“That Wicked City, Joplin, Missouri, that Slew Nancy Cruzan”

Michael Bray

25 May, 2011

What was the matter with Joplin? What can we learn?

Of course, we who are not speaking as prophets of God can only speculate about the occasion for disasters. When are such devastating weather-related events “natural disasters”? And when ̶ judgments? Let us propose that there are no “natural disasters” since God, Himself, rules and sustains His creation from beginning to end and from moment to moment. This is historic Christian doctrine. Now, if these “disasters” are judgments, for what sin(s) are they executed? Since He is omnipotent and omniscient, He has full knowledge of and is able to change the course of any event that occurs anywhere at anytime.

Some suffer great losses and others enjoy wonderful blessings for reasons, which though they cannot be discovered by men, still serve divine purposes (Job). We are told by the great Revelator, the Messiah himself, that sometimes diseases or handicaps occur for the awesome purpose of displaying God’s glory through a miracle at the hand His Servant – with the apparent intention of validating his Servant as the authentic messenger from God and “so that the works of God might be displayed” (John 9:3).

The increase of His glory in that fashion is attenuated in the post-apostolic age by the absence of those miracle working, hand-picked-by-Jesus Apostles walking the earth, but the idea of someone’s life bringing Him glory through affliction is still a fact in as much as it serves to “sanctify” God’s people (Hebrews 12). One may turn, for a contemporary example, to the paraplegic Joni Eareckson Tada, whose diving board accident and subsequent testimony to God’s grace has resulted in immeasurable praise and countless personal conversions.

Another occasion for the judgment of cities is their corporate refusal to respond to the Truth when it is made abundantly evident to them. Whole cities are called to account for their rejection of the Gospel (Matt. 11:20-24; Gen. 18, 19).

The Scriptures record the fact that judgment comes in many forms: war, famine, disease, and weather. Drought and flooding are the instruments of judgment associated with Elijah and Noah. Storms are sent by God to Jonah and to Jesus to accomplish His purposes. The weather serves God’s purposes in bringing judgments (Deut. 28:23, 24) as well as His favor (Deut. 28:11).

Sin and the City

Let us consider, again, the matter of divine judgment of a city. Of course, all cities have a number of unregenerate sinners and, by tolerating of even encouraging miscreant and criminal behavior, have earned the righteous judgment of God. And it is only by His own forbearance that any of our particular, blood-soaked, American cities are not smashed by a selection of the variety of meteorological catastrophes available in His heavenly arsenal (Luke 13:1-5).

The salient point in these meditations upon that Word is for the observer to reflect upon the sins of a given doomed city to discover whether, perhaps, repentance is overdue for ourselves. This is precisely the message Jesus gives to his listeners when he references the judgment of “the Galileans” and “Siloam” (Luke 13). That these cities, when destroyed, were judged by God is not in question. The sovereignty of God is orthodox Christian doctrine.

Whatever the Lord pleases, He does,

In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.

He causes the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth,

Who makes lightnings for the rain,

Who brings forth wind from His treasuries.

He smote the firstborn of Egypt,

Both of man and beast.

He sent signs and wonders into your midst, O Egypt,

Upon Pharaoh and all his servants.

He smote many nations

And slew mighty kings . . . (Psalm 135:6-10).

The matter that Jesus addressed was the false doctrine of the Jews of Jerusalem who thought that they were beyond the reach of the Law’s condemnation. Judgments did not pertain to the covenant people. They were blameless because they had been chosen and were in possession of God’s Law. Whenever they heard of the fall of other cities they did not humble themselves in gratitude that God had overlooked their sins and extended them mercy. Rather, they thought themselves distinguished from those sinners whose guilt was evident by the judgment they received. What God had intended for mercy, they interpreted as credit. They were not wicked like those Gentile cities.

The recent judgment upon Joplin follows soon after the earlier destruction of Japan two months ago. It is useful to contemplate the particular wickedness which incited the Almighty’s indignation, but with humble recognition of the fact that it is always by His grace that we are not treated worse than we are. “His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.” (Lam. 3:22,23).

