In John Christopher's 1967 teen sci-fi traditional TripodsHeroes Will and Fritz have simply destroyed the 'Masters', an alien race that has taken over Earth, after they meet a few of their hapless slaves. They’re folks managed by digital “caps” sealed into their brains.
One in every of them rises from the fallen physique of his alien grasp and declares to his fellow slaves, “Masters are not any extra. Our lives are subsequently meaningless. Brothers, allow us to go to the Place of Completely happy Launch.” This in fact refers back to the euthanasia heart that the Masters thoughtfully supplied.
Though I will need to have learn this a minimum of thirty-five years in the past, it got here to thoughts after I first heard assisted suicide advocates complain that some folks had been towards assisted suicide on “non secular grounds.” This will get it precisely the opposite approach round, reasonably like saying that some folks don't imagine in kosher meals or the pilgrimage to Mecca for non secular causes; for in fact these are issues which can be believed in by one explicit faith, for causes particular to that faith, which in fact aren’t shared by all others.
The demand to be allowed to kill oneself and to be given assistance is equally a peculiar perception of 1 explicit faith. The faith talked about is humanism and the actual perception is in “autonomy”.
Similarity with Tripods the scene is that this: autonomy is for the humanist a grasp to be served. The entire that means of human life is discovered within the means to make choices that maximize pleasure. And when this grasp, the omnipotent grasp of autonomous alternative, is discovered to not exist, then life is deemed to be meaningless. Suicide is the one factor left to do.
Now it might sound unusual to talk of the enslavement of autonomies; isn't autonomy about freedom, the alternative of slavery? But a part of the genius of Christianity is to understand that the alternative is definitely true. Sin—autonomy from God—thinks it’s gaining freedom, however in actuality it finds slavery. Making an attempt to flee from God's rule doesn’t convey freedom any greater than an airplane escaping from its wings or a fish escaping from water. Those that set autonomy as a central moral precept is not going to discover that it liberates them right into a courageous new world of happiness and success. Slightly, they discover that it locks them right into a mindset that step by step dehumanizes and destroys.
Nowhere is that this clearer than in assisted suicide. The beat of the argument of those that combat for it’s autonomy, autonomy, autonomy. The marketing campaign for autonomy is pushed by a quasi-religious perception in autonomy, and it's not exhausting to see why.
Extolling our private autonomy, believing that our particular person decisions are the aim and that means of our lives, runs into an unimaginable drawback with the strategy of dying. For some time, the phantasm (for such it’s) of autonomy will be maintained with medical remedy that relieves signs and delays the tip of life. However ultimately the time will come when actuality will break by means of. Dying is the last word negation of autonomy; it's a factor to come back on us, and towards which our will is just not fairly ready to withstand. The strategy of dying is subsequently a terror to humanism not solely due to its utter hopelessness (a humanist funeral is among the bleakest events one can expertise), but in addition as a result of it represents an inescapable rebuke to the whole humanistic undertaking.
When dying turns into so shut that its inevitability can not be ignored, the grasp the humanist has served all his life is all of a sudden gone. That's why assisted-suicide campaigners complain that the dying at present “don't have a good selection”. It isn’t a lot an announcement of actuality (the truth is it’s utterly false) as a lament for a deceased deity. Man with out alternative has no additional worth or objective in humanist faith. There are not any extra choices. Subsequently, our life not has that means.
Aside from one. There stays one potential alternative, one method to refuse to bow to the irresistible energy of dying. It means making the second of dying itself a alternative, an train of will. Simply as King Saul falls on his sword to keep away from being overtaken by the Philistines, he seeks to keep away from the disgrace of defeat by dying by being the reason for dying; so to the final second I keep the idea that I’m the grasp of my ship, I’m the captain of my soul, regardless that it has ceased to have any credibility. By pulling the set off myself (or pushing the button on the 'medical system', to make use of the time period within the Leadbeater Invoice), I’ll keep my perception in autonomy to the very finish. Let's go to a spot of completely satisfied leisure. Earlier than dying can suffocate my means to decide on, I find yourself dishonest it by selecting it myself.
Because of this assisted suicide is such an article of religion for humanists. That's why Dignity in Dying spent enormous sums of cash on tube adverts proclaiming “If I can't keep, let me select how I’m going.” Humanists UK subsequently says that UK legal guidelines ought to present “the chance to face the tip of life with dignity and autonomy”. Observe the general identification of those final two; dignity and autonomy are indistinguishable in humanist faith.
And it explains the motivation of these pushing for a change within the legislation. They’re nearly universally, both explicitly or functionally humanistic. And it explains why nearly universally those that aren’t opposed. It's not that they object to it on “non secular grounds”; it's simply that they don't share a single explicit non secular motive that drives them.
So the query is why ought to UK legislation be formed by this single non secular view? Particularly one so basically self-centered and so basically bleak? Which sees no worth or that means in humanity apart from that which we will create for ourselves by means of our personal decisions? And whose devotees are so enslaved to their grasp that they like dying to the prospect of life with out him?
Thankfully, the UK was based and constitutionally nonetheless stands on a significantly better basis. One which understands that human life is just not an individualistic undertaking of self-creation, however a treasured reward from a God of infinite holiness and excellent goodness. Who brought on us to indicate his picture and entered our world to save lots of us from our self-destructive makes an attempt at autonomy and raise us as much as unimaginable future glory. And so this human life is just not an accident from which we should salvage some worth by our personal self-assertion towards the brutal details of actuality, however is a treasured reward to be embraced from our conception and cherished for so long as it lasts. And so, as its finish approaches, we don’t discover that our lives are devoid of that means, however reasonably their true everlasting that means and objective come into correct focus.
The query of assisted suicide subsequently places us in entrance of the query of whether or not we need to substitute this foundation with one other, primarily based on one other faith, which calls for suicide exactly due to its atrophied view of what human life truly is. The difficulty is just not whether or not Parliament ought to reject assisted suicide on non secular grounds. Slightly, it’s whether or not to simply accept it when it’s demanded by one and solely faith within the service of its personal esoteric and damaging god of human autonomy.
The Rev Dr Matthew Roberts is the minister of Trinity Church, York, and a former Moderator of the Synod of the Presbyterian Church Worldwide.
