An Inspirational Message for the Month of December 2024 – Euthanasia and the Culture of Death – By Charles Schokman
Job said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” Job 1:21 NIV.
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Letter to A Post Christian Nation – Euthanasia and the Culture of Death.
We live in a society where governments and most of our establishment elites tell us that the unwanted baby’s life is not worth living and so we should facilitate ending her life. This week we look at the other end of the spectrum. The question of euthanasia. This is the latest issue which ‘progressives’ are seeking to impose on all of Western society. The UK parliament is about to have yet another attempt to introduce ‘assisted dying’. All Australian states now permit euthanasia – and I can personally testify just how devastating it is. The pressure put on elderly people and the disabled, the pressure put on medical staff and care organisations – is incredible. I remember during covid, the week that Queensland announced it was closing its borders in order to ‘protect the elderly and the weak’. That same week the State government also announced it was introducing a euthanasia bill which would kill the elderly and the weak! That is the confused state of a society that has lost its moral anchors.
Euthanasia is actually a complex question. A few years ago, I was seriously ill in a hospital intensive care unit, and was not expected to live – or if I did, to have a good quality of life. As I was in and out of a coma my wife suggested to our teenage daughter that she should bring some of her schoolwork in to tell me what she was doing. The nurses were horrified to hear her reading out to her seriously ill dad her latest essay on ‘mercy killing’!
Note again how those who seek to influence us – seek to change and control the language. Mercy killing gets changed to medically assisted suicide, and then to euthanasia and now it is called ‘assisted dying’. When I finish writing this, I am going to visit a woman in hospital who has only a short time to live. To put it bluntly – she is dying. And she knows it. The medical staff, through palliative care, are assisting her in dying. They are not killing her. To ask them to do so would be a cruel and wicked thing to do.
The Hippocratic Oath, which was the oath for doctors, is still taken today in some form by doctors in many countries. The original oath was strongly against euthanasia – a doctor should never “give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor…make a suggestion to this effect.” This was actually a radical position at the time because in the Greco/Roman/Pagan culture it was normal for doctors to take part in euthanasia.
As I have pointed out before – and will continue to point out again and again – our ‘progressive’ society is not progressing at all – it is regressing to the Greco/Roman/Pagan view of the world. A world where the life of the sick, elderly and disabled is considered to be worthless – and an unnecessary burden on the rest of society.
The argument for euthanasia is quite simple. The first is compassion. Anyone who has sat with a loved one as they have died a painful death surely longs for them to be put out of their misery. The argument is that you wouldn’t treat a dog that way – we all want to prevent needless suffering.
The other main argument is about autonomy. Surely, we should have control of our own bodies and especially when we die. I once debated a top government official at a University in Scotland over the issue of euthanasia. The motion he wanted, and got, was “this house believes that a person has the right to die a decent death at the time and place of their own choosing”. Again, it all seems so neat, simple and obvious.
And yet it just ain’t that simple.
In an ideal world where there were no pressures on the health services because of finances, no pressures on the elderly because of children’s inheritance and where all doctors, relatives and hospital administrators were honest, truthful and without fault, then perhaps a case could be made for euthanasia. But we don’t live in that world.
In addition to this human beings are not dogs to be put down. Human beings are more than animals and we are more than (in the words of Bertrand Russell) ‘a blob of carbon floating from one meaningless existence to another’. We are animals. But we are more than animals. We are creatures made in the image of God. He gives us life and we do not have the right to take it away – except in the most extreme of circumstances.
As regards autonomy – as I mentioned several years ago, I was in a coma, and I most certainly did not have dominion over my own body. I am thankful that those who did have some degree of control (the medical staff) are still part of a culture where human life is considered sacred and precious and where those who want absolute dominion to have not yet achieved their goal of replacing a Christian view of morality with a pagan one or a materialist view.
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What about the issue of pain? In my role as a minister, I work with many doctors and health care providers, I spend a great deal of time with the terminally ill and also with the disabled. I remember visiting one dying cancer patient in a hospice, just before I was due to speak on this subject. Although she was in a great deal of pain, she pleaded with me not to let people use her pain as an excuse for killing people. Astonishingly, despite a really bad prognosis, she is still alive today, married and with children. I shudder to think of what might have been if euthanasia had been available then. After I visited her, I spoke at an amazing debate in front of several hundred medical students – each side of the debate had a doctor, a clergyman, a politician and a philosopher. The doctor in favour of abortion was actually a gynaecologist. Our doctor was a palliative care specialist and because his talk with “I have been at over 7,000 death beds, and in very few instances have I been asked to take life. When I have been asked, I explained how we can provide people with good pain reduction and palliative care, which satisfied nearly all of them”. That is where our emphasis should lie – on great palliative care.
