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PAS:Witnessing to the dying  by C. John Miller

   The call came unexpectedly. I had known the man's health wasn't
good, but I wasn't prepared for this message: "Come to the hospital
quickly. Mr. York is dying!"

   At the hospital I received my second shock. The sound of Mr. York's
breathing was horrible. This non-Christian man was dying from lung
congestion; he was suffocating and had already lapsed into a coma.

   TUBES AND PARAPHERNALIA

   The whole scene left me dismayed. My impression was of tubes and
hospital paraphernalia everywhere.

   Here I was, a young pastor who had never before been plunged into
anything like this. To top it off, I didn't know the patient all that
well. Once or twice I had talked to him about Christ, but his response
had been vague. So what should I do? How do you minister to a man who
seems unconscious? No seminary course had prepared me for anything like
this.

   Even so, I've long been convinced that God's sovereign plan governs
everything. But what kind of web was the Lord weaving here? All I could
see to do was to give Christ's gospel to Mrs. York.

   Yet when I leaned my heart on the Almighty, the deep waters of death
seemed less threatening. God began to bring to mind things I'd heard
several years before from a Christian nurse.

   This distinguished lady had encouraged me in hospital visitation and
laid down some guidelines for communicating with a patient who seems to
be unconscious. In effect she had said, "Don't assume that a person in
a coma or apparently unconscious is beyond all communication. Sometimes
the patient who does not speak or show signs of listening can hear you.
Don't be misled by appearances."

   THREE THINGS TO DO

   To this she added wise counsel on communicating the gospel to the
person who appears to be unconscious, especially to the dying:

   1. Read to the patient a short, familiar passage of Scripture, a few
verses that sum up the gospel (as, John 3:16, 17).

   2. Speak rather loudly and briefly, close to the patient's ear.

   3. Repeat the process several times, using as much as you can the
very same words each time you speak.

   With these thoughts, coming to mind, I prayed with Mrs. York in the
hallway outside the dying patient's room. Then I asked, "Do I have your
permission to speak with your husband about his need for Christ--and to
speak loudly to him?"

   She consented, and I approached the bedside. I read Scripture--no,
really I half yelled it at him. And I fired off a two -minute sermon,
setting forth the way of salvation. I did this repeatedly.

   "TELL BOB I'M SAVED!"

   Afterwards Mrs. York and I came in and out of the room to see how
her husband was doing. For a short time hope was renewed for his
recovery, but his life energy continued to drain away.

   Then suddenly one day Mr. York raised up in bed, tubes and all, and
said, "Tell Bob I'm saved!" Then he slipped back into the coma.

   Mrs. York was dumbfounded but also greatly comforted. It turned out
that "Bob" was a Pentecostal neighbor who had been witnessing to Mr.
York. The next day the man died; but there is good reason to hope that
he is now in eternity, adoring the Father and the Lamb, along with
persons like the thief on the cross.

   What impresses me from that experience is how little the church does
to train its leaders to bring real hope to the dying. As a result we
tend to write off the dying as unreachable or not worth the effort.
Except for the "training" given me by a wise Christian nurse, I
wouldn't have had a clue as to the opportunity at this man's bedside.

   PSALM 23--READ REALISTICALLY

   In a second experience of ministering to the dying, which took place
nearly ten years later, I had to learn that more goes on at the bedside
of the dying than you may think.

   Mrs. Smith was about forty years old and dying of cancer. I had not
known her before, but the Smith family had friends in our church who
told me of her sad condition.

   My twice-weekly visits to her bedside were brief and apparently
profitable to her. I began by reading a familiar passage of Scripture,
one that sets forth the lovingkindness of the Lord. This time I started
with Psalm 23, a passage that I almost always use as an opener in a
hospital visit when I'm on unfamiliar ground and the situation calls
for special tact.

   I explained that this shepherd psalm pictures a sovereign Lord who
loves his people with infinite compassion and strength. But, I added,
this often is understood unrealistically, with the psalm being used to
evoke sentimental images of sheep gamboling over the green, presenting
God's peace without conflict. In fact, the psalm presents something
entirely different from a nature romanticism. For here you learn about
a perfect security the believer enjoys even in the midst of the deepest
needs and in the very presence of the shadow of death.

   Peace in the midst of conflict! That is what the Shepherd- Lord can
give to those who know him. He helps people where they really live and
when they die.

   But, I concluded, this realistic help comes only to those who know
the Lord personally. This tender Shepherd cares for his own sheep. They
are sinners, and he laid down his life for them in Jesus Christ. And
you, through faith in God's Son Jesus, can come to know this Shepherd
intimately and to rest in the care of his mighty arms.

   This is what I shared at the beginning--though the communication was
much more in the form of dialogue than indicated by the summary here.

