Ask Pastor Mike Live

Guest (Male): Shane? Shane says, "I've listened to a number of your sermons about end of life. I have some questions. Is it wrong to use fentanyl towards the end of life or palliative care? Is it wrong not to proceed with resuscitation? What is the definition of natural death for Christians who adhere?" Okay.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: I do address this in a couple of places. One, in our End of Life series, we do talk about this. I talk about it in more detail if you go to focalpointu.com or pastormike.com. Look under our heading Focal Point U or our Focal Point app. If you go to the app store, you can look up our Focal Point app, and under Focal Point U, it’s at the very bottom there. I think you’ll see a button for it, and it will take you to the section on anthropology, or the study of human beings.

What does the Bible say about that? We’ve got a section there on death and dying. We believe in life and the protection of life from conception to natural death. Now, natural death, we understand that we’re going to die and we’re going to naturally die at some point because life is going to give out. Our life is going to naturally give out. So we sit here and say, "When is that?"

Most of us are going to have that terrible situation of having a loved one in the hospital, maybe after an accident or just because they’re old, aging, and dying. We’ve got all these artificial means, particularly in the first world in the 21st century, and we’re going to say, "Do we unplug them? Do we stop with all this unnatural means of keeping them respirated and their hearts going and feeding them with feeding tubes and all the rest? When do we quote-unquote pull the plug?"

First of all, you talk about palliative care, which is trying to make this easier: fentanyl or whatever you’ve got in trying to make the pain go away. No, not at all. I think the book of Proverbs helps us with this. Of course, wine was the best they had. Alcohol was the best they had to ease the pain. It says to give wine to him who is perishing. Don’t give it to kings, don’t give it to nobles, and don’t give it to people whose minds are important. God is pro-sobriety, by the way.

If you’re into drinking and you love getting intoxicated, let me just speak to you: God is pro-sobriety. Keep your mind as sharp as you can keep it. It’s not about getting your mind dull; it’s about keeping your mind sharp unless you’re dying. If you’re dying and you’re in a lot of pain, then of course, whether it’s fentanyl, codeine, or whatever you’ve got to take, take what you’ve got to take to help ease the pain as it ramps up near death. Of course, we want palliative care to keep you comfortable.

If you’ve got a loved one who’s dying, we want to keep your loved one comfortable. That has an effect on respiration and all the rest, and sometimes you think, "It’s a catch-22. The more comfortable I make them, it seems like this is going to accelerate death." That’s been the problem as long as we can think back to helping people get comfortable. I understand that. But death itself is imminent oftentimes as we’re trying to make people comfortable, and I don’t think it’s wrong at all to keep people comfortable.

When you talk about not resuscitating people and having a do-not-resuscitate order on yourself or on your loved one, I don’t think that’s wrong either, especially if you think, "This is just the circle of continuing to say okay, I’m doing this." Death seems to be imminent; we’re continuing just to resuscitate and resuscitate and resuscitate. Doctors can help with this. Doctors are being honest with us about the fact that it seems like death is near. The problem is terminal, either the age, the ailment, or the cancer, whatever it is.

Natural death, to define it, is hard, but I do think most people can define it when you’re right in the midst of it. What I don’t want to get into is what Canada is getting into and a lot of European countries are getting into. We’re not into mercy killing. We’re not into what’s called euthanasia, which is just a compound of Greek words that means a good death. We don’t want to have a good death like saying, "We’re going to give you a good out here if it’s painful."

I’m all about dulling your pain and giving you some kind of narcotic to try and make this easier for you in terms of the pain itself, but I’m not going to end your life to try and end your pain. That’s just not the way the Bible addresses us. Matter of fact, if you listen to my lectures on this as it relates to death and dying, you’ll find that the Bible is always calling us for courage and strength. We certainly need courage. We need to say God is going to give us courage.

As we seek to face the ultimate challenge at the end of our lives, to face the threshold of death, this is something as Christians I hope that God’s going to give us extra courage in all of this. I want you to feel okay about palliative care. I want you to feel okay about the great advantage we have of having more than alcohol or biting a lead bullet as we near the end of death. I want you to realize that I think we have a lot of advantages here even in understanding dying.

How can we face the question of if we resuscitate, are we just going to be doing this again in five minutes or five hours? I think we can have do-not-resuscitate orders that probably can make a lot of sense when we’re near the end of someone’s life. So don’t feel like you’re alone on this. I think a lot of good consultation, calling your pastors in when you’re near the end of this. Pastors have to deal with this a lot. Doctors, pastors, your family members—don't make these decisions alone. I think you can walk through this, Shane, with a lot more confidence.