One of the things that comes up in my conversations with other Christians about beginning and end of life ethics is the difficulty of engaging with people who don’t share our worldview. We know that we are made in God’s image and so share equal dignity. We know that God is sovereign, is life and has life in himself so that he is the only one who has authority over life and death. Our understanding of creation, fall and new creation helps us to make sense of suffering but what about those who don’t have those anchor points? Here are a few thoughts.
First, I think it is helpful to remember that most people we are talking to are not hardline new atheists. Rather, we are talking to people who have a mixed and often confused worldview. In fact most people are not thinking in philosophical worldview categories at all. I think this is one of the unhelpful things about the way in which Christians who have gone through the University, Christian Union pathway have not been helped by the apologetic training they have received.
What this means is that I suspect, a lot of people are torn. They are afraid of suffering, they do have compassion for loved ones and so it sounds like assisted dying is a good thing. Yet, there is something that doesn’t sit easy with them, especially when they hear about what the risks to vulnerable people. However, they don’t really know where all of that comes from.
So, exactly because of that, I want to suggest that the best way of engaging in the Assisted Dying debate is to go back to those foundational principles. What do we believe about God, creation, Humanity and New Creation. This gives us the opportunity to do two things. First, we can expose the metanarrative (or big story) behind the euthanasia argument.
Do people really want to live in a culture where the foundational presumption is that this world is just a byproduct of chaotic accidents and conflicts (whether between warring gods or selfish genes)? Do they want to live in a world where either because we are just the gods slaves or we are merely evolved beasts that we don’t carry dignity or worth.
This then becomes crucial because we talk a lot about the safeguards that are meant to be around vulnerable people when it comes to assisted dying decisions. Yet, if we live in a chaotic, accidental world where no one has sovereign control and where there is no such thing as goodness then there are no safeguards, none of us are truly safe.
On the other hand, the best safeguards, the very environment I want around parents as they move into old age and that I would want for friends suffering from incurable illnesses is for them to know that they live in a world that is made by a Good God and so reflects order, goodness and beauty. I want them to know that they have intrinsic value because they are made in God’s image.
A second thing to remember is this. We have got used to making our ethical arguments within the context of a presumed, nominal Christian culture. So, when we realise that this is no longer the case, it can make the possibility of defeating or reversing these horrific new laws futile. At least Wilberforce was speaking to a society that had some form of Christian belief at its centre and foundation.
Here’s the good news. The world of the early church was much more like our world than that of Wilberforce’s day. The church found themselves as a tiny minority where the dominant worldview was that pagan one described above. Yet, over time, as the church grew and as Christians influenced culture not just by their arguments but by what they did, they were able to influence the culture’s ethics for good. It was no longer acceptable to keep slaves, it was no longer the done thing to leave baby girls exposed in the heat to die. This should give us cause for hope.
We need to remember that this hope is dependent on us being ready for the long haul. This means realising that for many of us, if assisted dying comes into force, we are unlikely to see that reversed in our own lifetimes. However, we can have hope that oen day it will be. Secondly, we are going to need to think about how we live, what we prioritise, what we do to begin to shift the cultural pendulum back, not just what we say.
Faithroots 