   A THEOLOGY OF HEAVEN

   Because of the conversational freedom that developed after about the
fourth visit, Mrs. Smith said something like this: "You know, you
ministers are always talking about heaven. But heaven doesn't mean a
thing to me. I want to live now, right here. Why, what is it then that
makes heaven so special?"

   Her penetrating comment was offered with a smile, and it made me
smile in turn. "You think, " I replied, "that heaven is a pretty boring
place? I can see your idea of it now-- everybody standing around in
choir robes, singing the same boring hymns forever and ever."

   "Well, " I went on,"that's not what it's like at all. Think for a
moment, Sharon. What has been the happiest moment of your life?"

   What followed was striking. She slowly pulled on the question with
the tired ropes of her mind. It turned out that the best, happiest
times of her life came when she was with someone she really loved.

   "And that, " I said with joy, "is what makes heaven so very special.
The Christian loves Jesus most of all. Jesus is his very best friend.
And the great thing about heaven is being there forever with my best
and truest friend."

   That was the high point of this ministry and practically its
conclusion. Apparently the private-duty nurse had been listening, and
she reported my visits to the dying woman's husband.

   MACHINE-GUNNED AT SIX PACES

   At my next visit, the nurse met me in the hall. According to her,
she had talked to Mr. Smith and he did NOT want me visiting so often
for fear that my presence would alert Mrs. Smith to the seriousness of
her condition. Why didn't I do what the other ministers did? They don't
disturb anyone. They stop for a moment, quickly pray, and move on.
Didn't I have any sense? Did I want to get her all upset? Did I want to
get everybody upset?

   Mr. Smith had enough of me, and so had the nurse. "Why," she
continued with righteous anger, "I lie to her a hundred times a day.
It's just what I must do, the Lord forgive me."

   She certainly gave me a powerful shock. This nurse treated me as
though I'd committed some unpardonable crime against a mysterious
deity. I was the blasphemer because I was willing to take death
seriously and to be concerned about the soul of a dying woman.

   If the nurse was upset, I was even more as the charade unfolded
around that bedside. Mr. Smith paid fewer and fewer visits. It was
reported in the community that his loss of interest stemmed from his
already having selected a new wife. Whatever the case, he certainly
handed his wife over to the medical people and then seemed to fade out
of the picture.

   But Christ wasn't finished. Unexpectedly the telephone rang and a
voice said, "Rev. Miller? I'm one of the nurses caring for Mrs. Smith.
She's told me she wants to see you. When can you come?"

   This nurse was on the night shift and turned out to be a Christian
who loved the Lord and Mrs. Smith. She arranged for me to visit while
she was on duty. Furthermore, as Mrs. Smith weakened from the cancer,
the day nurse lost interest along with Mr. Smith.

   ABANDONED TO DIE ALONE

   Although Mrs. Smith was still physically alive, she was socially
dead--abandoned and almost forgotten by her friends and family.

   Again, this was a shock. Earlier the family seemed passionately
committed to keeping her in the dark as to the fact of impending death.
Now that physical death spread its darkening shadow across her thin
face, they couldn't care less.

   Or as one writer bluntly sums up the mood of our century:

   One must avoid--no longer for the sake of the dying person, but for
society's sake, for the sake of those close to the dying person--the
disturbance and the overly strong and unbearable emotion caused by the
ugliness of dying and by the very presence of death in the midst of a
happy life, for it is henceforth given that life is always happy or
should always seem to be so. * (Philippe Aries in WESTERN ATTITUDES
TOWARD DEATH. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1974, p.87.)

   An even deeper issue is what lies behind this attempt to preserve
the collective happiness, undisturbed by death. People want to tame
death, draw its sting by ignoring it and by handing over the dying
person to the medical priests who often do their best to disguise the
reality of death with drugs and other technology. The medical team will
often let you die by inches so that you will never be confronted by the
hard reality that this is it. You just fade away, with little thought
or attention given to your eternal destiny.

   It's still hard for me not to get sick at heart as I think of Mrs.
Smith being eased into eternity, lonely and afraid, her mind crying out
for answers about the nature of life and the meaning of death. Instead
of getting a deeper love from her family, she was increasingly
forgotten. She took months to die, and they couldn't stand it. So far
as I could see, they did everything to hide her, to forget about her;
instead of receiving answers about the purpose of life she received
heavier doses of drugs.

   The only word for the whole situation is "phoney."

   THE LEGAL DRUG-PUSHERS?

   Mrs. Smith's dying was a microcosm of the phoney response to death
that dominates sick rooms and funeral parlors of the western world. I
have known some great doctors who were concerned about the whole
patient, including the issue of his eternal destiny. But as a general
rule I see doctors tending to become legal drug-pushers, respected
leaders thoughtlessly teaching people that the most important thing is
to live without pain.

