Why Christians Must Reject Assisted Suicide
Photo by Frederic Köberl on Unsplash
The development of the Swiss “suicide pod” sounds like something from a dystopian futuristic novel. Its reality indicates that we are moving steadily toward dystopia. The suicide pod is not yet legal in Switzerland. Rest assured, it will be. The inexorable march of secularized Western Europe into a culture of death gives us some glimpse of what awaits us in the U.S., barring a Christian awakening in our country.
A practice U.S. conservatives would surely have denounced just a generation ago is now on the table for debate. George F. Will has recently written an article in the Washington post titled, “Medical aid in dying should not be proscribed by society’s laws or condemned by its mores.” A few days later he again made the case for “medical aid in dying” (MAID), identifying its purpose as “preventing a hideous death,” rather than “truncating an unhappy life.” I have respected Will since I began reading his work in the 1980s. I continue to do so. Apart from our conservative proclivities, we have something else in common: we both have children with Down syndrome, and both lament the eugenic character of targeted elimination of people with Down syndrome through prenatal testing and abortion. It was surprising and disconcerting, then, to see Will affirm not only that assisted suicide should be legal, but that we should remove any moral stigma attached to it.
As one would expect, the case Will makes is in some ways compelling. It is rooted in the value of compassion. Why allow people to continue the rest of their lives in agony when we could end their suffering by helping them die voluntarily? Isn’t our resistance to suicide in such cases not only irrational, but cruel? Indeed compassion is an important value, but we should ask if assisted suicide is, in fact, compassionate, and what other values are relevant to this discussion. As with most significant moral issues, there is more at stake than first meets the eye.
According to the first of Will’s articles mentioned above, “Compassion & Choices, which advocates for medical aid in dying, sensibly insists that this terminology, not ‘assisted suicide,’ is proper. Suicide connotes despair and perhaps derangement.” Cue the red flags. In our postmodern moment, words are far too malleable. The philosophers who gave rise to postmodernity were well aware of the connection between language and power. Their philosophical projects have taken root and grown into a thorny bramble of confusion and obfuscation. Abortion is now healthcare. Sex is now assigned. Our pronouns are now preferred, and suicide is now “medical aid in dying.” Yet no matter how much we may not wish to say it, killing oneself is suicide. That is what the word “suicide” means. If this word connotes despair and derangement, the reason is that these conditions normally accompany the taking of one’s own life.
Will acknowledges, “Skeptics understandably warn about a slippery slope,” and he cites several examples of potential uses of MAID that do not represent its current stated purpose. Count me among those skeptics. Slippery slope arguments are not necessarily fallacious. Consider the following scenarios (some of which are similar to those Will suggests):
An elderly or disabled person may feel compelled to end his or her life, rather than continuing to depend upon loved ones for care and/or financial assistance.
Family or “friends” may pressure, subtly or overtly, the elderly or disabled to choose suicide rather than continue to “burden” their loved ones. Adults with intellectual disabilities may be particularly vulnerable in this regard.
Insurance companies may find subtle ways to encourage suicide, rather than finance continued care.
Medical professionals often advise parents of the unborn to abort following detection of genetic disabilities such as Down syndrome. What reason do we have to believe the same ethos will not prevail with regard to people who appear to have “outlived their usefulness”?
People who are experiencing intense physical or emotional pain may choose suicide, even if there is the possibility that their condition will improve. Remember that when we are in emotional distress, we are less likely to make informed and rational decisions. And yet the decision to commit suicide is irreversible.
According to Will, “Crucially, MAID is for those who are already dying and want help — for preventing a hideous death, not for truncating an unhappy life. MAID — the medical management of a natural process — should be considered a supplement to hospice (palliative) care.” Nevertheless, I simply do not believe that sinful humans will not exploit the ambiguity of the boundary between preventing a hideous death and ending an unhappy life. Parts of our society allow abortion into the ninth month of pregnancy. Is it realistic to think that the same cruel disregard for human life will not penetrate our practices of assisted suicide?
