Wednesday, January 20, 2016

The fundamental right to choose to die. .

A recent Canadian Supreme Court ruling has determined lethal-injection termination is a charter right (the equivalent of what we might term a protected right under the constitution). As a consequence of this, euthanasia will surely be legitimized, placed under one or another bureaus of the government, and rendered routine for society in Canada.  As it was described:
[S]ooner or later, death will become a civil servant. He will operate in the open, during business hours, with a budget and a boss. His work will be humanized and bureaucratized. Death will be licensed, regulated and empowered by law to solve a public policy problem—the unacceptability to certain people of certain types of dying.This marks a major shift in the meaning of death, from ineffable human destiny to legislated human right....
While a significant portion of America is in conflict over the right to life, much of the rest of the world has pushed onward to the other side -- the right to say good night to life when and how one chooses.  It is, in the eyes of many, a fundamental right, the right to die.

How strange it is that death which became the curse of rebellion for those who believe the Scriptures and the enemy of an all too brief life for those who do not believe them has now become normal, routine, and even, can we say, welcome over the prospect of living!  How strange indeed that death who placed the ticking clock of mortality over us while Satan gleefully giggled has now become the new normal -- even Christians succumb to the idea that death should come to us under our own terms and when we are ready to surrender ourselves to it, we should have the freedom to do so!

There is but one who willingly surrendered Himself to death and He died not for Himself but for those captive to death and living in the chains of its wretched prison.  But what of a Gospel that proclaims an end to death for a people who no longer see death as an enemy, who no longer view its appearance as a constraint upon their freedom, but choose it willingly as the purest exercise of that freedom?

What happens in Europe and Canada are not long from the shores of the US and what has become the new normal there will certainly try to become the new normal here as well.  Perhaps this is what Bernie Sanders meant when he suggested that what works in Denmark ought to be the model here.  The Danes have already tinkered with the view of death and worked to make a right what was once a dread to be put off at any cost.

How strange it is that we should give up trying to overcome death with technology, medicine, and religion and now tame it, domesticate it, and turn it into a pet!  Surely this is a sign of our fallen state that the life we were given as a gift would become a curse and the death that was our curse would become a gift!

Unleash the hounds of reason and you end up with all that mocks common sense as much as it contradicts Scripture and the Gospel!  Of course, it is the perfect answer to those who view human life as an offense against the pure nature of creation.  How better to decrease your carbon imprint than to return your body to the dust of the earth!  The goddess worship of the green queen of nature has taught us to hate life and love death.  Hmmmm....  God, help us from ourselves!!

2 comments:

ErnestO said...

"The RIGHT to DIE" has on the other side of the coin "be the cause of death to thy eternal soul."

Kirk Skeptic said...

Sad to say but we've been at the opposite extreme as well; eg promiscuously expending resources on those who have abused their bodies via substance abuse (including tobacco) and treating health care as a right which means someone has to provide it. Once we make Caesar the provider of health care, we surrender the right to challenge his authority.