of your skin cells, transform your skin cells into stem cells, put those stem cells on a credit card-like sized thing that's implanted in there, and then you could, hypothetically, one day, take that card and put it into, give it to the doctor, the doctor could put it into a machine and grow an organ for you on the basis of your own cells, which is a trip, right? Should we be able to do something like that? What kind of complications might that bring up? There's all kinds of issues. We're only scratching the surface of organ transplantation donation. Also, in order to, and this is like one of the big ones, you have to die in a particular way in order to give your organs to somebody. Is that an appropriate way to die? Is that something we should be encouraging? Now again, we don't have to think about any of those questions at all if organ donation does not exist. Now, let me ask you a question. Is organ donation a good thing or a bad thing? Good thing, right? The ability to remove part of your body that is not working and put in part of somebody else's body who they have generously donated to you is, we would never say something that's morally demanded of you, but that if permissible, and I'll be arguing a while from now that would be permissible, is something that's a wonderful advance in medicine and ability to kind of continue to live. But, it brings up just the sheer existence of it. Even if you never receive an organ from anybody, you still should think, what about this because of love of neighbor? I want to love my neighbor as well and people are going to have these questions. When we started this, less than a year ago, people were like, I don't know if this is going to be really applicable. And it's funny that almost every single person in here has run into some kind of bioethical issue with somebody in the last year. And that will only increase because every single medical advance that we receive that provides incredible benefits to the world will also have a large string of ethical questions attached to it, always. By the way, is this just something that is true in the 21st century? No. At the moment that you can, for example, send a projectile at a high rate of speed through a metal tube that will strike somebody and provide a significant amount of damage from distance, which we would call either a cannon or a gun, which has been around for a long time. At the moment that that happens, you've got all kinds of ethical issues that you never thought about before. At the moment that you attach a rock to the end of a stick that you can chuck and kill something, you have questions that you didn't have before that. It's not just something modern. It's definitely not something that's just American. However, the more complicated things get, the more it would behoove us to take time to slow down. We've reached an interesting point that we never had before. We've reached a point when it comes to technology that keeps us from dying or that provides for death, we're receiving these medical technologies so quickly that we are not able, as a society and people are starting to recognize this, we are not able to even ask the question, should we even be doing this? It's just like, well, we've got the ability, here we go. And so you're starting to run into the people, for example, the very people who are coming up with these kinds of ways of keeping us from dying, that are asking, I don't even know if we should ever use this, yet they've already released it to the world and other people are using it. Because it works, because it's something, because it will provide benefits for somebody, probably. So, before we can talk about all these kinds of questions and answer these kinds of questions, it would be helpful to begin to talk about how Christians, how you and I should view death. This is a bit tricky because in one way, to argue that Christians should view death in a particular way is to assume that they already do so, but I don't know if that's true. Mark Noll, probably the predominant Christian historian in our lifetime, definitely one of the greatest American historians, Christian historians in the history of the United States, wrote a book 25 years ago or so, a very prominent book. The book began with this very provocative sentence, the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of one. So to put a play on that when it comes to what we're talking about, the travesty of the Christian view on death is that there is not much of one, at least not much of one that is informed by Christian belief, at all. I don't think this will come as a surprise to anybody, but as we're going to see hopefully this morning, it's probably true. Death plays a major role in our lives, doesn't it? Yes or no? Yes. Why does death play a major role in our lives? We're all going to die, that's right. And it's the end of our lives, right? I mean, yeah, we're all, you know, Christians, so we might all claim like an existence after this, but as far as life as we know it, that will end when we die. And that is going to be the case of every single person in here. Good morning. So that being the case, death plays a major role in our lives. Should theology play a major role in our lives as well? Yes. What is the definition of theology? Study of God. That's right. So when I say theology, what do I mean? Study of who God is. That's right. So I'm not talking about those gigantic systematic theology books or some kind of esoteric weird thing where they're using words that nobody else actually uses. I'm just talking about theology of the way we view God and ourselves plays a major role in our lives, or at least it should as Christians. Therefore, if death and theology play a major role, we should pay attention to them, yet I don't think that we as Americans do a very good job of this. I can't fault Christians too much. Please don't get mad at ordinary Christians kind of about anything ever. It's hard to