“I regret that we resuscitated Mr. W. J. Turner. He was a little old man, aged further by the cancer that had invaded his bones and lungs and brain. He had eluded death for so long that his daughters had begun to whisper of his immortality. They believed, or so they told themselves, that he might live forever. When his organs began to shut down like falling dominos, he was admitted to the oncology ward at my hospital. His daughters assured the medical team that he would “beat this cancer.” They told the nurses, “Do everything you can to keep him alive.” The night Mr. Turner died, none of us knew for certain whether his family understood the immensity of his disease or the misery that would doubtless accompany his prognosis . . . His family appeared promptly—hair and clothing so well assembled that one would hardly guess they had been sleeping just minutes before. We sat together in the “fishbowl,” a glass-walled conference room close to Mr. Turner’s bed. I explained what had happened. They thanked us for saving his life. I reiterated, gently, that there was no doubt that his cancer was killing him and that his heart would not likely hold out under the stress of the disease. I asked whether they would consider going without cardiac resuscitation, were his heart to stop again. The eldest daughter did not flinch. “No, Doctor,” she replied. “We are Christians, and we believe that Jesus can heal. We believe in miracles. You do whatever you can to keep him alive.” This has always struck me as something of a paradox. It seems curious that the people who believe most fervently in divine healing also cling most doggedly to the technology of mortals.- LS Dugdale, Lost Art of Dying, 5-6

Dr. Dugdale relates that they had to perform “gruesome” resuscitation on an unconcious and unresponsive Mr. Turner two more times that night at the request of the family. After working for 30 minutes the third time, Mr. Turner was finally pronounced dead. At Mr. Turner’s age, bones are brittle and they most likely fractured and broke ribs doing CPR. Tragically, Mr. Turner was not permitted to die peacefully by his family because they “were Christian.” Dr. Dugdale regretted this and it has haunted him ever since.

During a conversation with Timothy Paul Jones, the apologetics professor, at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in July of 2025, he remarked, “For nineteen centuries after the church was born, sex was private and death was public. We flipped that in the mid-20th century with sex becoming public and death became private.” This and other incidents have prompted me to write a book entitled Memento Mori, Helping the Church Regain the Lost Art of Dying Well. I am in the midst of researching and writing this book.

I am an advocate for helping the church regain the lost art of Dying Well – an art that the church lost in the middle of the 20th century. Ironically, medical advancement was the catalyst.