There is another strong argument against euthanasia. It will inevitably just be the first step on a very slippery slope which leads down to Hell. The right to die will soon become a duty to die. And if you doubt that look at what has happened in countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada – and how the Greens in Australia already want to extend our euthanasia laws. Voluntary euthanasia soon leads to involuntary euthanasia. In Belgium and the Netherlands children can be euthanised – and, as in Canada, people with mental illness can be euthanised as well. Watch this sad story about Margaret whose mother was euthanised without request.
In 2017 there was a Dutch proposal for everyone over 70 to be given a suicide pill – thankfully it was not taken up. But it will return. Meanwhile suicide vans patrol the streets.
No one is arguing that people should be kept alive at all costs. It is wrong to unnecessarily prolong life through artificial means. But there is a vast difference between refusing treatment, or switching off a machine and actively killing someone. I think of people close to me who have chosen not to take treatment because they were ready to be with Christ.
Wider Issues
We need to get a broader picture. There are key questions we need to answer – ‘what is a human being’? What happens after death? Is there a Heaven and hell? Are you ready to face judgement? Are you ready to die? Bob Dylan put it succinctly in his song Are You Ready?
“Are you ready to meet Jesus?
Are you where you ought to be?
Will He know you when He sees you
Or will He say, “Depart from Me”?”
The pro-euthanasia society, Dignitas reports that 21% of people making use of their facilities, were not dying but just suffered from ‘weariness of life’. Are we going to kill people because they are weary of life, or are we going to point them to the one who says, ‘come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28)?
It is God who gives life. As Paul told the Athenians “He himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.” (Acts 17:25) He gives it, and we don’t have the right to take it away. Indeed, we will have to give account for every life taken.
But it’s not just that God gives life, he gives it to the full and he gives us all things richly to enjoy. And even more than that he comes to give eternal life. Those who are materialists only think that this life is it. But the Bible tells us that there is eternal life. Some might say I don’t want to live forever…. but that is a misunderstanding of what eternal life is. It’s not just this life going on forever – it’s this life minus all the pain, suffering, fatigue (have a look at Revelation ch.7) – all the pain taken away and all the beauty magnified. Wouldn’t you want that?
Can you see the difference between the secular culture of death, and the Christian culture of life? Why will you die? Seek the Lord and live…
Courtesy of David Robertson—NewLife Faith News
If you want more information on this subject then can I suggest Understanding Suicide and Euthanasia by D. Erryl Davies, and Issues Facing Christians Today by John Stott.
UK MPs vote to advance assisted-dying bill
2024/11/30 Island
[ pic Aljazeera]
British MPs have given initial approval to a bill to help terminally ill adults end their lives in England and Wales.
After an impassioned debate, members of the United Kingdom Parliament approved on Friday the so-called assisted dying bill by a vote of 330 to 275.
The vote signals MPs’ approval in principle for the bill and sends it on to further scrutiny in parliament. Similar legislation failed to pass that important first test in 2015.
The vote came after hours of debate – emotional at times – that touched on issues of ethics, grief, the law, faith, crime and money.
Hundreds of people on both sides of the issue gathered outside parliament during the session.
Supporters said the law would provide dignity to the dying and prevent unnecessary suffering while ensuring there are enough safeguards to prevent those near the end of their lives from being coerced into taking their own lives.
Opponents said it would put vulnerable people at risk, potentially coerced, directly or indirectly, to end their lives so they do not become a burden.
Backers of the bill told heart-wrenching stories about constituents and family members who suffered in the final months of their lives and people who died by suicide in secret because it is currently a crime for anyone to provide assistance.
Open vote
Although the bill was proposed by a member of the ruling centre-left Labour Party, it was an open vote with alliances formed that brought together those who are usually political foes.
The bill would allow adults over the age of 18 who are expected to have fewer than six months to live to request and be provided with help to end their lives, subject to safeguards and protections.
They would have to be capable of taking the fatal drugs themselves, according to the bill.
Other countries that have legalised assisted suicide include Australia, Belgium, Canada and parts of the United States with regulations on who is eligible varying by jurisdiction.
More than 500 British people have ended their lives in Switzerland, where the law allows assisted dying for non residents. [Aljazeera]
