Paul's Passing Thoughts

By Paul M. Dohse, RN, CDP

The Bible states in 1st Corinthians 15:25-26, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” We note two primary points in this passage: death is God’s enemy, and he will eventually destroy it. Another thought may be noted; more than likely, God does not ordain or create enemies for himself, and while he doesn’t necessarily predetermine everything presently according to his will, we can be sure he predetermines the outcomes he desires. God predetermines happy endings.

Hence, nursing is a good profession because it fights God’s enemy until he returns. That should define nursing. As nurses, we don’t capitulate to God’s enemy with a makeover of any sort. No, death is not a part of life—death is God’s enemy. No, there are not worse things than God’s enemy. No, death is not an “end of life journey.” We make the best of the situation with therapeutic communication and best practice, and do not include any attempt at positive spin. There is no positive spin to improve the so-called “dying process” by calling it, “living well while dying,” No one “dies well,” and there is no such thing as a “good death.” However, fighting God’s enemy to the bitter end could be considered an honorable death, but the honor belongs to the person, not the death. Neither do we honor God’s enemy in any way. At funerals, we honor the life, not the death.

Well, that takes care of various and sundry secular approaches, but this article was inspired by religious nonsense. Megan Basham is a journalist and New York Times bestselling author affiliated with The Daily Wire. She has contributed to major outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Telegraph. She presents herself as an unabashed church lady, aspiring matriarch, and “Christian pitbull” as stated on her X account profile. And unfortunately, was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, apparently, in her lungs. Other reports state that she was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer a year ago.

Megan Bashan, according to her online comments, was inspired to write an article in the Washington Post about her diagnosis by John MacArthur sycophant Phil Johnson, who inspired her to do so through a Westminster Confession citation in song form: “What God ordains is always good; His will is just and holy. As He directs my life for me, I follow meek and lowly.” The Westminster Confession was inspired by Martin Luther’s Theology of the Cross, which makes suffering the primary catalyst for a soteriological process. According to Luther, a person only lives according to the Glory Story, (the story of man), or the Cross Story, which is the story of salvation. It’s a matter of which one a person’s life gives glory to; does your life glorify man, or God? According to Luther, suffering is paramount because it diminishes the human glory and makes room for where all glory belongs…with God, and more specifically, his salvation. Luther believed and taught that the wisdom of God is hidden in suffering as exemplified in the crucifixion and suffering of Christ. In fact, Luther, the father of Protestantism, not only taught that salvation is a process rather than a one-time new birth into the family of God, but a salvation paradigm that makes the cross
(salvation) larger and larger as opposed to everything else in life, including life itself.

Hence, the goal of the “Christian” is to have an ever-increasing knowledge of how far we are from God and his character. This increases, more and more, appreciation and gratitude for our salvation. In essence, sanctification, according to Protestantism, is for the sole purpose of reaching a gratitude sufficient for “final justification” at the one “final tribunal” (Calvin). Obviously, any increase in thinking well of humanity would make the cross smaller and diminish gratitude for salvation. In other words, the highest form of moralism is to know how depraved we are leading to perpetual mini resurrections of joy (the Protestant doctrine of Mortification and Vivification). The goal is to know, increasingly, how far we are from God rather than an attempt to be like God (to be like our Father), which is said to be an attempt to “be the gospel rather than proclaiming the gospel.”

But let me give you the thumbnail for all of this: it’s a religious form of Platonism complete with its church state politics. I have written extensively about this for more than 15 years. But keeping with the thesis of this article, the theology propagated by Megan Bashan makes death and suffering our best friend. After all, what’s more important than eternal life, and the means to achieve it? However, always trust Protestant leaders to lead the way for uber illogical contradiction. The late John MacArthur himself, the modern-day prince of preachers, was fond of hermetical paradox and taught theological contradictions as mutually inclusive.

