Is Life Still Sacred? A Christian Response to Euthanasia

Canada’s euthanasia program (MAID) now accounts for 1 in 20 deaths, expanding beyond the terminally ill to include mental illness and even minors. Advocates call it compassion and autonomy...but what does Christianity say about the sacredness of life? (Full conversation: Holy Post 683)

Phil: A feature story in The Atlantic: the headline is, Canada is Killing Itself. Well, that’s something. 

“When Canada’s parliament in 2016 legalized the practice of euthanasia, medical assistance in dying, or MAID as it’s formally called, it launched an open-ended medical experiment. MAID now accounts for about one in twenty deaths in Canada—more than Alzheimer’s and diabetes combined—surpassing countries where assisted dying has been legal for far longer. 

MAID began as a practice limited to gravely ill patients who were already at the end of life. The law was then expanded. Well, let’s expand it to include people who were suffering from serious medical conditions but not facing imminent death. In two years, MAID will be made available to those suffering only from mental illness. Parliament has also recommended granting access to euthanasia to minors.

But here’s the point: at the center of the world’s fastest-growing euthanasia regime is the concept of patient autonomy.”

Skye: There it is. 

Phil: “Honoring a patient’s wishes is, of course, a core value in medicine. But here—this is the writer for The Atlantic summarizing—autonomy has become paramount. This allows Canada’s euthanasia advocates to push for expansion in terms that brook no argument, refracted through the language of equality, access, and compassion. This is the story of an ideology in motion—of what happens when a nation enshrines a right before reckoning with the totality of its logic. If autonomy in death is sacrosanct, is there anyone who shouldn’t be helped to die?”

Skye: There’s a natural, even Christian, instinct towards mercy and compassion—an end to suffering. Those are virtuous things. I get where that’s coming from. But this illustrates why—even when something is a Christian virtue—there are boundaries. Like, I think we’d all agree marriage is celebrated in Christianity, but there are boundaries. Getting married thirty times is not something to be celebrated. Neither is polygamy. Marriage is good, yes, but it has to be defined and confined. Same thing with mercy. It’s a wonderful Christian ethic, but there are boundaries. What started perhaps with the motivation towards mercy has gone off the rails.

Phil: A lot of the practitioners who were comfortable with “track one” euthanasia—He’s going to die, I’m just helping him—are uncomfortable with “track two” euthanasia. They interviewed one, and I thought this was really telling.

Jonathan Regular, a family physician on Vancouver Island, is among the small group that will practice track two euthanasia. And this is his quote:

“Once you accept that people ought to have autonomy, once you accept that life is not sacred, and that it’s not something that can only be taken by God—a being I don’t believe in—then if you’re in that work, some of us have to go forward and say, ‘We’ll do it.’”

Skye: There it is. 

Kaitlyn: That makes perfect sense.

Phil: He kind of just spelled it out.

Kaitlyn: Yes. It is completely logical. And it’s not even just the line about life not being sacred, or not something that can only be taken by God—that’s frightening. But even before that: if you think an individual’s autonomy is not only important but ultimate, then I don’t know how you argue against this. 

One of the most difficult and unsettling teachings that scripture gives us, in colorful stories and explicit teaching, is that humans don’t actually, because of sin, naturally know what is good for us. We can get glimpses of it. We are not without any ability to judge what a good human life looks like.

But in scripture, people pursue what they think is a good life, and they’re met with the reality that it’s not actually what’s good for them. The things they think will save them won’t save them. Ironically, scripture shows again and again: your pursuit of wealth above all else won’t give you satisfaction. Not only is it not honoring to God, but you won’t even get the flourishing life you want.

Even apart from Christian claims, I think there are very good theological reasons to be against this. Christians historically have been against it. I know Canadian who have written to persuade churches there to be more publicly opposed.

But even beyond Christianity: once you say there is some kind of good for a human life that isn’t just whatever you choose, then you can say—objectively—that there is good human life and bad human life.

We see this with animals. It’s somehow easier for us to say: that dolphin with a plastic drink container around its mouth is not flourishing. That’s not a good dolphin life. This is a better dolphin life. Yet somehow we struggle to say the same about humans.

Phil: But at the end of the 19th century, white Christian Europeans were saying that about people everywhere else in the world. In Africa—that is not a good human life, that is not a good civilization. We know what a good life is, so we’ll teach you or force you to. 

Skye: The irony, I get what you’re pointing at with colonization and ethnocentrism, but the irony is that much of the progressive movement in Canada and beyond has accepted many of those missionaries’ messages. Equal rights of women. Rights of children. Ending polygamy and prostitution. Reforming prisons and labor laws. The abolitionist movement.

They agree with all of those. But as many have pointed out, what progressivism often does is want the kingdom of God without the king. It wants all the benefits of Christianity without the metaphysical obligations of belonging to a bigger story.

I think the bigger message is this: we are beings created to thrive with a sense of purpose and meaning. We individually and collectively have value because our Creator has given us value.

So how do we combat this? At least in our own lives, in our congregations, families, households, we model for others, especially the younger generation, that life has meaning apart from consumption, apart from pleasure, apart from honor and wealth, that It is intrinsically valuable to contribute to the blessing of others.