God at the bedside: Shadowlands

This chapter discusses the issue of spirituality as seen in the film Shadowlands (1993). The film is based on the true story of C. S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins), a professor of English literature at Oxford and later Cambridge, who is perhaps best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Here Lewis struggles to understand the death of his wife Joy from cancer in light of his Christian faith. The chapter argues that an ethicist needs to respect the importance of religion in the lives of patients and families, and be willing to engage them on that level. He or she must be able to identify the spiritual basis of a patient's concerns, and be sufficiently familiar with that particular faith tradition to put those concerns in context.