[Erin] All its allotted length of days

As human beings enter the third millennium since the birth of Christ, more and more people are beginning to believe that this sort of thing makes sense. To be honest, I can understand it when people who don't share my faith in God think that assisted suicide and euthanasia are acceptable notions; why would the person who sincerely believes that there is no soul, no eternal life, no value in suffering, no point in prolonging his life when his youth and optimum health have long-since vanished not see it as desirable to select the date and the hour of his own death? While I don't share this view, of course, I recognize that for the person whose beliefs are so vastly different from my own there is no basis for a common understanding of these things; the total opposition of our basic philosophies about life make it unlikely that we'll find any consensus on the matter of death.

But although I may understand, though I reject, the non-religious person's views in favor of euthanasia, I find it extremely hard to understand the statements and actions of people who do believe in God and yet believe that people should have the right to euthanasia or to assisted suicide. Most puzzling of all are those who come from a Christian tradition and yet believe that it might be morally acceptable to end one's own life under certain circumstances.

Some of them may be motivated by fear. Plenty of us find the thought of our own eventual old age, with its possible infirmities or indignities, to be a grim and unpleasant subject to ponder. More than a few Christians might find themselves in the position of saying, while they are still relatively young and healthy, "I would never want to depend on others for everything. I would never want to be a burden. I would never want to be attached to machines," and so on.

No one is immune to a fear of suffering or dependency; but a Christian knows that these conditions are opportunities to grow in grace, not torments to be avoided even if the cost is death itself. Moreover, one of the virtues a Christian should be practicing is the virtue of hope; this does not imply a foolish optimism about life, but a willingness to trust in God's goodness and in His providence no matter what our present circumstances require of us.

And suicide, whether assisted or not, is always an act of despair. It is a refusal to trust that God might still have some purpose for us, however close we are to the end of our days; it is a throwing aside of life because we've decided that life itself no longer means anything to us--and that our life no longer provides anything of value to those around us.

Though what a secularist might believe about these things is going to be different than what a Christian believes, a Christian should at least know that the above isn't true. Either we are vessels of the Holy Spirit or we are not; but if we are, then it isn't up to us to decide that the vessel is worthless or broken beyond repair.