Communications Officer Ben John explores the deep links between our culture’s obsession with autonomy and the ideology of assisted suicide
We need to wake up to the danger that assisted suicide is to our society. It is far deeper than the surface level arguments that are often presented.
As we face the very real possibility of assisted suicide legislation passing in the UK, the political and cultural debate around end-of-life and suicide issues is increasing. Therefore, it is vital that Christians think carefully about what the Bible says about assisted suicide, what is happening, and how to respond.
Fundamentally though, the ideology of assisted suicide is rooted in idolatry and rebellion against God. It is an anti-gospel that presents suffering as our biggest problem and suicide as our greatest hope.
But Christians have a true hope for sufferers. We have a future, eternal hope, and a God who walks with us in our suffering. That is what we need to be proclaiming today.
Fear of suffering
In our 21st century Western so-called ‘first-world’ culture, we have become so used to being comfortable, so used to our wealth, and so used to being physically well that we fear suffering and sickness.
One study of assisted suicide in Oregon found:
Worries about symptoms and experiences in the future were, in general, more important reasons than symptoms or experiences at the time of the request.
It was the prospect of suffering that led people to sign up to assisted suicide rather than the suffering itself.
This isn’t to deny the awful situations that people do go through, but we must have perspective. This is about the fear of what will happen, a fear of suffering or a fear of the loss of dignity during suffering.
What is dignity?
There is an increasingly common assumption that suffering means losing your dignity. It is commonly stated that if someone gets sick and loses their physical abilities, or becomes dependent on others for care and support, that they have ‘lost their dignity’.
The philosopher James Mumford helpfully points out that this is not the case. He states that you can ‘lose your dignity’ by your own choices and actions being beneath you. But you cannot lose your dignity for something done to you.
He writes:
“The palliative care community has a radically different idea of dignity to the one propagated by the assisted suicide lobby. According to the doctors, nurses and chaplains – those with extensive experience of caring for people at the end of life – dignity means showing people who are dying that they are still valued. This entails not only providing critically important pain relief but also trying to get to know them. Christians tend to oppose euthanasia not because of some creepy lust for agony, but because Christianity teaches that no circumstances, however horrific, can vitiate the inherent dignity of all human beings. And the danger of departing from this conviction, of suggesting to all those who suffer with terminal illness that they have lost their dignity, cannot be overstated.”
Our society says that if our bodies are disabled, if we need help and support, and if we are dependent on others, then we are degraded. There is an underlying assumption that you have less value if you suffer or are disabled. My life is worth less, my value is degraded if I experience … [insert any disability or type of suffering].
However, stepping into someone’s suffering – loving them and caring for them – is what shows them that they do have dignity. To view individuals as burdens that we would rather not have is what is degrading and humiliating.
In fact, “compassion” literally means ‘to suffer with’. That is what a good and loving society does. It comes alongside. It doesn’t say “I can take all your pain away” or “I will kill you for your good” but says “I will walk with you through this”.
Suffering or needing extensive care doesn’t take away a person’s dignity. Are all those with long-term disabilities lacking dignity?
Again, the contemporary attitude towards suffering just shows how comfortable we are in our society. We have grown to think of ourselves as so self-sufficient that the idea of ever needing deep support and care is beneath us.
Ultimately, we are all dependent on God. But we have rejected him and embraced a view of dignity that is rooted in pride that sets us up as our own gods.
Culture preaches that if my life is not of a standard acceptable to me then I must die for fear of being less than what I think I should be or think I deserve. It is the same assumption that says if I lose something important to me – my wealth, house, family, or anything – then my life is no longer valuable.
And so, at the root of every decision for assisted suicide is this mental, emotional, and indeed, spiritual, assumption. It says, ‘this life I now have is beneath me, it lacks dignity, and so I want to die’.
But we often miss the irony here that in a fear of loss of dignity we are pursuing a choice that is inherently degrading. Suicide is the ultimate form of self-hatred. It says, ‘I have no value’. It degrades and devalues our own beings and bodies.
We must not be tricked by the language war which euphemises suicide by calling it ‘assisted dying’. Suicide is still suicide. Murder is still murder.
