The Meaning of Death
It is remarkable to think that it is but eleven days since the vote on the Assisted Dying Pecker—a calendar week is a long fourth dimension in social media ethics. As part of ongoing reflection on this outcome, Matthew Kirkpatrick of Wycliffe Hall in Oxford offers this reflection on The Meaning of Expiry—A Response to Lord Carey and the Question of Assisted Dying.
I don't know how I will die. Will it be swift and painless at a ripe old age? Will it painful, debilitating, perhaps when it feels far too soon? And how will I react? How will I feel about the emotional and financial burden that my continued life will make upon my children? I have worked hard to give them the best get-go in life so that they tin live adventurously, ambitiously, and with the sense that they can attain what they truly put their minds to. How will I respond when my life now holds them back? I really don't know.
On Friday 11th September, Parliament rejected the near recent Assisted Dying Pecker, which sought to brand suicide accessible and as painless as possible for those facing an immanent and tortured end. Although the event (330 to 118 votes) was resounding, and so were the voices of those who passionately fought to take the current guidelines overturned. One that particularly stuck out was that of quondam archbishop George Carey who again reflected on his modify of heart to promote the legalisation of assisted dying. In his nearly recent commodity, in the Mail service on Lord's day (16th Baronial, 2016), Carey argues that he has come to realise that the only compassionate response—to someone whose suffering is then great every bit to drive them to suicide—is indeed to assistance them accomplish information technology.
Carey does not offering a critical or in-depth contribution to the euthanasia debate. And there are many points at which 1 might critique his position—not least his caricature of the anti-euthanasia position as having no meaningful response to suffering other than that it is 'good for you,' or that it is based purely on fear. Nonetheless, what is most striking is the pronounced lack of a theological argument. Or peradventure it is the slight presence of one. How a secular state decides on euthanasia is an important question. So also is how the church and believers should interact with and influence this word. However, at all-time Carey's article ignores both these crucial questions; at worst information technology causes defoliation past suggesting that Christ himself might back up the Assisted Dying Bill.
There are many good and well-rehearsed arguments against euthanasia, which I will not repeat here. However, many of them are theologically unsatisfying. They are useful at showing how euthanasia is pragmatically problematic, and effectively so in keeping euthanasia illegal. Yet, they don't go to the heart of the reason why Christians might reject it. For just as with simplistic and unqualified arguments that appeal to pity and nobility, they fail to take seriously both the pregnant of life and the pregnant of expiry.
Although information technology may remain the one thousand thousand dollar question, human life gains its pregnant by interim as a minister of God's presence, will, and glory. Even the most rudimentary formulations of the prototype of God retain something of this vocation. In our fallen state, that prototype has now been lost or tarnished. However, in living out of the image of Christ, the significant of our task has now gained a greater urgency and specificity in this ministry. Whether information technology be through word or deed, directly evangelism or simply through the structures of responsible life equally parents, friends, colleagues or citizens, each of us is called to be Christ to one another, to seek first the kingdom of God, and to make it manifest on earth every bit it is in heaven. The meaning of life, therefore, revolves around our identities as vessels for God'southward glory. Although nosotros are designed for liberty, it is a freedom that is always for others. The importance of this being-for-others is revealed in Paul's declaration that 'To alive is Christ and to die is gain' (Phil. ane:21). Although Paul reveals his desire to dice and be with Christ, he recognises that it is more than necessary that he 'remain in the torso' for the sake of those effectually him as a minister of God'southward presence.
But how practice we become the vessel of God's celebrity? It isn't achieved through human being systems, schemes, or strength, merely rather through our weakness. Just as God spoke to Zerubbabel, 'Non past might, nor past power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts,' (Zech. 4:6) so he says to us now 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness' (2 Cor. 12:nine). Information technology is when we become weak and give up our strength and control that God is able to manifest his strength through united states.
If nosotros consider Paul's uncompromising desire to bring nigh God's glory on earth through his bodily presence, and his understanding of the importance of weakness every bit the channel for God's ability, assisted dying or suicide is placed in an extremely uncomfortable light. To affirm euthanasia theologically is to declare that at that place is such a thing as a life not worthy to exist lived, an being that is non only truly hopeless but one that God is unable to use for his glory.
Christianity is founded on an understanding of martyrdom—whether that be through the loss of our actual lives or a more metaphorical, but even so analogical, agreement of taking upward our crosses and following Christ. The world, on the other manus, works under the cult of power and success. And Christians are just as susceptible to their influence. We easily skid into because that when we piece of work the hardest, pray the most, deliver the almost fluent sermons, we are all-time serving the kingdom; or, past looking at the numbers in our congregation, or our popularity and plaudits, believe that we are achieving it. Fifty-fifty when we consider the most boggling of self-sacrificial or martyrous acts, they besides are in danger of being those actions that we make up one's mind and cull—and so remain under our control—rather those that we receive and accept in truthful submission.
By beingness more than influenced by the world's ideology than the New Attestation witness towards weakness, two important consequences take occurred. The first concerns us as individuals. Information technology isn't that suffering is 'skillful for united states' in a rather British, 'stiff upper lip' kind of manner, as Carey caricatures. Rather, it is through our infirmities that we can not only learn what true weakness and submission are, but also larn how to embody them earlier God and for his sake. If we share with Paul a profound concern that God use out actual lives for his glory, it is not just that nosotros should desire the terminate of our lives to manifest God'southward celebrity, but that we should also see it as the most profound opportunity to let his power to come through our lives. That medical science is making the states live longer and then dice slower is not a reason for at present allowing euthanasia—as Carey argues—but rather for seeing a new, more modern form of martyrdom.
The 2d implication, however, concerns the Christian customs. When we consider the ways in which God speaks through the most vibrant of writers, eloquent of speakers, or charismatic of leaders, the church building every bit falls prey to ignoring the weak every bit the channels of God's revelation. Past turning to the strong we fail to encourage the weak to recognise their potential and to listen to how God speaks through them.
Where Carey suggests that the anti-euthanasia perspective rests on fear, a truly theological response requires the greatest of courage. Are nosotros willing to embrace absolute weakness in gild that God might work more powerfully through u.s.; to desire to remain in our bodies through sickness, pain, and all manner of degradation, for the sake of others; to have the courage to suffer all things to further God'south kingdom? Are nosotros able to believe that God volition use our crippled and unpleasing lives to conduct those we dear, when all we can understand is how they may crush them?
I still don't know how I will react to the fate of my earthly life. Only time will tell. However, what we find in the New Attestation is a message that requires extraordinary courage—a courage to believe that in that location is no life that God cannot apply for his purpose, and that information technology is precisely the life that seems beyond worth that God can use in the most extraordinary of ways. In contrast to Carey's response, the mission of the church must non be to sign people off from their Christian lives, but rather to transform our Christian communities to be mettlesome in the face of sufferings, and to commit themselves to learn from the delicate, weak, and disabled, and for each individual to invest themselves in their deaths, as in their lives, to be the vessels of God'southward glory for the sake of others.
Ian Paul adds: the backbone and integrity that Matthew writes of seems to me to exist embodied in the response of Michael Wenham in his interview for the BBC beneath, and on his blog Diary of a Dancing Donkey.
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