The principle that governs Christian compassion… is not ‘minimize suffering.’ It is ‘maximize care.’ Were our goal to minimize suffering, no doubt we could sometimes achieve it by eliminating sufferers. But then we refuse to understand suffering as a significant part of human life that can have meaning or purpose. We should not, of course, pretend that suffering in itself is a good thing, nor should we put forward claims about the benefits others can reap from their suffering… The suffering that comes is an evil, but the God who in Jesus has not abandoned us in that suffering can ring good from it for us as for Jesus. .. Our task is therefore not to abandon those who suffer but to ‘maximize care’ for them as they live out their own life’s story. We ought ‘always to care, never to kill.’

Gilbert Meilander, Bioethics: A Primer for Christians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), pp. 65-66, cited in Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness, p. 173.