do sometimes, but taking a play out of the book of somebody like, for example, John Calvin, Martin Luther, or somebody like that, John Owen, a lot of famous guys through time really didn't critique the person sitting in the pew. Who were they critiquing? Men's study participant. Teachers and leaders. That's right. Why do Christians in America today have such a terrible view on death? Ordinarily. Yeah, so they've been either taught wrongly or not taught at all. So we can't fault them too much. I've said on multiple occasions that it is my fundamental conviction that one of my primary jobs here is to help people die well, and that that's not an easy thing to do. We all have to work at it, and knowing theology and how it applies to our lives is the only way that you and I are ever going to make real progress in dying well. Now, the reality is that any culture we live in at any point in time has its own views on death, correct? Every culture that's ever existed has had views on death. Those have not all been the same, but they have all existed. So in our culture, just like in any culture in the world, it's going to be difficult to not just buy into the cultural assumptions around us. Give me a cultural assumption, not really about death, but just about life in general, a cultural assumption that Christians ordinarily in our culture today have a hard time not buying into. Not all at once. Yeah, we deserve something, right? Amen. You have a hard time not believing that. Good? Anything else? What are the cultural assumptions that America shares broadly that Christians have a hard time not buying into? We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. We're basically good. That's right. We're good people. We're all good people. God bless America. Yeah. Amen. We're a Christian nation. We're a Christian nation. That's right. So, it's funny because if we were to say, well, was America founded on broadly Judeo-Christian principles, you'd go, yeah, of course. But this idea that we're some kind of city on a hill, manifest destiny, our job is to take over the world and then spread our good news to everywhere is, of course, not true at all. So, awkwardly and paradoxically, it kind of made America part of what it is today. So, you go, well, that was a mixed blessing. Theologically, it was terrible. Or like just something like consumerism, right? You should just always be about buying stuff for you and your whole life should be wrapped around just buying crap. Like Christians do not live very differently than other human beings. You buy into those kinds of cultural lies very easily. Same thing goes with death. It's particularly true that Christians will buy into the cultural assumptions of the culture they live in, whatever those might be, if they don't know what they're supposed to believe. Right? That just makes sense. If I don't know what direction I'm supposed to go and everybody I live around is going in this direction, I'm just going to assume like, well, this is the direction. So, if I, as the primary teaching person in this church, do not routinely remind you that your stuff does not matter, then you have every right to believe that your stuff matters because everybody else is saying that. And what I would say is counter-cultural. Same thing goes with death. If I don't say anything about what death should be, you'll just generally buy into the way that everybody else views death around here and there would be no fault in you for that. So let's look at two predominant cultural opinions on viewing death. They are very different, but hopefully we will see how common these are in our society around us. Opinion number one, death is an enemy to be fought with every available resource without quitting until death wins. I believe that this is probably the dominant way that Americans view death right now. Though it is shifting and it is not nearly as strong as it once was, this is probably the dominant model. In this model, there is never any doubt or questioning about medical treatment. In this model, can always implies op. What do I mean by that? Anybody want to explain that? Just because you can't do something doesn't mean you should do it. Yep. So, it's not, can we do this, okay, yes we can, now we should think about it. In this model, if we can do it, we ought to do it. There is a moral imperative to do all we can do to keep other human beings alive. Cost to oneself or to others is no factor, risks aren't a factor. This would be the, I'm going to make a gross comparison, but I think it applies really well. This would be like the Costco view of death, right? So, Costco is known for what? Besides amazing chicken bakes. What? Wholesale bulk items. I know this falls down a little bit because Costco's quality is generally pretty good except for their tortilla chips which they routinely over-salt and I write them on a regular basis. That's another sermon. It would be quantity over quality, right? Most people do not go to Costco and go look at the quality of the product they got. They're literally like, look, I got 74 avocados in a bag and I saved 25 cents per avocado. Nobody can eat that many avocados. They're like, yeah, but I saved so much money. Quantity over quality. This is the same thing that goes for healthcare. Using that analogy, how do you think that would work out? Ideas? Quantity over quality? Okay, so you could do that in kind of a broad range of things. Everybody's going to get healthcare and then if that's true, maybe the quality would go down. True, but that's true maybe on a broad scale, possibly. Let's look at the individual life though. Somebody's life when it comes to death and dying. You give people so much medicine, I think it hurts. Okay, it can hurt, yes. But we don't care about the hurting factor very much because all we want is the quantity. So the question comes down often. It pains some doctors to do this because you walk into a room and you