I had not been thinking much about Joplin’s history when I received an email from a friend. It was the editor and contributor to my book, A Time to Kill, who wrote something about Joplin and Nancy Cruzan following the tornado destruction of a few days before. Cathy Ramey opined with a phrase which serves me as the title of this short article. The Cruzan name is associated with accelerating the development of “euthanasia” as a means of ridding ourselves of burdensome handicapped citizens. To be sure, there are more complicated issues on the method that humans exit this biosphere than there are on their entrance into it. Nevertheless, the rejection of the traditional western (Judeo-Christian) high view of human life together with the exaltation of “the environment” invites some bizarre considerations regarding compulsory population control (e.g. forced abortion in China which continues without criticism from elitists of the western academy and political community). The western (post-Christrian) world has lost its way so that a heartland city like Joplin can be as depraved as any California San Franciscan.

Nancy Cruzan suffered severe brain damage from a car accident in 1983 and the moral and legal controversies in her case led to legal conflicts from which the case law developed which governs current end-of-life issues. She remained until her death in 1990 in a “permanent vegetative state” in which, allegedly, all higher brain activity had stopped. As ethics professor Scott Rae in Moral Choices describes her condition, “Only the involuntary function, such as heartbeat, breathing, and digestion – the functions regulated by the brain stem – continued.” She was kept alive by feeding her with foods and liquids through a tube inserted into her stomach. After seven years of this, the parents wanted to stop feeding her this way. The controversy centered around the question of terminating not “medical treatment” but “basic care.” When the courts finally allowed the tube to be removed, she died two weeks later – having starved to death.

In the middle of this controversy, Operation Rescue was at its height, organizing Christians around the country to come physically down to their local abortion facility and block the doors to prevent to intentional killing of innocent children – healthy or unhealthy. Cathy Ramey happened to be in Joplin, working for OR temporarily along with serving as editor of Andrew Burnett’s Life Advocate Magazine (subsequently sued out of existence by Planned Parenthood in Planned Parenthood v. ACLA, 1995). She had this to say about Joplin after I asked about her quip - the title of the article you are reading:

I was in Joplin running the OR communications center at the time. My personal task at one point was to contact every church in the area and ask them to hold Nancy up in prayer at their Sunday services. Every pastor but one declined in one way or another; "we don't want to get involved," and excuses of that sort. It was quite discouraging to see that just requesting prayer, nothing else, and hoping the Lord would then lead them was not something they were willing to risk.

Yes, there are come complicated end-of-life issues. They are in a class separate from those surrounding the intentional destruction of human beings in their incipient state: fetal, near-nascent, even post-birth! But doesn’t it seem damnable that the most vigorous champions of the innocent womb children in the 1980s, Operation Rescue – when they appealed to the churches of Joplin to simply pray for Nancy Cruzan – should be rebuffed so?

The most profound moral and doctrinal message that must be preached today in our pagan land is the sanctity of human life – that human beings are created in God’s image; that homo sapiens are not just another mammal on the Linnaeus’s taxonomy chart. This doctrine of the imago Dei in man is of the most profound importance and fundamental to all forms of philanthropy and humanitarianism.

The pastors of Joplin were called upon a few decades ago to pray at a very crucial, opportune and even divine moment. They refused the call. The country has continued to wander through the slough of Godless folly. Sympathizers will respond with that American charity which will surely be heaped upon them. But many of these generous philanthropists, even in their kindness, have overlooked the doctrine which must be declared and upheld if humanitarianism is to triumph over misanthropic environmentalism. That doctrine is homo imago Dei – the image of God in man. This is the foundation for the dignity of man and the protection due the innocents.

