Death with Dignity has been on
people’s minds a lot this year. From the
death of Robin Williams to the recent death of Brittany Maynard, the idea of
assisted suicide has been heavily debated, with Christians at the forefront
defending the dignity of life. While we
as Christians mean well when we defend the dignity of life, we fail to realize
that, in the overall view of things, our arguments do more harm than good. Busy with discussions on redemptive suffering
or the preciousness of life, we are blind to the elephant in the room: that, in
certain respect, the Death with Dignity crowd is right.
To understand the Death with
Dignity position, Christianity has to be completely removed from the
equation. When we appeal to things like
the preciousness of life, we assume that they are principles that everyone
accepts without question. Outside of
Christianity, the preciousness of life makes little to no sense at all. If we
are not made in the image and likeness of God, then we are nothing more than
complex animals. Our difference from the
animals is quantitative, not qualitative.
The difference between me and a dog is some as yet unknown chemical or
atom that somehow gives me rationality.
Naturally, this is all assuming
atheism, or at least an uncaring, non-religious view; that the universe is one
big accident; that, somewhere along the line, the happy accident of human life
just sort of happened. In that case,
what is human life? Not much more than
using rationality to enjoy the world around you. One accident appreciating another. As little as it may seem, there is a certain
dignity to it. Man may be just a cosmic
hiccup, but he is the only thing in the world that can appreciate and enjoy the
universe the way he can. Man can watch
the stars, study the trees, and listen to the birds; and when the fact that it
is all accidental and cosmically meaningless begins to bug him, he can create
meaning from nothingness. With weddings
and birthdays, holidays and religions, man can create for himself a complex
fabric of life. An ideal little world
that he is the lonely god over.
In such a world, pain and suffering
is a horrible, sick joke. Pain and
meaningless suffering destroy man’s meaningful world, and with it his
dignity. As long as the pain can be
overcome and man can continue with his life, things are fine. Eventually, however, there comes a time when
things are not fine, when man is so broken by illness and old age that it is
impossible for him to enjoy anything at all.
You would be hard-pressed to even call him a man anymore; his life is
the same or worse than the plants and animals.
When he finally dies, he goes back to being the cosmic accident he
always was. There is no dignity
suffering or death. On the contrary,
they are the great destroyers of dignity.
Going back to the Christian
arguments against assisted suicide, one might begin to see the problem. If a Christian tells someone non-religious
that life is precious, the non-religious person would just wonder where he got
that weird idea. On the level of natural
reason, it simply doesn’t follow. Humans
are born and die every day, just like everything else; man is remarkable only
in his rationality, and that isn’t with him all his life. The non-religious person would agree that
rational human life is precious, and they would point out that assisted suicide
logically follows. The best way to
respect rational human life is to perform one last act of rationality: to leave
the world while you are still human.
Redemptive suffering would make even less sense. The idea that bearing suffering to the bitter
end could be redemptive would seem at best morbid, and at its worst a little
sadistic. Taken by itself, suffering is horrible and demeaning, and to say it
has some purpose seems like the strangest, sickest delusion in the world.
As Christians, it is important that
we look at the Death with Dignity position and realize that they are telling
the truth. No matter how you look at it,
suffering and death are, and always will be will, ugly, horrible, and utterly
without dignity. It is simple fact of
life. When the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us, He didn’t tell us that suffering and death isn’t that bad, that
we just need to learn how to deal with it.
Quite the opposite; He reminded us how horrific the whole thing is, and
then turned the whole world upside down.
It would have made more sense if He had given us a way to redemption in
spite of suffering and death. Instead,
He gave us a way through it.
Christianity doesn’t put a good face on suffering and death because they
are, in any way, good things.
Christianity asks us to bear with it for the sake of the redemptive end.
Looked at from the outside,
Christianity is madness. From the
outside, Christians seem to take death and suffering lightly, as if they are
things that you could deal with if you have a good enough attitude. Apart from Christianity, these things don’t
make any sense, and we need to stop pretending that they do. To have any chance of overcoming the evils of
assisted suicide and euthanasia, we are going to have to acknowledge that the
Death with Dignity position is a far more powerful enemy than we previously
assumed. It is powerful because, on some
level, it is right, and that alone makes far, far harder to argue against.
