A Christmas present of death. . .

Halloween provided a ghoulish gift from the Illinois legislature to the people of Illinois.  They passed a bill seemingly to deal with food safety concerns but which was rewritten to become an assisted suicide bill.  It effectively allows qualified terminally-ill individuals to receive an “aid in dying” prescription from a physician in order to “die peacefully.”  The vote follows the example of Canada and a few other states in the US to provide a right to die and a right to die without pain.  It claims all the usual hurdles to prevent people from abusing the right before the law but we all know that willing accomplices are the weak links in every assisted suicide provision.  

It is not hard to see the logic or sentiment in this.  Who wants their loved ones to suffer or would remove a remedy to end such suffering?  Poll after poll tells us that we as Americans fear painful death more than merely fearing death.  In other words, we want to provide a preemptive strike against the prospect of such suffering.  Here were are not only talking about physical pain but a lost of a certain quality of life which the people suffering claim makes life not worth living.  It is, as always, a purely subjective judgment in which the hoops to such an aid in dying are less spelled out in concrete than allowed to the judgment of those involved -- from the ones suffering to their physicians.

We have come to the conclusion that either we live life on our terms or we want an opt out option.  This would be laughable if it were not so universal.  Who among us lives life on their terms?  Frank Sinatra might have such of a life in which he must be himself whether that means success or failure but we as people are help captive to the idea of happiness and to the elusive character of such happiness.  Poll after poll says we are not so much in search of success as we are happiness (a word defined differently from individual to individual).  We want to live the life we want or not at all.  The problem with that is, of course, who will guarantee such a pleasing life?  Here, the government is taking on the role of guarantor of happiness by guaranteeing the right to bring an unhappy life to a painless conclusion.  While some seem comfortable with the idea that the government decides, most of us are too painfully familiar with all the ways our government has failed in its promises to its citizens to trust such a government to be the definer and guarantor of happiness.

The consequence of a society with a plethora of religions and a shallow knowledge of those options has left even some Christians vulnerable to the idea that quality of life is the main issue.  Such Christians find it a short journey to admitting sympathy for those who live with daily disappointment and seek an out rather than suffer the pain to go on.  We are not united against abortion, to be sure, but neither are we united on the issue of assisted suicide.  The romance of it all leaves even Christians vulnerable to taking into their own hands what belongs to God alone. It will take less time to find more universal acceptance for the idea of an "aid in dying" than it did to accept the norm of birth control and abortion.  Death with dignity is the mantra.  Death with love is less spoken of because it requires of the living compassion and mercy toward those who suffer.  Sometimes the greater love is to reject and deny what desire and want seek.  If the adults in the room are willing, they will tell us to grow up and stop acting like children.  Life is messy.  Death is messy.  God said it would be so but He also did something radical -- He rescued us apart from our own will and delivered us through His suffering to suffer for Him now until all suffering ends.