What is the value of life?

Leap year produced an unusual gift.  The German Federal Constitutional Court ruled on a law passed by the Parliament some five years before that prevented “assistance in dying.”  The Court found the law unconstitutional.  It found for a supreme right -- personal autonomy -- that would guarantee the right to make decisions about one’s death and life unhindered from interference by the state.  This would guarantee the right to receive professional assistance in pursuit of the ending of their lives. This ruling has then opened the flood gates, finding for an absolute and unlimited right to suicide “in all stages of a person’s existence” -- a right that did not require life-threatening conditions or suffering to be present.  The court insisted that the freedom to die could not be taken away from anyone by the state for any cause.  Imagine this -- from a nation still haunted by the shadows of a complacent people to the suffering and death of millions, to the presence of an efficient death machine, and a governmental cover for this injustice.  The memories of this troubled history were not enough to prevent it.  Now a court has enshrined it and given it legal standing that is presumably established law.

How far will we go to desecrate God's gift of life?

Living now in the wake of a most unusual Lent and Easter and living in confidence that Christ is risen, this is worth our consideration.  We see the value God has placed upon life by the giving of His one and only Son to suffer and die that we might live.  We are reminded that the lingering effect of the fall in Eden is the temptation to make life cheap.  But God's redeeming work is to give it eternal value.  What a schizophrenic point of view -- to work so hard to preserve some lives and then to decide that others lives can be ended at will?  Makes you wonder about those who insist that everything must be done to prevent the spread of the corona virus and protect the people while insisting that abortion clinics are essential and the lives taken there a more important value than allowing people to worship!

Lord, have mercy.