Straight from the Competition!
Looking through the posts of Being! Or Nothingness, one of my fellow nominees for Best New Blog (vote for me!), I found some really insightful thoughts regarding the culture of life, euthanasia, and the controversy over Million Dollar Baby. Here it goes:Sure [the movie is] an apologia for euthanasia . . . but it doesn't have to be. Christians today (not to mention conservatives) seem to be in the business of elimating everything in the culture that they think doesn't support their ideology. This is exactly the problem. Christians today treat Christianity as an ideology, something that others must be "convinced" of, even if that means eliminating everything that would not support it. They treat Christianity as a moralism and not as a man, a man who has come to us and said "Follow me" and offer us life, a life that not even death can destroy.
A life that death can't destroy . . . nor the culture of death for that matter. When will christians realize that the culture of death is not something to be feared, but something to be combatted with Life? This film, in my opinion, should be used by Christians to fight Euthanasia. Ebert tells us:
"I believe the character Maggie is such a fighter that she could learn to deal with her disability and enjoy her life. But here is the important point: She doesn't believe that. Yes, it is true, as critics have charged, that she receives inadequate counseling. That the care in her hospital is not good, and the security is laughable. But the screenplay by Paul Haggis and Eastwood's direction make that clear -- they know it, too. It is not movie criticism to say Maggie needed better counseling. We might as well say Hamlet needed a psychiatrist."
If this is true, then we should take up where this line of argument leaves off. People are not choosing Euthanasia because they really want to die, they are using it because they think their lives aren't valuable, worthwhile, important. They are choosing Euthanasia because the counseling they receive is inadequate, often motivated by financial concerns. They are choosing Euthanasia because of poor care and neglect. They are choosing Euthanasia because of our failure to love.
In the end, this movie seems to help make our case. Euthanasia is the response of a people that have given up hope. A people that see no positivity to life. A people who are as dead on the inside as they seek to make those they "care" for.
But Christianity is a living hope. Christianity is the announcement of a Presence that offers us a postivity toward life. Christianity is a people who are alive, with life-life, and seek to fill those around them with the same hope, postitivity, and life.
We have nothing to fear from this movie. We have only to fear the timidity of our hearts.
posted by ertandberni @ 2:08 PM
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