Inconsistency. . .

Most of the progressive or liberal variety of Christian will insist that the death penalty for egregious crimes is inhumane no matter how it is administered.  Indeed, the hold up on the death penalty has been in part because of the search for humane ways to put someone to death that will satisfy the courts while at the same time remains accessible from pharmaceutical manufacturers who do not necessarily want their drugs used for this purpose.  So to summarize, there is no humane way to enforce the death penalty on the part of the state so we must not allow it.  Pope Francis has gone so far as to state that the death penalty is against the Gospel -- whatever that means.

Then there is this.  On September 23, 2024, an American woman killed herself in a Sarco pod, a 3D-printed capsule which kills the person inside with nitrogen. It is promoted as being a comfortable space with soft furnishings and a travel pillow.  The promoters say it is “luxurious” but that would presume that the sleep pods found in university libraries and airports are also luxurious.  People may want to die, but they do want to die comfortably.  The the suicide pod also allows the consumer to “choose either a dark or transparent view out of the pod so you can look at a pleasing scene as you pass -- Soylent Green anyone?  Of course, the progressives and liberals would insist that everyone have this right to choose when to die and to die painlessly as a basic human right.  But if the state administers the death in this way, it is automatically inhumane while if the person chooses it the death is even laudable.  Now that is some inconsistency.  For what it is worth, the late term abortions are positively brutal in comparison to the suicide pod and yet such abortions are not inhumane but also an essential and basic human right.  Again, more inconsistency.

None of us are entirely consistent.  Perhaps that is the nature of life after the Fall.  But the essential inconsistency of viewpoints common to us as sinners has less consequence than its application to life and when to die and how to die.  Perhaps it is merely the matter of who is in control that makes things humane.  If we are, then it is good.  If someone else is, then it is not.  But death is death -- for the person in a suicide pod or the child ripped from the womb.  We may feel better about one over the other but it is a precarious ledge on which to posit such deep and profound matters.  I fear that ledge will soon give way.  What then is there to prevent death from being simply a consumer choice?