You may not be so familiar with the other end of the argument: assisted suicide.
A number of countries (in Australia, Canada, Belgium, and the Netherlands and recently in Spain) and now ten US states have made chosen death a legal option for end-of-life care. The way the law is designed to work and the way it actually functions are two different realities. The intention is to prevent suffering. A man with terminal cancer enters a doctors office not wanting to go through the rigors of the disease. Who can blame him? A woman is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and doesn’t want to endure to the end. Again, who can blame her? The doctor offers a number of options, one of which will be an injection of a lethal chemical. You might ask, “Where’s the breakdown? Why would a society resist this?
This is humane, not criminal.” Most would agree at this most basic level. But Christians cannot. We are not in charge of our lives, most definitely not the beginning or the end of them. But that isn’t really the motivation behind this article. If assisted suicide stayed within the bounds of terminal cancer and advanced Alzheimer’s, we’d probably focus on more pressing issues. But it doesn’t stay there.
A patient goes into an office in Canada and fills out the paperwork for a lethal shot, claiming he’s lost his hearing. The shot is administered and afterward it is discovered his hearing aid battery was bad. Last year a lady was diagnosed with cancer and her body refused to respond to the lethal injection she requested, so the presiding physician smothered her with a pillow. Another case in Canada involved a lady who requested suicide aid because she was allergic to her neighbor’s cigarette smoke that wafted through her vents. The request was granted. The point is the world we are living in is beginning to see taking a life as ethically acceptable, as long as that person doesn’t want to live.
How many times have you thought “I wish I was never born.” Or “Life is just too hard.” We all think these thoughts from time to time and in a world where loosing your life is as easy as buying a pack of cigarettes, thoughts like these can have disastrous effects.
Hitler experimented with all types of life-altering scenarios. Communist countries have, too. Any human deemed not capable of productive work is labeled expendable. Children born with deformities: expendable. Mentally challenged adults: expendable. Seniors with physical or mental handicaps due to age or disease: expendable. Where do you stop that kind of thought? Prisoners will soon fall into that category. People fired for too many mistakes on the job will be labeled. The husband or wife who finds out their marriage is over or their child is dead will be offered this option. People with too much credit card debt, depression or something as simple as a bad phone call can apply for aid. Human life loses value and our communities become labs full of great experiments. Do you see why Christians value life at any age and every stage? If God didn’t value all life or if He only esteemed those labeled as all together, we could walk into this valley with confidence. But God does value every single life.
We are all created in His image. From a design perspective, there are no human mistakes. The mentally handicapped, physically challenged and terminally ill lives are just as worthy of another breath as the lives our society loves to celebrate and emulate. We see Jesus in this role as the Healer. Everywhere He went people were restored. The darkness that enveloped them vanished in the presence of Jesus and they all found a new reason to live.
My motivation for writing these words today is not to create more lobbyists or pick a fight with
someone who believes in the death penalty. My goal is to open your eyes to the way God sees every human life: as precious and worth sustaining. The message of Heaven is the offer of a new, reimagined life to anyone, everyone who believes in Jesus and follows Him with their lives. How does that flesh itself out here? By trusting God with your days, all of them. By investing your time in a believing community that values and encourages you with His Word. By asking God daily to lead you into more life that He designs. Take me and use me, Lord, for your work and your glory. Spread out my days for the most Kingdom impact. When it is time to meet you face to face, God please, let us leave here with dignity. I pray my life leads others to you, even in death.