go, okay, listen, there's this thing we could do for you. We don't know if it's going to work. It's going to produce this, this, this, this, this in you. You'll be stuck here for the rest of your life, but it might give you another three weeks. You will bleed out your eyes for the entire time that you're here. Oh, and it's also going to cost a hundred grand. The default position for Americans today is what? Do it. There is very little conversation about quality of life. Just give me more time. Right, so it's always, well, maybe something will happen. Now we're going to talk about life support because life support is super complicated. It's always just the default of give more time. Are long lives inherently worth living, yes or no? No, they are not. There is in this model a strong sense of denial when it comes to death. To accept the reality that the end has come is to admit defeat. And that is impossible because we fight to the end. We are Americans. We do not give up. Americans aren't the only ones that do this, but we are very famous for this in our own society. We also bow at the feet of the temple that's called medicine. If the doctor thinks we should do it, we will just do it. We'll just go. Doctors are the high priests of our society. So, given that, you just keep fighting. You deny it. So how would denial work in the situation of, let's say that I am dying. How would denial function in this group? How does it ordinarily function? Think about me and us. Any ideas? I'll start it off. I might deny the fact in this model that I am dying. I'm not dying. I'm doing just fine. How else might it function? Think about you all towards me. You look great. I'm at the point of death and everyone's like, you look way better than you did yesterday. That might be a true statement, but it's just common. You're going to make it. You're totally going to make it. If you just get Monty Python and search for the Holy Grail, which is one of the greatest things that's ever been made on the face of the planet, there is a very famous scene where these two knights are fighting and one knight gets a leg cut off and then he gets another leg cut off and he gets his arms cut off and the whole time he's just like, that's nothing, that's nothing. And the other knight's like, just give up. And he's like, no, I'm good to go. We do this all the time. The most gross example of this and thankfully changing example, but still at least it's a common desire, comes with the death of children, which is by far one of the most difficult things that happens. The way that denial plays itself out in the death of children is that oftentimes parents are reluctant to tell their children that they're dying. And the children will sometimes die never knowing why they live in the hospital. It's one of the craziest, still understandable, but craziest things that comes with the denial of death. Because we're just going to fight this and we're going to get to the end. Now let me get something on the table that is clear as day. One of the truly undeniable things in the universe, and it has two parts, we've already talked about one of the parts of this, every person in here is going to die. I don't know when, thankfully, you don't know when, but you are going to die. That's the first part of this. Here is the second part of this. You are all, right at this very moment, in the process of dying. I know that's not the most encouraging news, but it is the only thing that I truly know objectively about you. Because it's true of all humans. I might be colorblind, so I might not understand the color of your hair, I don't know why you wore those clothes, I might not know exactly what ethnicity you are, I could have guesses, but what I know is that you are going to die and that you're on the road to death right now. So denying that death is going to come, or denying the fact that somebody is dying, while understandable, is complete lunacy. What is the reality of this view that is actually true and appealing to Christians? I'm not talking about the false things, we'll talk about that in a second. What is the reality of this view that we can say, okay, that part is true, that makes it appealing for Christians? What comes after death? Death is not the end for us, but do these people act like that? Are they acting like death is not the end for us? No, right, so that's what's false about this view. So we'll get there in a second. Although, you get back to this thing of death is not the end for us, the reality is that while we have faith, and we'll talk about virtues next week, but we don't actually know what happens when we die. There are broad categories for what happens at death, but you and I have never died. Well, I died once, but that was only for a couple of minutes. I didn't see anything, so there you go. Maybe it's all a lie. The thing is, we've never experienced it, therefore it is terrifying. At this point, when somebody's dying, I'm scared to die, the first thing you should not say is, what are you scared about? Of course it's terrifying. It's the end of life as they know it. It is over. They don't know what that's like. So then we would go, Death is an enemy. It should not happen. Is that true? Yes. Death should not happen. Death is, according to 1 Corinthians 15, the last enemy. Death is going to be abolished, though it's not, simply not the way things are supposed to be. Death is a sad thing. So we can say, along with the people who fight to the end and never give up and deny that death is happening, I understand that part of that. Death is really terrible. What's false about that view? Well, we've already hit on the idea of denial. What is denial? OK. What's another word for denial? Rejection or lying? Is that a Christian virtue? No, not in any sense of the term whatsoever. It's not. Good. To fight for life at all costs is not only a terrible way to live and die, but is a fundamental denial of the gospel that you and I believe