Among the many things that are completely perverted about what is happening around the body of Terri Shiavo, it is striking how the ones who are raging for “life” are advocating for an artificial life. This confounds me. For if one believes that one is created in God’s image, then one’s internal organs are part of that, of course. A feeding tube most definitely is not. Thus, the religious right are arguing against natural life. To my mind, that is arguing not for God’s will, but man’s.
No theologian, me, and that’s putting it mildly. But I cannot help feeling that what is going on in Florida is blasphemous. I certainly find it distasteful, and that’s putting that mildly, too.
What bothers me more than anything else are are the total perversions of family relationships the religious right are fighting for. In the first place, I do not understand parents who would make of their daughter’s body an object, and that is what Terri Shiavo’s parents are doing. They seem to have nothing else in their lives to sustain them, because it has been in their power at any moment to stop this horrendous side show that stars what remains of their daughter.
I was an only child and extremely close to very loving parents. I cannot conceive of my parents doing such a thing to me. I would never have done such a thing to them. I was told I had to consent to having my mother’s leg amputated after a surgery that caused the blood to quit flowing into it. I refused. I did not want her to die more than anything in the world; I didn’t think I could live without her. But it was no longer about me. Mother would have been devastated had I allowed that. As it was, they restored the flow of blood and she died two days later anyway. I spent the last two days of her life telling over and over not to worry about me anymore, but to do what she had to do. She regained consciousness an hour before she died to tell me that Daddy (he had died 7 years before) had been there and she loved me. I have high standards when it comes to parents. Terri Shiavo’s parents are not behaving like decent loving parents.
But the really important thing here is about the perversion of the relationship between husband and wife that the religious right is pushing. Since law has existed, the legal relationship between husband and wife has superseded all others. The religious right was making that argument themselves just yesterday, I recall. It had something to do with how only certain people who are in love are entitled to that exalted state, since it’s sacred, and under attack. For the religious right, everything is always under attack; yet it is the religious right that spends most of the time attacking.
What’s under attack from the religious right is just about everything that makes your lives familiar to you day in and day out. Mainly it is is your right to the skin and bones and blood and fluid and muscle you are walking around in. They want to take it away from both you and God, if you believe in God. They want it to belong to their state. They want their state to tell you what your doctor can advise you on, what your doctor can do to treat certain things, what your doctor can prescribe, and whether or not you live or die. They want to take God’s real gift to mankind away from you. They want to take your free will.
Isn’t this blasphemy?