Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
so I'm sure you've all heard of the TV show The Walking Dead.
It's kind of like a "worldwide phenomenon", right, and it's a whole show about the zombie apocalypse
and there's a little double entendre when it comes to the title.
The Walking Dead obviously referred to zombies
but they also refer to the human beings because they're walking
and you know that they're ultimately going to die.
In fact, every single episode has this crisis of like, "Wait, we're fighting for our lives ...
but in the end we're all gonna die. Why keep fighting?"
In fact, these peoples, they've had their lives completely overturned.
Their family and friends are mostly dead or are walking around zombies.
There's no security, there's no comfort, there's no coffee (laughs)
there's no Wi-Fi!
Like the big question is,
if at the end of the whole deal we're gonna die, why keep on fighting? Why keep on walking?
Why keep on living?
Is life worth living?
You know, there's a French philosopher, his name is Albert "Cammus".
Is that how you say it? Just kidding.
Albert Camus, he was an existentialist philosopher and he said this.
He actually said that there's only one truly serious philosophical question.
Out of all the philosophical questions out there, there's only one truly serious philosophical question.
Why not suicide?
Because there's two ways of looking at the world.
One is that if there's no God, there's no purpose to anything. It's all an accident.
Therefore, life is meaningless. Therefore, nothing matters.
The other way of looking at the world is that, if there's a God, then there's a purpose to creation.
And then even when I can't understand the meaning behind the moment,
I know that everything matters.
Two ways to looking at the world: one is no God, nothing matters.
The other is with God, everything matters even if I don't know how to make sense of it.
I bring this up because of a couple of things.
One is our country is facing big decisions when it comes to physician assisted suicide.
People who are at the end of their lives or in a desperate place, in a dark place in their lives
are asking, "Is life worth living? Why not suicide?"
And also because of a movie that came out, Me Before You.
You've probably heard of it. It was a book back, I think, in 2012.
This movie is about a guy named Will
and Will is this really good-looking, really wealthy, very much loved man
who's also paralyzed.
And he meets this woman Lou, who steps into his life and knows that he's planning on killing himself
and tries to show him that life is worth living,
but ultimately—spoiler alert—Will decides no, life's not worth living
because I'm paralyzed and so he ends up killing himself.
So, here is Will, even though he has all these great things going for him:
he's wealthy, he's attractive, people love him.
He's paralyzed and that's incredibly painful, like no, I'm not making fun of that at all
but because of that, he doesn't have the quality of life he would want, so—
he decides to end his life.
But I would say this.
Maybe he can move but what if he's alone?
Is his quality of life sufficiently decreased there?
Maybe he can move and he has people around him. but he's been disfigured.
Is his quality of life sufficiently decreased there that his life's no longer worth living?
So there's two different ways of looking at the world.
Again, nothing matters [or] everything matters.
Or quality of life ethic versus a sanctity of life ethic.
What Christianity introduced to the world was what you'd call a sanctity of life ethic
This vision, that every human being, your life matters,
that because there's a purpose, because there's meaning,
because you're made in God's image and likeness, that even when you're in your darkest moment,
even when you are unwanted by everyone else, even when you're in incredible pain,
that your life is still worth living because there's a sanctity of life ethic
versus this quality of life ethic.
Now I know what happens is this, is that we watch this movie, right?
And we get afraid because that's what propaganda does, it plays off of our fears.
We watch it and we're like, "Man, but what if that was me?"
I've talked to so many people afterwards like, "Yeah, but Father, but what if that was you?
What if you were gonna be paralyzed rest of your life? What if—?" All these kinds of things
But I would I would flip it back around and say, "Yeah, what if? What if you were in your darkest moment,
what kind of culture do you want surrounding you in your darkest moment when you feel the most worthless,
when you feel completely unwanted, when you feel you have nothing left to live for,
do you want to be surrounded by a culture that says, "Hey, it's great that you're around but—
if you want to kill yourself we're totally OK with that."
Or would you rather be surrounded by a culture that says, "When you feel in your darkest moment,
the most unwanted,
the most powerless,
do you want to be surrounded by a culture that says, "We're going to fight for you.
We're going to advocate for you, not just for whatever choice you want to make.
We're gonna advocate for you and say that even though you feel worthless,
you feel unwanted, even though you're in the midst of incredible pain,
you're wanted.
Your life has meaning.
We claim you. We're gonna fight for you
and we're actually even going to show you that there's a purpose and a power in your suffering."
Because that's one of Christianity's hugest gifts to the world
that suffering isn't meaningless.
Remember? If there is a God, then everything matters,
even our suffering there's a purpose and a power to suffering.
Back in 1988, there was a young woman, a seventeen-year-old young woman in Italy named Chiara Badano.
She got cancer and very, very quickly, this beautiful, and healthy, athletic, active woman was confined to her bed.
She couldn't even hardly move
but she said this, she said I now offer my sufferings to Jesus
and if I can offer him this pain, if I can offer him this suffering,
I unite it to him for the salvation of souls.
You know, at one point, people come visit her and they tried to comfort her,
but she'd smile at them and encourage them so much, that they were in fact comforted
because here she had this worldview that said life is worth living.
Now, I know that when it comes to the physician assisted suicide,
there's politics and there's courts and there's culture.
Here's the thing: As Christians, we don't have to wait for the courts.
We don't have to wait for the culture.
We need to be willing to do what the early Christians did.
You know when the plague broke out through various parts of Europe,
what people would do is they would have someone in their family had caught the plague
and so to protect the rest of the family, they would just put these people—
their moms and dads, their siblings, their children, their spouses—
out onto the streets, let them die there.
Here's what Christians would do.
They wouldn't petition the governor or petition the emperor,
like you need to come and help us.
What they would do is they would go around
and they would pick up those that no one else wanted and say, "You're wanted."
They would go around and collect the people that everyone else had discarded
and said, "Your life is worth living."
Because this what we're supposed to do. I'm not gonna wait for the courts to change.
I'm not gonna wait for the culture to change.
As a Christian, I have to change.
It doesn't mean that we abandon the courts or abandon the culture,
but it does mean that we start local.
Who are the people who are least wanted in your family?
Who are the people that are least wanted in your school or at your work?
Who are the people that are least wanted in your life?
To find them, to bring them in,
and to fight for them
because the job of the Christian is not to wait for the courts or the culture.
The job of the Christian
is to have that sanctity of life ethic
that motivates us to go out and save lives.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike.
God bless.