The reports of Nancy Cruzan lying in a “persistent vegetative state” are untenable. As Dennis Graves reported in KY3 News (Mount Vernon, Mo., Oct. 22, 2003):

Sheriff Doug Seneker guarded Cruzan's room at the Missouri Rehabilitation Center. Lawrence County Sheriff Doug Seneker was a deputy sheriff at the time. He questions whether Nancy Cruzan was in a persistent vegetative state. His opinion is based, in part, on her reactions three days before her death when he went into her room to check on her. "She turned and looked at me and stared at me with a panicky look, sweating profusely, and the thought I had was, she was thinking, ‘Oh, here’s a policeman, he’ll help me.’ But we weren’t allowed to do that,” said Seneke. In fact, Seneker and other officers were required to prevent others from helping her.

"We had a group called Operation Rescue that were intent on getting into her and they had a nurse with them that was going to replace the feeding tube,” said the sheriff. “That was their stated goal and they kept finding ways to get into the hospital. We arrested 15 of them.”

The whole tragedy must have been a terrible ordeal for the victim’s family. Nancy’s father, Joe, killed himself in 1996, five years after Nancy died. Her mother, Joyce, died in 1991.

Maybe this city was being called by God through the mouth of Operation Rescue – a band of prophetic servants of God – to repent and honor the God who gives life and takes it away. And if that city failed, mercy was shown for 21 years. The opportunity for repentance for some is over. May the living in all the United States heed the warning and turn from the shedding of innocent blood.

UPDATE:

Following is more from Cathy Ramey to me on Cruzan and Joplin, Missouri.
MBray

[Ramey says]
You have stated it well! But here are some more facts that I acquired while working in the communications center that Advocates for Life paid for (not O.R., to be technically correct).
 
To me it matters not if Nancy was in a coma without machines initiating autonomic functions, or in a state of lesser diminished capacity. But here are the facts as presented in legal affidavits by the "rehabiilitation" facility staff and others who had a relationship with Nancy; she was able to eat on her own just as a 10-month baby would, with someone spooning food into her mouth. But feeding Nancy that way was deemed "too slow," so a feeding tube was placed in her stomach to facilitate the busy staff and her too-busy family that also could not spare the time to feed her.
That stomach tube became the focus of the legal case to euthanize Nancy as it was distinguished as an "artificial means" of sustaing her life and opened the door for "removal of the tube" or simply not using it. No new orders were given to feed Nancy the good-old-fashioned way as an alternative.
Not only could Nancy, if properly offered, open her mouth and chew her food, she had preferences as to what was fed to her. She had favorite TV shows that staff identified and set for her to watch each day. Yes, Nancy was deeply impaired and slept a lot. No, she could not speak intelligible words, nor could she manipulate her body to be self-sufficient in any way. But according to one staff member affidavit, Nancy communicated with her eyes and with her resistant behavior (e.g., rejecting some foods as not to her taste). These facts were affirmed in an affidavit supplied by a priest that visited Nancy on occasion, but his testimony was, apparently, thought to be biased by his church's doctrine.
The media cooperated in killing Nancy, all but ignoring what was being done to her in Joplin. They elected to print information suggesting she was merely a shell of a person, kept alive by greedy rehabilitationists, and "would never want to live that way." But in truth, Nancy had adapted to her limitations and relied upon others, trusting them to do what she could not. That is the way of being disabled in some capacity or other.
Before we are so-limited, we opine we would be unhappy or tormented by such dependency, but the human spirit is amazingly strong. Nancy fought to survive her initial injuries and won; she did not die as a result of the car accident. But Nancy was absolutely helpless, as needy as an infant when it came to battling the U.S. Supreme Court, her parent's and their lawyers perceptions that some lives are not worth living. She had no strength to contradict the media lackeys that chose carefully what facts the public was to be given, and she could not compel the compassion of churches and individuals so set upon their own needs. Few, far too few, could be bothered helping a defenseless woman.
But none of this should suprise any of us. People, helpless like Nancy, even people whose bodies are functioning perfectly and naturally for their age and stage of development are killed by the thousands every day without most people batting an eye. Nancy was just a larger, more cumbersome victim to the madness of our culture which sees needy people as less worthy of survival.

Cathy Ramey "

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