“I am walking with a friend as she cares for her aging mother. Her mother is 86 years old and her medical situation is becoming complicated. Her kidneys are failing and she’s wondering if she should begin to press the medical staff to get her mother a kidney transplant. My friend and her mother are Christians, and they do want to make these decisions in alignment with Scripture, but they’re struggling to find a clear path on the ethics of organ transplantation. What should I tell them?”
Read and Reply to comment on at least two (2) of your cohort member’s posts, drawing upon your learning of the course content, and using the ABC approach:
Acknowledge your classmate and add a new point, drawing from course content.
Build on the post, focusing on course content. Make it a higher level answer and provide more depth of understanding, drawing from what you’ve learned in the reading/lecture.
Conclude or contest a previous point.
Below is the classmates post that I am replying to on the subject above.
This particular decision would be fairly easy for me, as I have personally been affected by an organ transplant that saved my dad’s life just a few months ago. I know firsthand that the organs are not given unless the person receiving it is the best fit for the transplant. I’m assuming the moral dilemma is the age of the mother, but I don’t think that it should be discounted just because of this. There could very well be viable kidneys that would be perfect for her and not a fit for a younger, healthier transplant patient. The options are heavily weighed and considered before the recipient is even notified of the possibility of finding a match. My father was the number 1 person on the UNOS list for a liver transplant for a long time. (Honestly, it could have been a week, but it felt like a lifetime.) There was very little stopping me from begging them to take a piece of my own. I was in the process of becoming a possible donor, but even that was taking so long that we were told he would likely not make it by the time I could do the transplant!
In our lessons considering improvisation, we learn that the world is ever-changing. Although Scripture remains the same, we cannot expect all things to go exactly as they did in Biblical times. “The scriipt does not provide all the answers. Life throws up circumstances that the gospel seems not to cover. If performance of a scriipt is regarded as the paradigmatic form of discipleship, a great deal of disappointment or doublethink is likely to result.” (Wells, p.43) There really is not any Scripture that was meant to be shared in the decision-making process of transplantation, obviously–but we are taught to love our neighbors. (Lev. 19:18) We are taught that we’re all creations of God; set out to do His good works (Ephesians 2:10) and our lives are to be valued. (Psalm 139:14) If the concern is the mutilation of the donor’s body, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that we check our bodies at the door. “We can approach new moral challenges that are not directly addressed in Scripture without making the Christian faith irrelevant to modern moral issues.” (Gaines) So–by allowing this transplantation, the donor is loving his neighbor, valuing God’s creation, and giving this person a second chance. Some would say that this could be an issue of taking matters into our own hands–but that is discounting the greatness of God. Surgeons aren’t tricking God into giving this person a few more years of life. His Will supersedes any attempt of man.
The readings are below
Wells, S. (2004). Improvisation: The drama of Christian ethics. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press.
Chapter 4: Drama as Improvisation
Chapter 5: Forming Habits
Chapter 6: Assessing Status
Chapter 7: Accepting and Blocking
