Greetings!
What is dementia and what does it have to do with the Exchanged Life?
Dementia is a term used for individuals suffering from multiple mental deficiencies such as memory loss and thinking skills. Alzheimer’s disease is its closest relative, while Vascular dementia (results of a stroke) comes in second place. There are many conditions that cause dementia but the most populated are thyroid problems and vitamin deficiencies.
People with dementia classically have problems with short-term memory, keeping track of personal items, remembering names of people and places and planning daily activities, like, appointments and meal planning.
CAUSES
Overall, dementia is caused by damage to brain cells, thus resulting in the brain's inability to file new data or recover filed data within the brain. This is why it is difficult to remember new data presented to the individual. When brain cells are not proactive, the human mind falls back on pre-existing disjointed memories. This results in communication failure with all new data. For example, when a dementia patient looks at a person’s face, that is considered new data. If they fail to recall their name, their brain is deficient in connecting old data with new. Thus, they can’t remember the name of the face they are looking at. Bottom line is if the brain cells are not healthy enough to communicate with each other, the person will manifest this problem in mild to server forms of confusion.
Believe it or not, there is no test
to determine if someone has dementia. It is classified as a patient diagnosis. Meaning, the diagnosis is based on careful medical, social, generalized physical exams and other observations by those around them.
UNUSUAL FACT
According to testimonies of family and friends, people suffering from dementia who claim to have had a conversion to Christianity, rarely forget they are Christians. Most are able to recall simple but intimate details regarding receiving Jesus into their lives. This fact is beyond amazing – it proves many of the promises our Lord gave us.
DEMENTIA & WORLDVIEW
Since dementia has no cure or treatment and it is a progressive pathology (increases daily), new forms of patient comfort are being considered – as in euthanasia. Self-assisted suicide is becoming just as progressive as the recorded cases of dementia itself. If you are new to the ideology of euthanasia, simply put, it is murder.
Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him
. (1 John 3:15)
As our passage reveals,
anyone who hates another is a murderer. Euthanasia is murder. Most authentic Christians agree with this statement. If we keep apples with apples, those who practice murder do not have eternal life (Life of Christ) abiding in them. Euthanizing patients of dementia is not the solution. Loving and respecting them to the very end is.
Most who decide to euthanize a loved one is usually making the decision because of their own deficiencies as a caretaker. Meaning they are tired of caretaking or simply don’t want to be responsible. Statistics prove this. This is why the usage of euthanasia is considered murder. Even in the cases of assisted suicide requested by the patient, it puts loved ones in the position of “pulling the trigger.”
If we continue in deducing our passage, we need to look at the parallel of murder and hate. John is clearly laying out the doctrinal position of those that murder are those that hate. We are called to
love one another.
Our best solution is to review what love is.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things
.
(1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
Some of the leading noted problems
with the caretakers of those that suffer dementia are impatience, frustration and the lack of ability to endure to the end. While this is true and understandable, it does not negate the mandate given to us in this passage.
The simple reality is, all of us will face the probability of dementia in some form or another as we grow old. The question becomes, “Will we have caretakers around us that will apply the full Biblical definition of love?” Not long ago, before the age of retirement homes, the family was required to care for their parents and grandparents when they suffered the degenerative effects of old age. Today, we live in a world where we pay or have the government pay, for the process of ushering our elderly unto death. Humm, I wonder what the Father thinks of this modality?
Remember when Jesus was hanging on the Cross
saying, “John, meet your mother. Mother, meet your son.” This was a new covenant principle being unveiled to sustain what Paul later said to the Corinthians. John became responsible to care for Jesus’s mother until her death. I will not be surprised to discover on the “other side” that John was faithful in all forms of caretaking until her last breath – no matter what degenerate complications she experienced in her old age. Could this be the reason John was the only disciple NOT to be martyred?
This principle of true and proven love has done a complete slow-fade in our society today. The digital age has formed such a fast pace of living that our children and grandchildren minimally leave the elderly to die on their own. Many are faced with the temptation of euthanizing their loved ones because they simply don’t have the time or home structure to provide the most basic need of the elderly - integrity.
I have personally watched
some of the more profound Bible teachers of our age slip into dementia – literally forgetting the basics, like my name. What did/does God call me to do? To love them, answer their questions and repeat my answers again and again, all without embarrassment and shame. You see, I am one of those authentic Christians who believes that true love needs to stay in place with its full list of descriptives. This list is not a menu to pick from, it is descriptive of the Life of Christ who expresses His Father’s love through His children.
Final note.
Always remember as you relate to a person of dementia, Jesus is very much alive in them.
What you do unto the least of these my brethren, you do unto Me.
And for those who might not be born-again, all it takes is one window of mental clarity for them to receive Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Stephen Phinney
Content is taken from,
Discipling The Post-Truth Church, by Dr. Stephen Phinney 2018
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