Is Medically-Assisted Suicide Morally Wrong?
Christians oppose euthanasia: Here are four reasons why
Four decades ago when I started teaching at a large, secular university, I told my students that they were pagans. I wasn’t being critical; just trying to be accurate. They wanted a definition so I provided one: A pagan is a person who lives for physical and psychological happiness and when he dies he ceases to exist. I borrowed this definition from the ancient Greeks but it fits the current mood. Because it’s what’s behind the current mania of assisted suicide, sometimes called euthanasia.
Christians oppose euthanasia on doctrinal grounds. Every human being is created in the image of God and has infinite worth and value. No one has the right to take innocent human life, not even the person themselves. In other words it’s murder. It’s abortion for the elderly.
Euthanasia is becoming legal around the Western world. Right now nine nations allow medically assisted suicide. Ten U.S. states have laws legalizing euthanasia as does the nation’s capital, Washington D.C.
The Dutch were to first to legalize it in 2002. Right now around 5% of their deaths are state administered.
Canada legalized it in 2016 and in the first year 1,000 people were terminated. By 2022 it was over 13,000.
Switzerland just legalized euthanasia for non-citizens.
Many other nations are considering legalization.
Why do Christians oppose euthanasia? Four reasons:
1. It is forbidden in the Word of God
Let me say here that it is easy for me to criticize the actions of someone who is terminally ill and in terrible suffering. I can understand why they would want to end their lives. If I were counseling a person like this—and I have sat with the terminally ill while they died—I would tell them that their life, even in the midst of suffering, still has meaning. And that God still views them as having purpose and value. But the ending of suffering has powerful appeal and I get that.
Having said this we need to make clear that the Bible opposes the taking of innocent life. No physician—or anyone else—is free to end that life. That is for God alone. The commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” applies here as much as anywhere.
2. We Reject The pagan definition of life.
The paganization of culture changes the purpose of being human. Instead of life having intrinsic meaning its only purpose is pleasure. Once you cease to experience pleasure your life ceases to have meaning. It operates under the assumption that your life belongs only to yourself. You have no responsibility to anyone else. Not to family, friends, or community. Certainly not to God. Euthanasia is just another social catastrophe when a culture stops believing in the God of Scripture.
Assisted suicide is a symptom that we have forgotten God and now live out our lives as though there is no God. It is part of the great darkness descending upon us. But in that darkness the light of Christ shines brighter than ever. One way to shine our light is by being pro-life and ministering to all no matter how great their suffering or despair.
I remember as a young man wondering why God allowed the elderly to linger, sometimes for years, living a seemingly useless life, depending completely on the care of others. Then it is as if God spoke to me. The care of younger people for their older, dying relatives is one of the most beautiful acts of love I have ever witnessed. And I have observed how it enriches the souls of the caregiver. Their acts of sacrificial love make them more like Christ than anything they will ever do. And there is nothing better than being like Christ.
As a writer in World put it: “There is nothing dignifying about giving up on life, giving up on loved ones, and giving up on God.” Or Carl Trueman: “Assisted suicide is just one function of our world where psychological happiness is the most important moral category.”
Matthew Paris is a British atheist I have cited before in my videos. He puts the pagan position precisely: “Religious objections are irrelevant unless you believe in a divinity who has sanctified all human life.” There you have it. Paris says opposition to assisted suicide is anchored in the Christian doctrine of the sanctity of life which Paris rejects.
We are witnessing how hard it is psychologically and spiritually for the technicians who do the killing. The College of Nurses of Ontario has set up a hotline to help staff cope with their consciences after they have terminated someone’s life. One nurse said, “After a recent experience caring for a patient receiving medical assistance in dying, I felt distressed and uncomfortable. How should I manage these emotions?” How indeed. This woman still has a conscience and it is eating away at her.
Kathleen Stock in Unherd, expects pro-death activists to prevail because, “without prior commitment to some deeply felt theological or philosophical principle about the intrinsic value of human life, all that is left for most of us are vague intuitions and orphaned remnants of moral reasoning inherited from a formerly Christian outlook.”
3. The slippery slope.
I remember an elderly Jewish liberal—who was strongly pro-abortion—telling me he opposed euthanasia. Why? Because the Nazi’s used it as a pretext for killing Jews.
He feared the slippery slope. Once euthanasia is legal then in time the state will legalize the killing of anyone for any reason.
Belgium legalized euthanasia in 2002 and in 2014 was the first country to legalize euthanasia for terminally ill children of any age.
