World Christianity
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 61, No. 2 – Spring 2019
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
By Jonie Eareckson Tada. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018. 203 pages. Softcover, $16.99
Joni Eareckson Tada is a Christian evangelist, radio personality, author and the CEO of Joni and Friends, an organization that ministers to special-needs families and churches with similar ministries. She is the author of numerous books, including A Step Further, and A Spectacle of Glory.
Although there are numerous publications that discuss assisted suicide, disabilities, and other bioethical issues, Tada’s personal history of struggling through quadriplegia, breast cancer, and depression adds considerable weight to the discussion of how to respond to dying. Her time spent as an advocate for the disabled also gives her many personal anecdotes and real-life scenarios to draw upon in her examples. Her experiences make her undoubtedly one of the most qualified persons to write on this particular subject.
As the title suggests, the thesis concerns the moral judgments that must be made at the end of life and how to find the right way to approach death as a Christian. In a sense, Tada’s book is about having a good death, not to seek it prematurely and neither to prolong a natural process unnecessarily.
Tada uses concrete examples from her experiences with those whom have had to make difficult moral decisions in ambiguous situations. Each chapter asks a question of the reader, presents gray-area cases, and ends with group discussion prompts, making the book suitable for group or private Bible study. Tada discusses in detail the meaning of suffering and pain, what it really means to die with dignity, if life is worth living under certain conditions, and how the moral decisions made by the dying are a testament, for either good or ill, to those around them.
Related topics touched upon are famous euthanasia cases, the widespread abortion of Down Syndrome babies, life support systems, unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, minimally conscious states, and hospice care. One of the most helpful subjects she brings up is that of Advance Care Directives versus Living Wills and the questions everyone should ask before signing such documents.
As far as Tada’s ethical system is concerned, on the surface it appears to be a Christian situation ethic, but the conclusions she arrives at are far from Joseph Fletcher’s. Unlike pure situation ethics with its human-centered perspective that can devolve into sheer relativism, Tada reshapes her circumstantial or situation ethic by encouraging prayer and Scripture reading before making any serious moral decision like the ones described in her examples. She always points to God as the ultimate source of wisdom during these times, keeping the Holy Spirit as the foundation of the moral choice, not simply the situation itself. Therefore, her ethic remains a biblical ethic but retains some important elements of situation ethic, such as motive and intention.
Certain subject matter pertaining to her topic that she does not touch upon such as the movement to change the laws regarding organ harvesting from people diagnosed as persistently unconscious and the euthanizing of dementia patients who cannot give consent can be found in the work of authors and advocates like Wesley J. Smith, a common contributor for First Things.
This reader found When is it Right to Die? to be approachable and appropriate for the average reader or to be used as a group study, which it is clearly formatted for. It is easily digestible despite the painful subject matter and non-academic in nature, intended for a mainstream audience, whether Christian or not. Tada’s honesty, insight and optimism is a testimony in itself, and she repeatedly points her audience toward salvation in Jesus Christ, making her book an evangelical tool as much as an informative and sensitive look into humanity’s deepest fear: death.