It is often suggested that it is the kind and loving thing to do, just like how we put animals down. Is that dignifying? Christians need to see the inherent lack of dignity in the idea that we should treat humans like dogs to be put down. We protect, care for and go the extra mile for humans because they have an inherent dignity and value that animals do not. We are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), animals are not.
Christians often know this truth, and why it means we cannot support assisted suicide. But have we then paused to think, therefore, how grievous this is to God? He has endowed us with value and worth, he has commanded us to love and care for one another, but instead our society wants to support self-murder in the name of dignity and a fear of suffering.
Suffering is inevitable
The Bible warns us that in this fallen and cursed world, suffering is inevitable. Death will come to all of us. This means sickness and suffering are times when we need to point people towards Jesus.
Paul writes to the Corinthians:
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
(2 Corinthians 12:8-10 ESV)
Consider also, Job’s remarkable response to his wife:
“Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”
(Job 2:9-10 ESV)
God is the one who is Lord over life and death. As Job also said:
“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
(Job 1:21 ESV)
Ultimately, all our present suffering is temporal compared to the eternity we have with the Lord. Therefore, in the midst of suffering, Paul is able to say:
“For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
(2 Corinthians 4:17-18 ESV)
When we are comfortable, when this life is all we believe we have, then we want it perfect. We want to avoid all suffering. But, as stated above, we think we deserve the lives we want with health and comfort. And at root of that, is the idolatry of autonomy and control.
Idolatry of autonomy and control
Despite the emotive stories and media headlines, despite the accusations that those opposing a change in the law are cruel, there is a reality that because this is about a fear of suffering this isn’t really about relieving suffering.
At root, this is about autonomy and control.
Dignity in Dying, formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Legalisation Society, summarise its campaign on their website:
CHOICE over where we die, who is present and our treatment options.
ACCESS to expert information on our options, good quality end-of-life care.
CONTROL over how we die, our symptoms, pain relief and planning our own death.
We live in a world where choice and autonomy are worshipped as the standard of morality. My body, my choice. Everything that has been used to affirm abortion as a ‘human right’ is the same used to argue for assisted suicide. It becomes the ‘right to die’, or, rather, the ‘right to be killed.’
This is exposed quite soberly in Liz Carr’s excellent documentary Better Off Dead?.
In an interview with Lord Falconer, who has long campaigned for assisted suicide, there is this exchange:
Liz Carr: Is this about pain and suffering, or is it about control?
Lord Falconer: Very often it is about control. It is very, very frequently, not about the intensity of the pain.
Liz Carr: Should we be changing the law for those people?
Lord Falconer: Without a doubt, yes, because even with the best palliative care, there are a group of people, who will always want to be in control of the process, and will want the process to come to an end.
Later she meets with an actual euthaniser in Canada, which . The euthaniser, Dr Ellen Wiebe, also runs a contraception and abortion clinic, and has been involved in over 400 assisted suicides or direct euthanasia. This, again, is a revealing conversation:
Liz Carr: In your experience, what do you think, is the number one reason that people want MAiD [Medical Assistance in Dying, i.e. euthanasia]?
Dr Ellen Wiebe: The reason, the number one reason is autonomy, control. … Everybody’s different in what they think of as autonomy and control.
Liz Carr: So, that would be about, not wanting to lose that in their lives?
Dr Ellen Wiebe: Yes. Control. They desperately want control. … They want to say it’s now. At the end we say, “OK, well, I can get back here at 7:00pm. Is that okay?” And they’ll say yes, and they’ll be so grateful that they can skip the last two days of their life. And I look at it and think, “All you really needed was some more drugs. But you want my drugs? I’ll give them to you.”
…
Liz Carr: … there could be somebody next to me with exactly the same condition who doesn’t want to go on anymore?
Dr Ellen Wiebe: I’ve certainly met people who are no more disabled than I am, saying that life is not acceptable in this state. And I would say, “Hm, you and I are different, but not different in the sense of wanting to have some control.”
Again, as with the fear of suffering, we have a fear of not being in control. We don’t want to be passive actors in the world, we want to decide for ourselves. Sometimes it is not even what choice we make that we care about, just that we have a choice.
