Flashpoints: Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia

This is part of the Flashpoint series, in which I will talk about controversial issues from a Biblical standpoint. I hope to humbly and respectfully approach these issues when I post on them, as they are difficult conversations and I am by no means an expert of anything. I only aim to help us think through some difficult things with the aid of His guidance. If you have any topics you'd like for me to explore, please write the suggestion in the comment section below.

No sane person enjoys seeing someone else in pain. We may enjoy violent movies, games or television shows, but no one that I know truly enjoys watching someone else in pain. That’s why we all cringe when a football player is slow to get up and look away when the news reports on someone in pain. We don’t enjoy true pain in real people.

This is only escalated in people that we love. When my brother wrecked his bike and slammed his face into the asphalt, I didn’t laugh at his hurt. Instead, I wanted him to stop being in pain. We desire for those around us to be comfortable, and we want them to be happy. It is this desire in the human heart that drives the debate of euthanasia/assisted suicide/hastened death to the minds of people.

Upon reading Nicola G. Raye’s “A Hastened Death,” I was confronted with my own thoughts on this issue. This post will be my working through of this idea, which will begin by looking at what Miss Raye said, work through this issue with my belief system, and then I will conclude with my thoughts on hastened death. Let us begin with a recap of how Nicola Raye and her father approached this very difficult issue. 

An Atheist’s Perspective 

Nicola Raye’s father in the essay, which I presume was a true story, was a brilliant man. He was active in many facets of his life: he walked daily, wrote regularly and engaged in thought-provoking debates. In fact, the knowledge that the way he died is sparking such discussions would probably make him rather happy. He was a philosopher and an intellectual.

All of this was Nicola’s father before the strokes. The first stroke only seemed to affect him a bit, as his mood soured slightly, but little else seemed different. Years later, the next stroke started the downward slope. He ended up bound in a wheelchair with slurred speech. Even though therapy helped some, he could no longer live life as he once could. He couldn’t write on his computer, take walks or engage in conversations like he did before the second stroke. His life was dwindling, and would never return to the way it once was.

The entire Raye family discussed his life with him, and Nicola’s father decided that he wanted to die. Even after he did a year and a half of antidepressants, the man still wanted to die. He simply did not enjoy life as he once did, and had no desire to continue on in this state. As an atheist, Mr. Raye did not see any purpose to his life beyond what he enjoyed. There was no divine calling or anything on his life, and he did not believe in any kind of life after death. The way he saw it, life is to be enjoyed for the short time that we are here. If we cannot do so, then we might as well cease to exist. So, with the help and support of his family, he ate some chocolate pudding with a bunch of pills crushed into it. He took some pictures, watched TV, had one last smoke, and fell into eternal sleep. 

An Christ Follower’s Perspective

This is heartbreaking to me, and a difficult issue to work through. I am saddened that this once-brilliant man found himself in such a difficult position. I am brokenhearted that his family had to watch him deteriorate before their eyes, and that everyone involved felt that the best option for him was to just die.

I can understand completely. I am also an active person, much like Nicola Raye’s father. I am constantly on the move, doing something with my life. I write, read, engage in deep conversations over coffee, take walks and bike rides at the park, swim at the lake and many other things that a neurological disease could take away from me. I would be rather miserable if all I could do was sit in a chair and mumble. Therefore, this essay caused me to take a long look at how I feel about hastening death in cases like this. I needed to search my heart, and most importantly as a follower of Jesus Christ, I needed to search His Word.

I was curious to see what Scripture said about the idea of assisting a loved one into death, or even if I were to be in that position. I was not sure if the Bible would have much to say on the matter, but I scoured over the pages of Scripture, and found a few different ideas that really seemed to point in one direction on this very understandable debate.

