working out a biblical ethic
on God in all-of-life worship, making him first in everything. When we see his image in humanity, a high view of God will lead to worship by treating his image with utmost respect, whatever the abilities or characteristics of the image-bearer(s) in front of us.
Example: The next patient in surgery is accompanied by his mother. He has a complex degenerative condition. He’s in pain, and is becoming more frail. His mother is distraught: ’You wouldn’t treat a dog like this. Why can’t we just relieve his suffering?’
How would the fact that we are made in
God’s image influence the doctor’s response? An extrinsic view of this son’s life might
conclude that his value as a person has decreased. Many ethicists would advocate euthanasia in this circumstance, especially as his mother seems to support it. Yet this patient, despite his frailty, is an immensely valuable image-bearer. He is worth far more than the ‘dog’ his mother mentions. Which is her point, but misdirected. Vets treat animals as they do because they are less valuable than humans. Time, money and compassion should be invested in caring for both him and his mother. The GP’s view of God’s image in his patient should lead to sadness that such a valuable being could be reduced to suffer in this way, but his ‘worship ethic’ will lead to practising costly, compassionate, medicine in caring for fellow image-bearers as far as he possibly can.
centering our lives on him in all-of-life worship This is where ‘the rubber really hits the road’ in our actions as Christian medics. God designed
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our lives to be centred on him, and he is supposed to be first priority in all our decision making, ethical dilemma or not. But we have all ’exchanged the truth of God for a lie’ and ’worship and serve created things rather than the creator’. 15 Any Christian approach to ethics must be
realistic about the reality of universal sin. ‘Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God’. 16
We need to be realistic not just
about the sin ’out there’ in the lives of others, but also the sin in our hearts. We do not want to centre our lives on God. We do not want his approval above any other. Instead we are prone to put ourselves first, or seek approval in idols of popularity, or professional success, or whatever they may be. To respond rightly to any situation, we must
recognise, first, that the only reason we have any inkling of the sin in our hearts, and any desire to overcome it, is because of God’s work in us by grace. We were dead in our sin. 17 Second, we must see that until we reach heaven (where God’s work of restoring us to his original design will be complete), there will always be a part of us that worships other things. So we must examine our hearts, and ask God
to shine the light of Scripture on them by his Holy Spirit. We need to question our motives at every step: ’Who am I seeking to please? Who am I fearing first?’ We need to ask: ’Who, or what, am I worshipping?’ This is never more important than when
we are challenged in our understanding of the Bible and our approach to ethics. All-of-life worship means centering our lives around God. The only reason we know what God says, or thinks, is because of his self-revelation in the Bible. At times this revelation is hard to understand, but this shouldn’t surprise us
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