Which brings us back to Megan Bashan and her Protestant cohorts. How is the Protestant culture of celebrity pastors, leaders, authors, and internet influencers NOT the glory story? Oddly enough, Bashan chose to exclusively publish her article, supposedly as a testimony to fellow suffering Christians, in the Washington Post, and the article cannot be accessed without paying for a subscription. I find this utterly bizarre. And how is this type of exclusiveness not a glory story as well? In addition, she mentioned that Phil Johnson got a cameo in the article for all the “GTY [Grace to You program that Johnson oversees] fans” GTY fans? That’s not a glory story? And then there is the whole Protestant conference circuit where parishioners pay for celebrity speakers to wine and dine at 5-star hotels, while preaching for a call to suffering for purification. In fact, John MacArthur spoke on the subject of suffering and evil at the 2008 Resolved Conference, which took place in Palm Springs, California.

This, however, should be no surprise since Luther himself despised human logic:

Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

And if that wasn’t clear enough…

Reason should be destroyed in all Christians. Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom … Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism… She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets.

And trust me, modern-day Protestantism would make Luther proud in the endeavor to destroy logic. But again, for those of you familiar with Platonism, you know that this view of humanity is Platonist, not Christian.

There is also a familiar contradiction when Protestant leaders get bad news from the doctor. Like most people, they fight the diagnosis tooth and nail with every available medical treatment. Huh? Wouldn’t this, clearly, circumvent God’s work in their lives, reduce humbleness, and increase the glory story according to their theology? According to statements by Basham, she is no exception to this rule; she is pursuing all avenues of treatment. To get rid of the driving force behind sanctification, which is supposedly efficacious for eternal life?

Basham has also shared via social media that her initial reaction to the diagnosis was devastation and she was so depressed that she couldn’t get out of bed. Apparently, this was her initial lack of faith until Phil Johnson showed her the shining light of death and suffering as presented by the Westminster Confession. However, her initial reaction was not only understandable, but totally appropriate. There is no bright side to suffering and death; it is depressing, and an attempt to destroy God’s child.

With all of this said, it is very much like God’s character to bring good out of tragedy, but that doesn’t mean he preordained suffering according to his will. As one person posted on X in response to Basham’s article:

Does God “ordain” cancer itself… or does He sovereignly work through a fallen world where cancer exists?

There’s a difference between saying God can bring purpose through suffering and saying He specifically decreed the disease itself. One emphasizes God’s redeeming power in the midst of evil; the other risks making God the direct author of the very destruction Christ came to overcome when He came and healed those who were sick.

Scripture repeatedly presents sickness and death as enemies connected to the fall, not as “good” creations in themselves. God can absolutely sustain, refine, comfort, and even glorify Himself through suffering. But that does not mean cancer is ordained by God simply because God can work through it.

The cross itself proves this distinction. The murder of Christ was evil in the hands of sinful men, yet God brought salvation through it. God’s sovereignty is seen not by ordaining moral evil, but in overcoming it.

This reasoning makes more sense, especially when we consider things like adolescent cancer units, unless you are of the Protestant persuasion. Protestant leaders have come under fire numerous times for celebrating various tragedies as being “God’s good and holy will.” The Protestant spiritual hero Jonathan Edwards wrote,  

The view of the misery of the damned will double the ardour of the love and gratitude of the saints in heaven… The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints for ever, as it will show them more remarkably their own salvation, and give them a more lively sense of it… The saints in glory will see the doleful state of the damned, and consider that they deserved the same misery… [It] will give them a more lively sense of the distinguishableness of sovereign grace, and of God’s love to them… When they shall see how terrible the wrath of God is, and shall see that it is executed on those who were their own neighbours, or near relations, it will not cause grief or unhappiness to them, but will cause them to rejoice in the glory of God’s justice.

As a nurse, and fellow human being, my thoughts are with Megan Basham and I bid her God’s speed in winning a medical victory over the cancer that has afflicted her. But cancer is not only our enemy, it is God’s enemy. If it was only our enemy, we could bless it and pray for it as we are instructed to do in Scripture. Cancer is no blessing, and God doesn’t preordain enemies for himself. I applaud her for being proactive against the cancer, but not advocating for illogical theology in the midst.

One should never be illogical to impress the confused.