It is a brave act of valour to contemn death; but, where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live. ―Browne
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| (photo: cfah.org) |
A few years ago now, I went to the funeral of a man who had died after having spent the last years of his life with dementia. During the sermon, the minister referred to a section from a catechism―I think it might have been the Westminster Catechism―which teaches, “Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.” He described the last few years of the deceased, and then said that he had come to a point where his disease became so bad that this end was no longer being fulfilled. He was no longer able to glorify God, and so his life had to come to an end.
This sermon struck me and I have often thought of it since. The sentiment was well-meant and intended to help the family understand the death. But I think that the minister was fundamentally wrong: not because that line from the catechism is wrong, but because he thought that a person with a crippling mental disease was no longer glorifying God.
