Thrown away
It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away (Joel 1:7)
It is the waste that strikes you. The bark is not merely stripped off the vines and fig trees but then thrown away. It is discarded as of no value, where once it had immense value. The bark that brought water and nutrients to the branches and fruit, and conveyed energy back to the roots has been discarded as worthless.
I'm not sure if you have spotted it but hospitals have been issued with government guidelines on how to prioritise patients in need of emergency care when there is not enough to go around. When they are faced with 20 patients needing ventilation and only 12 ventilators, this guidance helps them to make that most awful of choices.
As an ex-ethics teacher, I am fairly inured to these kinds of questions. Given a choice of someone who has a chance of survival and someone who doesn't, then there seems to be little actual choice and to have someone remove the responsibility for that decision from you is a gift not a curse.
As a vicar, I am only too aware of how that decision is going to look to the person left to die and their loved ones who must watch, albeit from afar. In the raw logic of survival, the pain of loss will only be made greater.
However, this is not the point of this piece. Within the initial guidance was a piece of advice that stopped us in our tracks. Those with learning difficulties were included in the list of those who had less right to medical support in extremis. No other factor, please note, just anyone with a specified learning difficulty.
So my youngest, beloved, beautiful boy, who has never had any significant illness in his life, who is the healthiest of all my family, is listed as not deserving life-saving help, for the sole reason that he can't order a takeaway and work out how much change he should be getting. Please note again that this has absolutely nothing to do with his survival chances. Merely because he has additional educational needs.
There is something wrong at the heart of our modern world that this virus has revealed. I can only make one suggestion and it's this: that we have learned to value people as objects to be discarded if they are not 'useful'. It is a philosophy that is an essential part of our consumerist, commercial world. It has replaced the protections of Christianity, with a disposal culture. It is seen in everything from abortion law to the high street. Let us pray that this at least is blown away by this storm.
It is the waste that strikes you. The bark is not merely stripped off the vines and fig trees but then thrown away. It is discarded as of no value, where once it had immense value. The bark that brought water and nutrients to the branches and fruit, and conveyed energy back to the roots has been discarded as worthless.
I'm not sure if you have spotted it but hospitals have been issued with government guidelines on how to prioritise patients in need of emergency care when there is not enough to go around. When they are faced with 20 patients needing ventilation and only 12 ventilators, this guidance helps them to make that most awful of choices.
As an ex-ethics teacher, I am fairly inured to these kinds of questions. Given a choice of someone who has a chance of survival and someone who doesn't, then there seems to be little actual choice and to have someone remove the responsibility for that decision from you is a gift not a curse.
As a vicar, I am only too aware of how that decision is going to look to the person left to die and their loved ones who must watch, albeit from afar. In the raw logic of survival, the pain of loss will only be made greater.
However, this is not the point of this piece. Within the initial guidance was a piece of advice that stopped us in our tracks. Those with learning difficulties were included in the list of those who had less right to medical support in extremis. No other factor, please note, just anyone with a specified learning difficulty.
So my youngest, beloved, beautiful boy, who has never had any significant illness in his life, who is the healthiest of all my family, is listed as not deserving life-saving help, for the sole reason that he can't order a takeaway and work out how much change he should be getting. Please note again that this has absolutely nothing to do with his survival chances. Merely because he has additional educational needs.
There is something wrong at the heart of our modern world that this virus has revealed. I can only make one suggestion and it's this: that we have learned to value people as objects to be discarded if they are not 'useful'. It is a philosophy that is an essential part of our consumerist, commercial world. It has replaced the protections of Christianity, with a disposal culture. It is seen in everything from abortion law to the high street. Let us pray that this at least is blown away by this storm.
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| My beloved youngest son, on his way up Glastonbury Tor |
I don't know what to say. I clicked the "comment" button mostly because I wanted you to know, George, that I share your disbelief that valuations of people's relative worth can be applied in such a heartless way. It's a similar mindset, I guess, to the one that puts the profitability of huge corporations above the health of the planet. As young people like Greta Thunberg seize the agenda. let's hope there will be a worldwide shift in attitude and policy away from valuing everything and everyone in dollars and cents.
ReplyDeleteHeartbreaking. Awful. Painful to read. And so wrong.
ReplyDeleteThanks. Truly shocking. Thankfully the latest news is that they've just brought out new guidelines that no longer include learning difficulty as a reason to withdraw treatment, so that's great news. Let's hope attitudes change for good.
DeleteWe are all God's children. He is a joy in our community as well as in your family and his different outlook on life and sense of mischief must give you some respite from the relentless coronavirus news. Glad to hear that the guidance has changed. Am reading your blogs in arrears.
ReplyDelete