Assisted dying and Christmas

 Parish Magazine Item for December 

From The Rectory

 

We are praying that all our Christmas services will be full of joy. We hope you’ll join us and find them uplifting experiences. 

 

I’m sorry, in a way, that this item isn’t especially merry. But then nor was the first Christmas. It likely involved, amongst other things, scandal, long and hard journeys, a painful birth, a borrowed manger, plot, escape and murder. We make a mistake, may I suggest, if we imagine that we can all have a couple of months which are all glitter and tinsel.  

 

I want to take this opportunity, if I may, to say something about a difficult but important issue of the moment and then to think about it in the light of Christmas. If you’d rather give this article a miss, I quite understand!

 

The new Labour government has had a flurry of initiatives and announcements. But one of the potentially most consequential events in this parliament will take place on 29^th November as the House of Commons holds its first debate on the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s private member’s bill to allow for the assisted suicide of terminally ill adults in England and Wales.

 

Of course our first response to anyone suffering pain or feeling hopeless must be compassion. We must do all that we can to help.

 

The case against assisted suicide has often been made eloquently, recently so by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. Google will help you find those. Or readers might also be interested in Baron Etchingham’s contributions to this debate in The Spectator: spectator.co.uk/article/not-all-suffering-can-be-relieved-a-debate-on-assisted-dying/

 

Traditionally, Christians have always been strongly opposed to suicide as an act of despair and therefore contrary to Christian faith and hope. We believe that God alone gives life and that we should trust God with our deaths. Christians are for life. Although it is hard for secular society to grasp, we reject the idea that persons are utterly free and autonomous individuals divorced from all connections or loyalties. We belong to God both by creation and redemption. It is not complete to say “It’s my body; it’s my life; I can do what I want.” Speaking actually in the context about how we use our bodies sexually, the Apostle Paul tells believers: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your bodies.”   

 

As well as this in principle objection, I am pretty terrified by the potential practical problems of such assisted dying legislation. The “right” of terminally ill adults to die might be expanded to teenagers with mental health difficulties. And we can, I suspect, easily imagine that some pressure might be put on (or at least felt by) granny as she clings on to her, we are told, “poor quality of life” in her expensive care home as the grandchildren’s inheritance is put up for sale. If this seems alarmist, we might look at some of the experience of other countries. Or at the theoretical safeguards and procedures around abortion and its practical availability. The statistics give me pause. We might think we are talking about very rare and restricted circumstances, but we might in fact see many many deaths, even if the formal legislation remains apparently preventative.

 

I find it hard to think that assisted suicide will aid the advances in hospice and palliative care that we undoubtedly need. It is perhaps worth saying that ethicists have often accepted the idea that pain relief might legitimately shorten a life if this is a secondary consequence, not the primary aim.

 

Laws such as those which are proposed would radically alter the relationship between patient and doctor. Those who are pledged to preserve life will be dealing in death. Will family doctors also terminate life? Or will offering assisted suicide be a specialism to which some devote all day, every day?

 

Much more could be said, but perhaps Christmas also tells against “euthanasia”. The baby of Bethlehem shows us how much God values human life. God the Son came from heaven for us. He came to mean and difficult circumstances, overshadowed by death. He who made the stary host, was weak and vulnerable. Human life does not matter for what we can do. The Romans were given to infanticide. Babies were disposable. The Christians cherished helpless, crying, spewing babies. The infant Jesus shows us that someone who cannot speak or in fact do anything for themselves can be – is – of infinite worth. Here too, perhaps here especially, is the Image of God, the God who could be made man, made small. Christmas affirms again the dignity and worth of all, including the last and the least. The newborn Christ shows us that the old and the sick are cherished by the Almighty.

 

Jesus was born to die. And at the very heart of the Christian faith is suffering with meaning and purpose. Of course the death of Jesus is unique. But I hope it doesn’t seem glib to say that the cross proclaims that there are worse things even than gruesome pain. Jesus’ death was deliberately terrible and humiliating. No effective pain relief for him. He seems to have rejected that which might have dulled his suffering. And no quick humanitarian end. Soldiers would sometimes break the legs of the victims of crucifixion who lingered on to hasten their death, but this was not needed in Jesus’ case. He had already died when they came to check on him.

 

To the Christian, it is not only all life that has meaning and value. Suffering too can have infinite worth. When a death is horrible, or we are tempted to think it shameful, maybe we can see there a hint of the cross of Christ, which was in reality the wisdom, power and glory of God, for all the agony and seeming futile waste.

 

Whatever we face, pray Christmas might bring us fresh peace and hope.

 

The Revd Marc Lloyd