I have been struggling for quite some time to organize my thoughts about what it means to me to have a “consistent ethic of life.” How do I honor life amongst the death that regularly occurs in this mortal plane? How do I go about redeeming life and creating holy space for it in the here and now, while all the while understanding that it is terribly impermanent and, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, “… nasty, brutish, and short.”

On one end of the spectrum, there is life at the very beginning and the debate concerning not only abortion and abortion rights versus the right to life, but also the rights of the infertile and what does one think about the ethics of infertility treatments versus the thousands upon millions of children needing food and water and good homes world-wide. How do those issues impact the way I live? Should they? I haven’t even begun to think about cloning, but now I think I should. Apparently, products from cloned animals are going to be in grocery stores soon. I need to begin to follow this more closely.

In the middle there are all sorts of issues. One we, in the LightFamily, have taken on this year is what to do with guns. LightBoy has become fiercely enamoured with WWII because of a video game given to him by friend P3T3. I don’t want him to think that weapons are whizz, bang fun on a video game. I want him to understand the full awesome, terrible horrible might of a bullet. I don’t think one can get that impact without ever firing a weapon … or several. One must endure the pangs of hunter safety courses and weapons safety drills and then perhaps even kill an animal before understanding that horrid cliche …”Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” So we gave LightBoy a teeny-tiny .22 for Christmas to begin the process of understanding his place on the planet.

Other issues in the middle concern how to eat without cruelty to the fellow creatures that abide on the earth with us. We are given the right to rule over them. With that comes responsibility to care for and honor them as creatures with dignity and worth in their own right. Animals are not a product to be farmed and industrialized and manufactured as if they were cars. It might make them cheaper, but then that also makes us cheaper as well. I don’t believe we’ve thought through the end results of industrialization thoroughly enough to understand it’s full impact on us, the animals, or the environment. Cheaper and faster, we are finding is not always best or even better.

Then we come to the end of life. Modern medicine has invoked miracle after miracle prolonging life. In the end, though, we must all die. How long must we live and under what circumstances have become the questions we need to answer, usually long before we are ready to consider them. Dying has become not a question of when our time is up, but when are our loved ones ready to “pull a plug.” Medicine has become able to prolong the ability of our physical shells to breath and contain the symptoms of life, but are we living at that point?

What about capital punishment? This is one question in the midst of the myriad of others that I have found rather easy to answer. I believe that capital punishment is wrong. I don’t believe there is any justification for capital punishment other than revenge. It is not a deterrent; there have been a multitude of studies that prove that it does not deter crime. It is not rehabilitative. One can not be rehabilitated once one is dead. Therefore it’s only purpose is revenge. I am, in particular, having a difficult time dealing with this particular sentence. Sadaam Hussein was a really bad guy. One of the worst. I’ll grant that. If anyone deserved a death sentence, he would (except, yes, I don’t believe anyone does). Here’s why I’m particularly having a hard time with this one, though. Part of the reason that Sadaam Hussein was such a horrible, bad guy is because we (the U.S. … well, our government/C.I.A.) encouraged him. We told him it would be okay if he did his bad horrible deeds, we’d look the other way. We actually put him in power and then turned a blind eye while we knew exactly what he was doing and when and how. Now, after 20 years of encouraging his badness, we captured him, put him on trial and are executing him.

I especially have a problem with that. That is NOT a consistent ethic of life.