Despite these objections, I would be quite surprised if support for assisted suicide does not spread more widely. Some will support it out of the compassionate impulse Will demonstrates. Some will have less noble reasons. As Jonathan Haidt points out in his important book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (Vintage, 2013), we humans tend to make moral decisions based more upon intuition than rational consideration. The intuitive impulse to “prevent further suffering” will be in many cases almost irresistible. Disguised impulses to rid ourselves of those who we perceived as a burden will also come into play. We should look for cases of assisted suicide to become more common before the most dramatic and tragic cases are publicized sufficiently to generate public opposition, which will itself rely upon intuitive repulsion.
It is particularly concerning that some Chritians are embracing the practice of assisted suicide. A church in Canada recently hosted a “Crossing Over Ceremony” (note again the euphemistic language) for a member with ALS. I would like to say I am surprised, but I am not. Churches today are often ethical chameleons. They simply blend into the background of the prevailing cultural ethoi. The notion of the church as a distinct people is seen as a fantasy of religious fanatics. Yet to capitulate on such a crucial matter as the value of human life is to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage. Life was cheap in the Greco-Roman world in which Christianity emerged. Following the traditions of Judaism, Christians began to think about human life differently than their pagan neighbors. Practices such as abortion and the exposure of infants, they said, were inconsistent with the image of human life revealed to us in Scripture. This was more than just pious talk. Christians were willing to care for those children they found exposed. Once again we find ourselves in a world in which life is cheap, and we have to demonstrate–in word and deed–a distinct vision of human life. We must insist that the value of life is not based upon whether or not we wish to live, nor upon our instrumental contributions to society. Put differently, God understands human life as valuable not for what we want or what we can do, but for what we are, and it is God’s understanding that gives shape to our understanding. We are bearers of the divine image, the pinnacle of God’s creation.
What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet. (Psalm 8:4-6 NRSV).
There is a long and complex tradition of Christian reflection upon the nature and value of human life. At the root of this tradition is the idea that we do not create ourselves, nor do we own ourselves, but that we are God’s creation, and our lives are his. In Genesis 2:7, God breathes into Adam and transforms a lifeless lump of clay into a living nephesh–a living soul. We should not think of nephesh in a platonic sense, as the true, spiritual essence of a being, but rather as the animating life force. Thus, Adam can engage in actions, experience thoughts and passions, and exert will in ways that other animals cannot. Sometimes nephesh can be used of animals, but not here. This suggests that Adam is given life in a way that other creatures are not. Humans are created in the image of God, unlike all other creatures. And though we will all someday die, we submit to the God who gave us life to determine its end.
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, in his book So You Think You’re Human? A Brief History of Humankind (Oxford, 2004), begins with the following provocative statement:
Here is a paradox. Over the last thirty or forty years, we have invested an enormous amount of thought, emotion, treasure, and blood in what we call human values, human rights, the defence of human dignity and of human life. Over the same period, quietly but devastatingly, science and philosophy have combined to undermine our traditional concept of humankind. In consequence, the coherence of our understanding of what it means to be human is now in question. And if the term ‘human’ is incoherent, what will become of ‘human values’? Humanity is in peril: not from the familiar menace of ‘mass destruction’ and ecological overkill—but from a conceptual threat (1).
We in the West have forgotten who we are. Roman Catholics, with a considerable body of ecclesially recognized material on human life, are well prepared to begin to re-educate us on who and what we are. Protestants, generally speaking, are not. We have our work cut out for us. We were not prepared for this conceptual crisis, and have thus been caught flat footed.
Secularism is incapable of properly conceiving what it means to be human. As the church continues to decline in the West, we will witness increasing confusion about the nature and value of human beings. While much of the world around us will embrace a culture of death, the church must hold up an ethic of life. To capitulate would be to reject and dishonor the creative work of God. And rest assured, it will be the elderly, sick, and disabled who will pay the price.
David F. Watson is Lead Editor of Firebrand. He serves as Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.