The Dilemma of Current Materialism

The Dilemma of Current Materialism

 

By Fred O. Blakely

Increasingly, we are being confronted with the dilemma created by a materialistic technology. Particularly is this so in view of the phenomenal advances In medical science and the development of life-support and -maintenance systems.

 

Time was, when death threatened, the family doctor did what his limited knowledge and means permitted, with the not uncommon result that the patient died, without any agitation or controversy concerning the involvement of legal, moral, or spiritual considerations. But now all that has changed, and we are by no means persuaded that it is unfailingly for the better.

 

Mechanical, human, and animal transplants into the body of the ailing one are being made. In addition, highly sophisticated life-maintenance systems are employed for prolonged periods of time on even hopelessly ill or injured patients. The health-care people, of course (incidentally), reap astronomical financial receipts from these procedures, and yet, in the latter cases, the stricken one still dies.

 

The morally-complicated aspect of the situation arises in the case of the hopelessly afflicted. Who is to say when the synthetic life is to be discontinued, and the dying person be permitted to depart the body, as God has appointed him? It is at this point that the spiritual dilemma of reference emerges.

 

With such a grave decision to be made. the health-care people, as a rule, and, more often than not, the family of the patient also, simply are not qualified by spiritual attainment to make the delicate judgment. The spiritual acumen has lagged far behind the radical advance in material technology, so that, Frankenstein like, the latter mocks man by the dilemma into which his godless inventive genius has thrust him.

 

In this state of things, what is desperately needed is not more advance in technology. Rather, it is a crash program of repentance and faith by which our decadent civilization seeks God, and the wisdom and judgmental ability that only He can impart, so that it may be able to cope with the technology which it already has. Only in that way can the ethical discriminations which modern technology is increasingly demanding be properly made.