There is only one case of hastened death by someone else’s hand in all of Scripture (at least that I could find), and it is found in 1 Samuel 31. Here, we see Israel’s first king, Saul, surrounded on a mountain by his enemies. They would like nothing more than to tear him apart and kill him slowly and violently. As he looked certain death in the eyes, Saul asked his assistant (known as an armor bearer) to run him through with a sword. Saul figured that a quick death at the hands of a friend was better than the possibly slow and agonizing death at the hands of enemies, similar to how someone could feel that eating poisoned pudding at the hands of family would be a better way to go out than slow and agonizing deterioration of the nervous system. I can see the line of thinking, without a doubt, but Saul’s friend wouldn’t do it. He was afraid, and instead Saul was forced to kill himself. Therefore, we are left to speculate on the exact view in Scripture of Saul’s thinking. I can think of  several passages that could assist in our interpretation, however.

The first is in Genesis 1:26-27, which says: 

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female.

Here, we see that God made man and woman in His image. We are earthly representations, the physical depiction of the Lord of the universe. We are made to represent Him on this earth, much as an earthly king will put up statues of himself to show that he rules that land.

Furthermore, the Psalms talk of how God knew us before we were born, and that we are precious and wonderfully made by God. We are not just His image; we as a race are the treasured image of God that He has made specially and individually, as a master artist works each work with a love and individual effort. I am very different from you: in appearance, speech, interests, age, height, background…the list goes on! We are all uniquely and differently made to represent a God that is beyond all understanding and expression, and He treasures us. He would never want us to ignore that and think that our life would be best utilized by ending it. That’s why in Exodus 20, Moses wrote that one of the Ten Commandments was to not murder. We don’t murder because God values life.

Even more, if you are a Christian, then you have an even greater reason to stay alive. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 says: 

Don’t you yourselves know that you are God’s sanctuary and that the Spirit of God lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s sanctuary, God will destroy him; for God’s sanctuary is holy, and that is what you are.

The very Spirit of God dwells within Christians, and our bodies have been made into a temple for the Lord. We must keep that in mind! How dare we think that we could know better what to do with the cherished image of God that even houses His Spirit than the God who made it? The arrogance that we have to believe that we know when to end life more than God is amazing, and honestly is even convicting me. We must value life more than this.

Rather than looking at deteriorating health as a curse or as something to run from, why should it be any different than any other problem in our lives? God ordains, in His sovereignty, that we go through trials in this life. Satan still has a limited amount of rule in this world, and he intends to cause us as much trouble as possible. Between those two truths, we can be certain that we will experience any number of things that will make our life less than it may have once been. It could be a heart-wrecking divorce, where your treasured partner in life decides to leave you for someone else. It could be the death of a child or loved one around you. Nicola discussed his pain and agony at watching his father suffer, and then die. What’s to say that Nicola doesn’t drop into a dark state, quitting his job and becoming clinically depressed? His nights and days begin to run together, he stops eating, and is totally miserable. Clinical depression can be even more debilitating than a neurological disease; what if Nicola remembers his dad’s line of thinking (that life would not get better, so better to die) , and in his depressed state, feels that he has also reached the point of no return. Suicide would start looking awful good to him, wouldn’t it?

The point is this: we will all suffer. Few will suffer in ways that assisted death seems logical and merciful, but we must look at all suffering, no matter how bad it seems, through the same lens. The apostle Paul had a “thorn in his side” that the Lord would not remove. Did that mean that he wouldn’t persevere and soldier on for the glory of God through that? Of course that isn’t the case, and it is the same for John, who was left to die on an island. John was exiled, never allowed to be with people again to share the name of Jesus. So what did he do with his new and lesser life? He continued to worship, and eventually wrote the book of Revelation, where Jesus talks of His return to remove suffering from this world.

We must keep things in perspective. Suffering, even to the point of strokes and ALS and other neurological diseases, must be kept with the perspective that God is in control of it all. Nothing happens to His cherished, individually created images without His allowance. He is sovereign, and if he will put His Spirit within a man with a deteriorating brain and body (such as my pastor-mentor-friend, who has ALS), then I will maintain that He intends to keep that person alive until He takes them home. It may not be easy, but we must trust that He knows better. He made us; who are we to finish ourselves off on our own devices?