One, Lauren Hill (19 year old), wished to play one basketball game with the college team that would have been hers had she not become ill. That game happened on Sunday with a crowd of 10,000 in attendance, cheering her on.
The other, Brittany Maynard (29 years old), wished to end her life before cancer ended it for her in the most horrible way imaginable. That end came on Saturday when, surrounded by her family, she took the medication prescribed for her by a physician under Oregon's "death with dignity" law.
I honor both brave young women and their choices. I grieve with and for their families. The sadness of their stories is almost unbearable. But that is not what troubles me tonight.
I am, tonight, angered and frustrated by what has streamed across my Facebook feed from those who claim to be good Christians, and I seem to be connected to a fair number of them. Today, they have, almost all of them, chosen to label Lauren as "right and good and brave," and to simultaneously label Brittany as "wrong and bad and selfish." Christians! How dare they? Really!
I can understand if a person holds to a belief that taking one's own life is sinful. I get that such a person, consistent with their own values and beliefs, would choose to live each and every day right down to the very last suffering, struggling, painful, howling breath. I understand that such a one, might choose to put themselves and their loved ones through the brutal march to the bitter end. If that is your belief and your faith, then I grant you that. I will not say "nay." However, I insist that those "Christians" who believe as they might, grant those who do not share their faith and their belief the right to choose their own path. There are options and other ways to be and believe, and those ways are not, de facto, wrong and bad. To stand up, in a public forum, and Facebook is that, and publicly denounce the painful and difficult choices made by a dying young woman is the worst kind of hypocrisy by the worst kind of hypocrite.