in. I believe that Christians deny the gospel more at the end of their lives than at any other point, which is terrible because then they're dead. The reality of your belief is that you will die in the most difficult times of your life, whatever those beliefs might be. Dying would be one of the most profound things that you will ever do and will be the true test of your theology, whatever it is, that will most come out in the end. You can claim to believe in a God that is in control of everything. We'll see this more in the book of Exodus this morning. If you die a terrible death, then nobody around you will have reason to believe that you believe in a God that is in control of everything. That's not an easy way to go, though. Therefore, it will take training. Option number two. This would be almost the opposite. Death is a natural part of life and it should be embraced and celebrated. Thankfully, the conversation and convictions about death and dying are changing today. Both Christian and secular scholars and doctors are finding themselves much more in line with this model. One major step forward started back in the 60s when there was a woman who was a physician and she was rightly observing the kind of general situation of the world as tragic and she came up with the idea that to repress feelings and truth when it came to death and dying only did people harm, which is true. Instead of keeping it all in, the author appealed for the idea of letting it all out. So, the very opposite of what everybody was doing. You've likely heard of the stages of grief. Anybody know what the stages of grief are? Denial, that's where it starts. Anger. Acceptance is at the end. Bargaining, depression and acceptance. If you think through it, that's a really good explanation, broadly speaking, of the way grief hits us. We deny that it's actually happening. Then we start to bargain our way out of it. Bargaining doesn't work to alleviate the depression, but the depression ultimately ends up, supposedly, in acceptance. So, those are real stages. The author's contribution was to say that it's the job of everyone involved in the dying process to help those who are dying to work through the process. This is one of the things that led to the beginnings of what we would call hospice care. Do you know anything about hospice? What is hospice, for those of you that might know? Hospice is end-of-life care. It's where you go when you are going to die. When the doctors are like, you're done. These people that work in this, both doctors and nurses, are some of the greatest heroes on the face of the planet Earth. They receive only patients who are going to die. They will not release anybody back into the broader world. They're trying to comfort them in their death. It's got to be one of the hardest jobs in the world to hear interviews with these people, to know these kinds of people is quite something. We'll talk about hospice in the weeks to come. Others have built on the work of this woman seeing that the end of life provides very good and unique opportunities for making all those involved into better humans and should thus be something that we joyfully participate with others in. So the person dying by talking about these things and by getting to the place of acceptance becomes a better person and you become a better person in interacting with dying people. This much I completely agree with. Go hang out with dying people. If you think that it's just, you know, all about you, go hang out with dying people. It would be to great benefit to everybody in this room to spend more time with dying people. We're going to talk about, eventually, the tragedy of not dying around other people. I have said from the very beginning of this church and I'm joking most of the time, but I am not, that it would be awesome to have a graveyard in the front of our church. It would be way better if there was more property in the front of our church. It would also be cool if people came in through the front doors of our church instead of the back. But let's just assume for a minute that we had a large piece of land You know why? Perspective. Makes you think. You've got to walk through the community of saints in order to go to worship and then you have to walk back through them in order to go back into the world. The most ideal situation would be to have the baptismal at the entrance. You just sit in church and then go right back the other way. It would be awesome. It's not going to happen. I'm not even about to petition the government. They can barely give me chicken so I'm sure they're not going to let us bury some dead people up in the front but it would be great. It's only when we live in denial that death becomes problematic and damaging in this view. And I think that there's much that we can profit from from this growing trend of the way we should view death. This approach would be much more in line with Christian faith and practice but even here there are some things that make us unable to fully embrace it. Anybody know what those things might be? Kind of the flip side of what we talked about before. What is in this second option of viewing death in our culture that we would say, we agree with a lot of that stuff but there's some of that stuff we could not agree with. And this view is death an enemy. No, it's not. It's just a natural part of life. It's just what you're going to do. Yeah? Or physician-assisted suicide as well. Also, there's often just resignation to the reality. It's like, well, you're going to die. So, while it's much better, it's not ideal. In the end, the simple truth is that Christians should die differently from others. The Christian author puts it, For the Christian, death remains an enemy that produces sorrow and grief among the dying and their loved ones. Yet, by virtue of Christ's work of redemption, death has been defeated. Christians may genuinely look forward to being with Christ in glory