   What about ministers? If anything, they are worse than doctors
because they should know better. As a class, ministers are on the timid
side--overawed by the real authority in the hands of medical personnel
today.

   But why? Well, the root problem of pastors appears to be their
desire to be popular. Somehow this means that they have an unwritten
deal with the community at large: "You, dear pastor, be nice to us, and
we'll be nice to you. Don't say anything to disturb our right to be
happy. Don't blaspheme against the 'happiness god' and we'll treat you
right."

   MINISTERS WANT TO BE LIKED

   Now I do not agree with the old minister who always took as his
funeral text the words, "Repent, lest you likewise perish." But the
clergymen not only look phoney but ARE phoney when they try too hard to
be liked. As a result, in moments of crisis they can be frightfully
bland and not infrequently they become downright liars. They too serve
the gods of carnal peace and carnal comfort.

   At the bedside of the dying, how many ministers are content to
discharge a social responsibility by mumbling a quick prayer and moving
on? At the funeral, how many ministers preach unrepentant sinners into
heaven, putting forward a "God" who is as bland and lifeless as
themselves? What about the clergyman who expounds on the virtues of the
deceased when, in fact, that departed brother never took the trouble
while alive to discover that he had a rotten set of relationships with
wife, children, and business associates?

   THE SOLUTION: DEATH DEFINED

   To begin with, it's high time we all recognized that we have a great
deal to learn from God. This is true of us pastors who have done so
little in our time to set before our congregations the issues on death
and dying.

   Look, pastor, don't worry whether or not someone calls you "an
ignorant fundamentalist." Death is a mighty mystery and we're all
pretty ignorant of its nature until God introduces us to himself as
Savior, Teacher, and Victor over death. But saturate yourself in the
Scriptures and let their powerful interpretation of life and death take
over your heart and mind.

   What you will learn there is that death is ABNORMAL. Man was made to
live in fellowship with a covenant God and not to die. Yet, because of
sin, death becomes the penalty executed upon fallen man by a holy God
(Genesis 2, 3). You further learn that death is man's enemy (1
Corinthians 15:26), man's greatest fear (Hebrews 2:15), and Satan's
weapon for destroying man (Hebrews 2:14, 15).

   Satan's strategy is simple. As the prince of a kingdom of darkness,
he has certain rights. He is master over a realm of sin and has a right
to accuse all sinners living in this realm, demanding that God execute
a just penalty against them (Luke 22:31, 32). This penalty is
death--physical, spiritual, eternal. Its leading principle is
separation--separation of man from fellowship with God, of soul from
body, of man from his surviving friends, and eternal separation in hell
from God and all that is good.

   CONSIDER THE AGONY, O MAN

   Scripture does not tell us all we'd like to know about death in
relationship to sin and Satan's rule. It opens the door a crack, just
enough to let us know that there are hostile powers at work far beyond
man's understanding.

   True, science may attempt to explain death apart from sin and Satan,
but then the dilemmas mount. If the scientist says that death is merely
natural and physical, how then does he explain the dying man's deep
sense of struggle with a terrible enemy?

   consider the agony of blasphemous Peter De Vries as he struggles
with his child's death in the semi-autobiographical novel, BLOOD OF THE
LAMB. If death is purely natural, why De Vries' mighty anger against
it? And why do doctors and nurses war so splendidly against death and
feel so frustrated when they lose?

   Good questions. They fall into place once you accept the biblical
tie-in of the triad: sin, death; and Satan.

   But keep reading the Bible and you find that there is much more.
Take up the Gospels and you encounter a Man who overcame sin, death,
and Satan. Death is the Great Separator, but Jesus is the Great
Reconciler. He has become the Prince of life, the author of a new hope
founded upon his perfectly righteous life and his own death in man's
behalf.

   SURRENDERED TO THE LIE

   Let's now apply this to Mrs. Smith. Once her disease worsened with a
pattern of slow, steady decline, she lost all her human rights and her
dignity as well. The family finally had her moved to a nursing home
where she was so heavily sedated that she became a near zombie. All
decision making was out of her hands. She was not permitted to express
any feelings about her approaching death.

   Regrettably, as the end neared she embraced the charade of the
professional staff and her family. She deepened her pretense that she
only had a "back problem."

   But within this framework of deception, I could tell her about a
sympathetic God-man who had honestly looked death in the face at
Calvary, had seen its horror, and had overcome it. I also could tell
her that all who are united to Christ by faith immediately pass into
his presence at death (Acts 7:59). Their souls find a paradise of peace
in the presence of the Father and the Lamb (Luke 23:43). And at the
general resurrection of the just and the unjust, they will inherit
glorified bodies resembling the transformed body of Jesus ( Philippians
3:21). As a pledge and guarantee of this reality, Jesus dwells by faith
in our hearts even now. Heaven awaits; but heaven already has begun to
possess our hearts (1 Corinthians 2:9).