Canada legalized it in 2016. It was designed to end the suffering of the terminally ill. But the following year in 2017, the Canadian Medical Association said: “Medical assistance in dying could reduce annual health care spending across Canada by between $34.7 million and $138.8 million.” Already euthanasia was being touted as a cost saving device.
Another story from Canada: One former bank executive who became disabled said his caregiver told him to consider medically assisted suicide. “You are costing the system north of $1500 a day.” Here’s a man who wants to live being told he should die by a government official.
Matthew Parris argues that the taboo on euthanasia needs to be lifted because in a world of longer life spans and lower birthrates it won’t be long until the elderly have a duty to die. They cost too much. It reminds me of Logan’s Run, a sci-fi movie (and book) made almost 50 years ago, about a dystopian future when upon turning 25, people were liquidated in order to make room for the new generation.
The Free Press has a chilling story on Zoraya ter Beek, a Dutch national who is 28 years old. She expects to be euthanized in early May.
She recalled her psychiatrist telling her that they had tried everything, that “there’s nothing more we can do for you. Your depression is never going to get better.”
Zaroya then provides details on how the death event works: “The doctor really takes her time. It is not that they walk in and say: lay down please! Most of the time it is first a cup of coffee to settle the nerves and create a soft atmosphere. Then she asks if I am ready. I will take my place on the couch. She will once again ask if I am sure, and she will start up the procedure and wish me a good journey.”
After this the doctor administers a sedative, followed by a drug that will stop ter Beek’s heart.
Commenting on this young woman, Samuel Sey says, “She will be one of about 10,000 people in the Netherlands who will likely be killed through euthanasia this year, a number that has steadily increased since the nation broadened its euthanasia law to include cases without terminal illness. [Doctors are] legally allowed to euthanize children as young as 12 years old if they had parental consent. The Dutch government has since expanded the law to include children as young as a one-year-old.”
The language is already being changed. We are now seeing lots of euphemisms applied to euthanasia: Again, Kathleen Stock: “At times, it can sound as if one is being offered a particularly relaxing spa treatment. With a pleasing ring of supportiveness, you are now being “assisted” in achieving something, rather than killed by a doctor or killing yourself…the lethally toxic sedative given to “the patient” was merely a “drink”, and its administration a “procedure”, after which you “fall asleep”.” In Scotland euthanasia deaths will be recorded as “natural” rather than as a result of suicide, with the suggestion that this will reduce the “stigma” around assisted dying.”
And these are no match against the powerful lure of a vision of preventing personal physical suffering in future, or the suffering of loved ones, via the offering of a serene and painless death.
For, once introduced at scale and firmly embedded into existing social systems, the constant presence of the psychological possibility of assisted dying might easily wreak more quantifiable havoc than it prevents, in exactly the ways anticipated by critics: guilt-tripping those who feel like burdens into premature endings; tempting the already depressed towards easy oblivion, and so on.
4. Sends a mixed message.
The growth of suicide rates is one of the biggest crises in Western culture. Governments spend millions of dollars telling people not to kill themselves. Then some governments turn around and tell people, “Go ahead, commit suicide. We will help you do it.” Talking out of both sides of your mouth helps no one. If you want people to forego suicide you need to be speaking with one, uncertain voice.
All this is ironic because Western culture has led the way in suicide prevention. I remember once when crossing the Coronado bridge in San Diego there was a sign saying, “Suicide Prevention Hot line;” a counsellor would try to talk you down off the ledge. But since California is now a “right to die” state they probably should change the sign. Maybe it should say “Suicide Prevention Hotline, unless you really want to kill yourself, then go ahead and jump.”
We are Christians. We favor life and oppose the culture of death. May our God, the God Who values every human life, guide us and strengthen us as we seek to do His will.
More: The Astonishing Mistake of the Pro-Abortion Movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0P8eoilpfU
Samuel Sey; Giving Up On Life:
A young Dutch woman on why she intends to have herself killed:
Kathleen Stock in Unherd on the changes in language:
Carl Trueman on the pagan definition of life:
Bethel McGrew on the slippery slope:
More on the slippery slope from The Spectator; “The Barbarism of Canada’s Euthanasia Regime”:
The atheist Matthew Parris argues that Euthanasia is a positive good and we need have no qualms in saying so: https://archive.ph/Y9lXy
A Pro-life view on Assisted Suicide: https://aul.org/physician-assisted-suicide/pro-life-views-on-euthanasia/
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