when they die and to being raised up on the last day How does that happen? We're going to close with this. Back in the late Middle Ages and into a few centuries past the Reformation, there came to be a body of writing. It's very diverse. It's one of the very few things that Protestants and Catholics both engaged in. The movement stemmed from two important conclusions that still apply today. Number one, death contains eternal consequences. It is not like most anything else you will ever do in life. It has eternal consequences. Once you die, it is done. Number two, dying well takes work and training. And number three, if we can learn how to die well, we will live better. Now, I believe that idea is not only strange but sadly repulsive to many Christians today. Here's a case in point. How would you say that most Americans, if they were to die in your sleep? Or a bullet. One bullet. And the brain. That would actually kill you, right? And you don't shoot yourself. So, what we've dealt with, either the dying in your sleep or the bullet in the brain I think you're exactly right. If we had to sum up those views on death, what kind of death do we want? Painless and quick. I don't know what's coming, it's just done. That's the way I want to die. Why is that the way we want to die? Any ideas? We don't have to deal with it. We are radically selfish. And yet, in reality, most people don't seem to die that way. That's right, most people do not seem to die that way. Interestingly, the writers in the school of Ars Moriandi saw a sudden death as a terrible tragedy, one of the worst things that could possibly happen to a human being. Any ideas why? Who said that? The kind of writers who were in this school, that were in the art of dying school, said a quick, painless, unknown death is one of the worst things that could happen to a human being. I don't know why they said that. Why would you say that, Tim? It's because, you know, death seems to bring you to think. You can't think once you do it, but when you're done, the reality of death takes you. So death leads us to profound thought, knowing that it's coming. You kind of miss that if you don't know your death is coming. What else? Preparation. So there's no time to prepare. You also have the ability to impact other people's views on it. When you are suffering, you can be kind of a light to other people and say, this is what I'm going through. So if you were to die unprepared, you'd have no ability to help others shape their own view of death. Oh, he died. Anything else? Yes. There is no possibility for closure if you just up and die. Both those you are close with, so family members, friends, co-workers, enemies, enemies, enemies. No ability for that. You're just done. There's another thing that you might not have a lot of time to reconcile with if you just die immediately. God. That's right. There's no ability to reconcile with God if death just comes immediately. Nailed all of them. This is why an instant death would be such a tragedy. Knowing you are dying and dying slowly might not be the easiest way to die, but you and I are never promised easy deaths. Add to that fact that death isn't only about you. I'm going to read two things in closing here. One of them is a poem. One of them is just something. This first one is something that John Donne wrote. I have it hanging on the wall in my office. It's a very famous poem. Listen to it closely. If you hate poetry, you won't after this. Maybe. It's called For Whom the Bell Tolls. It goes, No man is an island a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manner of thine own or of thine friend were. Each man's death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind. Therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. It tolls for you because whoever's dying makes you less of a human being. C.S. Lewis says this, In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to cast the whole man into activity. I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald's reaction to a specifically Charles joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him quote unquote to myself, now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. The reality is that while it would be great if we all died long though manageable deaths, some of us will die instantaneously. While not everybody goes that way, some people do. So in closing, how is it that you and I can possibly practice the art of dying well? Well, thinking about other stuff, we're talking about dying slowly at times like maybe 2-3 months Truth is, basically we're all in the process of dying. But we were thinking about the same death with the same intensity if we were in those 2-3 months. The only way that you and I will ever be ready for death is if we start preparing for death right now. Because we are all in the process of dying. This is way less fun than doing a Sunday school unlike being a better Christian financial steward or something. However, it is dramatically more important. So, the next however long it takes, we're going to talk about these things and we're going to use God and humans now to put our affairs in order now knowing that this is the only way to prepare for death. And in preparing for death, a side benefit is you and I will actually live better. Let's pray. God, we do thank you for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ for the reality of life beyond this life, life eternal, life as we can barely even possibly imagine it because it will be a life though very similar to this life yet also so distinct and that there will be no suffering, evil or pain. We do pray that as we study these things you would help us to die well, to be prepared for the day that is inevitably coming for each and every one of us and that we would be people who are prepared to die and that we would be the kinds of people that can help others prepare to die. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.