In part 1, we looked at how what we believe about God and about us (humanity) shapes our ethics when it comes to abortion and euthanasia. There are four key questions that I encourage people to think about when making practical and ethical decisions.
- What do I believe about who God is?
- What do I believe about humanity?
- What do I believe about creation?
- What do I believe about new creation?
In this article we are going to look at the second two.
What do we believe about creation?
We believe that this earth weas made good (Henesis 1:1-2:4. God is pleased with his creation. This means that physical matter is good. We are meant to enjoy this world, we were placed in it to care for it and to rule it. This is important because a lot of attitudes to death are shaped by underpinning religious philosophies that conflict and compete with that. We sometimes talk about Gnosticism, an early heresy that believed that physical matter was evil and spirit good. However, Gnosticism wasn’t just a Christian heresy but a mingling of muddled Christian traditions with the pagan religious and philosophical worldview that dominated the world at that time and has continued to dominate non-Christian thinking for much of history. Under that worldview, if this world was the accidental by-product of warring demigods and if the true, perfect divine origin was Spirit, then our goal was to escape from this physical world with all of its limitations, to be free of the body’s prison and reunited to the original Spirit. You can see why pursuing a good death, even through taking your own life was desirable. Indeed that’s what thw word “euthanasia” refers to: “a good death”.
However, if the Bible argues that this world was made good and so physical bodies are good things too, then this should give us pause for thought. At the same time we need to pay attention to the fact that this world and our experience of it seems to fall well short of good. Paul puts it this way.
“19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that[h] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
This reflects what we see at the end of Genesis 3, that because of sin, we experience suffering in this World. I think this is important because some of our conversations about mercy killing can give the impression that suffering is itself unjust, that therefore our primary concern is to save people from their suffering. Yet, whilst we may not want to face it, we do need to remember that the Fall means that the suffering we all face is entirely just.
Secondly from our own perspective as Christians, we need to see that even as forgiven, justified people, suffering still has meaning and purpose. God uses our own suffering in order to work his good purposes out in us:
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we[a] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we[b] boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we[c] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
What do we believe about new creation?
What we know from the passages I quoted above is that New Creation is about the renewing and putting right of this present, physical creation. Indeed, present suffering keeps our perspective on that very hope. This is important because the eternity we have to look forward to puts our present experience of suffering, even through end of life palliative stages is put into perspective. There is something better than the possibility of escape through assisted dying to keep us going.
Secondly, when thinking about what we want for unbelievers we have to consider the fact that Scripture talks about judgement and coming eternal punishment. Hell is not a popular subject these days and yet Scriptute talks about it. This reflects that death is an end to our present life but not a ceasing to exist.
This means that we must not naively assume that death is an escape from suffering. As much as we wish to reassuringly say about someone when they are gone “at least they are at peace now.” There is something worse than the pain and suffering of terminal illness and the dying process. Our desire must be to see another person put their trust in Jesus and those are the conversations we want to prioritise over conversations about assisted dying options.
Implications
At this stage, we can conclude a few things. First, we can say for certain that assisted dying/euthanasia is not something we should choose for ourselves. Secondly, we cannot desire it for others. This will affect the counsel we give to people considering a legalised option. It also means that Christians who are going to be pressurised to being drawn into the process either as part of the medical or legal process will have to take a stand and refuse to participate in bringing other lives to an end. This may over time prove costlier and costlier for Christians and their careers.
At this stage though, we may not be certain as to whether all of this means that Christians should campaign against the legalisation of euthanasia. It may be something we consider wrong but can we impose our value systems onto others? We will look at that in another article.
Faithroots 