   I'm very, very sorry. Before this experience with the Smith family I
had not taken seriously the idea that death has become the new American
obscenity, the unmentionable word. Americans no longer "die"; they
"pass away."

   A CHRISTIAN BEDSIDE MANNER

   From all of this I also learned that bitter anger is often just
beneath the surface whenever a family member appears to be dying. The
terminally ill patient can get fiercely angry at the doctors for not
informing him as to the seriousness of his medical treatment, of major
surgery or chemotherapy. Without any good reason nurses can catch it
from the patient and the family.

   And, in a word, the pastor should also expect to encounter
bitterness against himself. But knowing this possibility ahead of time,
he should use the attack as AN OPPORTUNITY to show Christ's love. No
matter what happens, God wants you to practice the forgiveness
commanded in the Sermon on the Mount. And the next time you visit, the
patient may well apologize for last week's outburst.

   When he does, you have a beautiful opening to explain the gospel.
But do not seek to force the gospel on someone who does not wish to
listen. Remember that in some sense a sick person is a captive
audience, and you must guard against taking advantage of his
helplessness to preach to him contrary to his expressed desire.

   Let's put it all together now. Here are some steps to take when you
are called to minister as a Christian to a dying non- Christian:

   1. Recruit all the believers you can to pray for the terminally ill
person, his family, and for you. Remember, this is a battle over a
man's eternal destiny and the devil will not give up easily.

   2. Watch to see if fears and frustrations are making it impossible
for the patient to listen to you. If so, find out what they are and do
what you can to relieve them. Remember, he has a physical life as well
as a soul, a social life as well as a spiritual life; and if he is
upset by something trivial like diet, see what you can do to get the
matter straightened out.

   3. Present the gospel in the framework of realistic hope, setting
forth the grace and power to be found in Christ. Lift up Christ and
keep lifting him up as the great Victor-Redeemer who supplies the
answer to man's deepest need. Then at an appropriate point, ask the
person if he knows the Lord Jesus and invite him to trust in this
Savior.

   4. Pray with and for the person with strong and loving convictions
about the realities of divine things. This may be the most important
part of your ministry. For this is how the patient comes to realize
that you know God as your own Father and to expect that he too can
share in God's gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ.

   For myself, I also pray for healing of the patient unless God has
made it abundantly clear that his will is to take the person from this
life. In keeping with the prayer for healing, it seems to me that it is
not ordinarily the minister's duty to inform the sick person of the
approach of death. I believe this responsibility lies with the family,
not with the physician or minister.

   Under special circumstances, however, the minister or doctor may do
this at the request of the family. But even here a word of caution is
in order, just because in some instances the dying person recovers or
at least lives much longer than the doctors think possible.

   5. Make your visits BRIEF AND REGULAR, especially if the illness is
protracted. The patient will begin to expect you at a certain time. So
try not to disappoint him by coming several times in one week and then
staying away for ten days.

   6. Keep your eyes open to see how you can support the family, both
during the final illness and afterwards. Cooked food for the family
supplied by the congregation during the final hours and in the days
afterward often is much appreciated. Spiritual food is, of course, even
more important. So, whenever possible, use the opportunity to teach the
whole family about the person and work of Jesus Christ within the
context of deeds of kindness performed by the Christian community.

   ***

   For any Christian who wishes to minister to the aged and the
terminally ill, I would recommend some background reading to help you
understand the attitudes of psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, patients,
and the general public toward death and dying. Standard works on the
subject are: Herman Feifel, ed., THE MEANING OF DEATH (McGraw-Hill,
1959); and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, ON DEATH AND DYING (Macmillan, 1970).

   For a recent work that provides a bibliography (340 entries), see:
O.G.Brim, et al., THE DYING PATIENT (New York: Russell Sage, 1970). One
of the most helpful works on the practical level is THE PSYCHODYNAMICS
OF PATIENT CARE (Prentice-Hall, 1972), by Lawrence H. and Jane L.
Schwartz.

   For the Christian nurse I would also recommend an article in the
January 1975 issue of the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF NURSING. Written by Helen
H. Whitman and Selby J. Lukes, its title, "Behavior Modification in
Terminally Ill Patients", reveals its Skinnerian orientation; yet it
supplies some common-sense solutions to the behavior problems created
by bad-tempered people who are dying.

   by C. John Miller

   (c) 1978 by PRESBYTERIAN EVANGELISTIC FELLOWSHIP, and issued into
electronic media on a "shareware" basis for informational and
educational purposes. For permission to reprint or republish, please
contact PEF, P O Box 1890 Decatur, GA 30031, [phone].

   This article is also available in an attractively printed booklet
from the same address.