We think of ourselves as autonomous, which literally means self-governing. There is some truth in this; being made in the image of God, we do have moral agency to make meaningful decisions. We aren’t animals who are not accountable to God, nor are we robots who do not make meaningful decisions.
But our use of this freedom is accountable to God. We get to make decisions, but our decisions are not the standard for morality. Our modern radical idolisation of autonomy says, ‘I get to choose what I do with my life and no one can tell me otherwise.’ But we know this is not true.
The world recognises that autonomy has limits when it comes to hurting others, for example. That’s why ‘consent’ is set up as the all-important standard for morality.
But none of us get to set a standard; we have a transcendent eternal lawgiver in God who says, ‘do not murder’. As with abortion, so it is with assisted suicide: we are playing god in giving and taking away life.
We went to extreme lengths during Covid lockdowns to try to eliminate risk of death (including making it illegal to go to church). But travelling to Switzerland for an ‘assisted death’ was explicitly given as a permissible reason to go outside. Why? Because that person’s ‘control’ over their suffering – even if it was being used to end their life – was treated as absolute and unassailable.
But we are going to suffer in this world, and that is often going to be out of our control. And that is okay, because we know the Lord is in control. He is the one who is truly autonomous. He is the kind Father who looks after his creation.
As the Psalmist writes:
“Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.”
Psalm 139:16 ESV
The Lord is in control. He is the one who “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11b ESV). We should not take life into our own hands, even our own lives.
These are not easy truths, but when we know them – when we internalise them and believe them in our heart – then what peace they give us when faced with suffering. This is also a peace that can give strength and hope to those around us.
Assisted suicide does not end suffering
As a nation and as individuals, we must see that assisted suicide and euthanasia does not end suffering. At a national level, assisted suicide ushers in the slippery slope that is the logical consequence of this tragic worldview.
When we pursue autonomy and control at any cost, then we will end up extending assisted suicide to the mentally ill and children. If we continue on this path, then it would be God’s judgement on a nation that is rejecting God.
We should not give the impression that if, hypothetically, we could ensure perfect safeguards then we would be okay with assisted suicide. No. Suicide is still suicide, and murder is still murder, regardless of whether it is for physical or mental illness. There are no safeguards theoretically possible to justify assisted suicide in the Christian worldview.
Finally, perhaps the starkest truth for Christians to dwell on is this: assisted suicide does not end suffering for non-Christians.
Rather, it ushers in eternal suffering in hell and away from God: “They [those who do not know God] will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” (1 Thessalonians 1:9 ESV)
We urgently need to warn people about the judgement to come. Our society is deceived by Satan and its own sin to think that assisted suicide brings about a form of salvation. It is a dark anti-gospel, promising freedom yet bringing destruction.
End-of-life ministry is a time where we should be loving people, caring for them, but more importantly, pointing them towards Jesus. If we bring in assisted suicide, then many people will be robbed of the opportunity to hear the gospel. As Christians, we cannot stand idly by when a law is being proposed that will condemn them to hell.
If you are not a Christian, you probably don’t agree with this. I am not saying ‘I am condemning you to hell’, nor am I saying that ‘if you pursue assisted suicide then you will end up in hell.’ All stand condemned because all fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). The gospel is a gift of grace to all who receive it (Ephesians 2:8).
We must not forget the true gospel and therefore be deceived by the anti-gospel of assisted suicide. We have a saviour, who died for us, Jesus Christ. When we know his love, our eyes turn away from our suffering onto our Saviour: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18a ESV)
Jesus, the suffering servant
We, as Christians, have a better hope and gospel: one where we can point towards the saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, who says, “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 ESVUK) The one who “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4 ESV)
He did this by suffering in our place. What a glorious gospel that means we worship the one who:
“though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Philippians 2:6-8 ESV
The Lord of the universe suffered the most humiliating death on a cross so that we might be raised to eternal life.
“Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.”
Isaiah 53:4-5 ESV
Jesus died that we might live. He chose the worst possible death so that we do not have to.
So, when we know Jesus – when we have that future hope – then, and only then, can we cry out:
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
1 Corinthians 15:55 ESV
