Article January 1, 2001 ISSUE

Should I be an organ donor?

by Douglas Simmons—Melrose, Massachusetts, USA

At a high school meeting this year, two of my friends were talking about their driving permits. On the form for the permit it asks whether or not you would like to become an organ donor. In the United States you may choose to sign a consent form so that, when you die, hospitals are allowed to harvest your vital organ tissue or bone marrow for transplantation, therapy, research, or education. My friends were discussing how they wanted to be donors, but they couldn't because they were not 18 years old yet. They asked me whether I was one or not, and I answered that I wasn't. Then they asked, "Is that because of your religion?" And I said, "Yeah, I guess."

But then I thought, "Why am I not an organ donor? Should I be an organ donor?" I brought the question up in my Sunday School class one evening and my teacher answered that Christian Science did not directly state anything one way or another. She said it was really up to the individual.

I wanted to pray for my own answer. I wasn't doing this to explain it to my friends, I was doing it for myself. Lots of questions started running through my mind, such as, "Is this the way that God wants me to help people, or is there a different way?"

I struggled with my questions for a few weeks. I looked up different passages in Science and Health that I thought would help give me an answer. But I didn't feel like I was making any progress so I decided to just continue to pray.

One night I was watching TV and the X-Files was on. It's a television show that mixes science fiction with suspense and drama. In this particular episode a man had died and he was an organ donor. The hospital staff said that his parts were in five different people and four or five different hospitals. And that's when it hit me: after I'm gone I don't want my parts to be in different people. I've spent my life considering God as the source of health, and I've had many healings this way.

Then I had some more realizations. It says in Science and Health that "Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, or other material elements" (p. 475 ). So giving organs to other people is believing that organs can give life. But I know that Life only comes from God.

So I decided not to be an organ donor, but to help people in some other way. That way, I think, is to study and understand Christian Science, and share it with others. This means that, rather than wait to have a surgical operation, or die, to help people with failing organs, I can pray for them right away. And I know God is able to heal them.

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