Two lessons from the assisted suicide debate

Like many Christians and indeed others across the nation, I was saddened to hear the news that the UK parliament voted in favour of legalising assisted suicide.

As Christians, we are not opposed to the withdrawal of life-extending care, but we are against the active murder of anyone. Fundamentally, we believe that every life is sacred and unconditionally valuable - human dignity is not something we assign to ourselves and can then take it away when faced with illness, poverty, or disability.

The intrinsic dignity of a person

The bill claimed to give greater dignity to those wanting to end their lives, but it would in fact take away the inherent dignity of being human and make terminally ill patients feel unwanted and uncared for.

All the experiences around the world of this kind of legislation are that the safeguards drift and it will lead to people who are mentally ill or physically disabled, or just wanting at that moment to kill themselves, being allowed to do so along with a whole range of 'terminally' ill patients.

This will profoundly change the relationship between carers, families and patients and send a message that the state does not want anyone to be a burden so they should get out of the way. It feels now like the UK supports with state sponsored suicide and is a much less safe place to be if you are seriously ill.

So it is right that as Christians we object to this law a matter of Christian principle, but also out of love for our neighbour, because we believe it to be bad for society whatever your beliefs about the human condition.

We should continue to pray that God would be gracious to our nation and turn us away from this evil decree. At the same time, we can use all the means to seek to persuade MPs to vote against the bill in future as they see the terrible damage it will cause.

Having said all that, it seemed to me a good time to reflect on a couple of broader lessons we can learn from what happened here:

1. We love being in charge
   
   I would suggest that the main reason 'we' lost was not because 'the other side' were more organised or deployed better arguments. It was because for many people the idea of any higher authority who has any say over our lives is utterly unacceptable.
   
   All the arguments about how it will change so many things and that assisted suicide is sinister and scary are lost in focussing in on that one person in the story who has to be in control, who should define their own dignity.
   
   Many in the debate were competing over who was showing the most compassion but their presuppositions really made the difference. If am in charge of my life and my death, then we can argue over the fine details but essentially I must be free to end my life at a time of my choosing. The ultimate act of kindness is to allow me that honour. It is almost impossible to argue against that unless we can accept a higher authority. To deny these right lacks compassion, as my local MP was typical in saying: 'I believe in the sovereignty of the individual and the right of that individual to have control over their own life.'
   
   Isn’t the heart of the issue, because it is the heart of sin? Arguing that we are being the most kind to preserve life when the ultimate act of kindness is to allow us to control the moment of our death will always lose. It’s not really about reducing suffering, that’s just the emotional payload it’s about autonomy – the desire to choose when and where we die was taken by our first parents, Adam and Eve.
   
2. Maybe we missed an opportunity
   
   I was also left wondering whether churches and Christian organisations missed an open goal for declaring gospel hope. We were so focussed on deploying the arguments about compassion and families, slippery slopes and coercion, that we didn’t talk about why people suffer and die and the ultimate answer. People die because we live in the broken world and the suffering that precedes death is part of the megaphone to help us realise that. So while we’re all talking about being at the bedside of someone we love, Christians should be agreeing about the horror of death and dying but use that to explain why we can suffer in hope, growing and learning, all the time knowing there is something more. We will all die in weakness but can rise in triumph through Christ.

As someone who did quite a few media interviews on the topic, I wonder if I should have spent more time talking about that. In the end it’s only going to change if more people love Jesus.

I guess we would still have lost but just maybe by God’s grace some listening might have started to look for hope beyond death and let go of the controls.