Assisted Suicide is Spiralling Out of Control in Canada
Plenty of the same people who were outraged that the United States Supreme Court would overturn precedent on seminal abortion decisions, seemingly had no problem with the overturning of precedent in this Canadian case. This is because implicit in the view of rights and judicial review that many progressives hold, is that it is perfectly acceptable to overturn precedent in the name of expanding or establishing some newly discovered right — but once this is done, the debate is settled and there can be no reasonable dissent or change of heart. History, it seems, only marches in one direction.
An important part of the Carter decision, where the court determined that relevant social facts had changed, was essentially a blithe dismissal of exactly what has come to pass in Canada less than a decade after the decision. The court rejected the concern that once assisted suicide was allowed in some rare cases, there would be a “slippery slope” from helping terminally ill people end their lives, to a system in which vulnerable people like the disabled were caught in a euthanizing net.
Evidence presented in the case by a medical expert from Belgium that this might be possible, was dismissed by the court because “the permissive regime in Belgium is the product of a very different medico-legal culture.” Unlike those barbaric Belgians, enlightened Canada could avoid sliding down this slippery slope in which safeguards are easily gotten around. They would avoid the creeping expansion of eligibility by setting up a “carefully regulated scheme” that would keep its application narrow and exceptional.
Yet just seven years after the decision, the exact scenario dismissed by the court has come to pass. Who could have seen this coming? Well, all sorts of people, and not just religious voices. Disabilities advocates in Canada have been sounding the alarm on the path Canada was headed down since 2015, seemingly ignored by the courts and government.
You Might also like
-
Examining America’s Political Pulpit
Matthes argues for the power of the pulpit—or what she labels “sermonic influence” on political and cultural life. Such an influence, she demonstrates, has proven especially notable during times of national crisis: it is here that Protestant sermons have resonated with the greatest force.
In her new book, When Sorrow Comes: The Power of Sermons from Pearl Harbor to Black Lives Matter, Melissa M. Matthes argues for two claims. First and most fundamentally, that Protestant ministers should assume a more active public role addressing political and legal affairs, and that, in doing so, they should be met with greater acceptance as national and community leaders whose guidance truly matters. Second, that Protestant clergy espousing theological liberalism provide the greatest opportunity to enlighten public discourse and strengthen the common good.
Her work succeeds admirably on the first score, but is open to a more ambivalent assessment on the second.
The Public Power of the Pulpit
Matthes centers her work on American Protestantism and justifies her limited purview on the “cultural dominance” of Protestantism in the United States—a position of demographic preeminence still evidenced by how the majority of the religiously self-identified are some form of Protestant, and that over 80 percent of African Americans number themselves as Protestant Christians.
From this Protestant-centered perspective, Matthes argues for the power of the pulpit—or what she labels “sermonic influence” on political and cultural life. Such an influence, she demonstrates, has proven especially notable during times of national crisis: it is here that Protestant sermons have resonated with the greatest force. This is so because, despite the secularization of American culture, many Americans still look to the country’s most prominent confession, especially for consolation in moments of collective crisis and in the aftershocks of largescale national tragedies.
In defending the public role of Protestant ministers, Matthes makes her stand against the claims of some strict separationists like Andras Sajo, who argues that “social, political, and legal arrangement[s]” must “not allow considerations based on the transcendental or the sacred.” Matthes argues that when the nation wrestles with tragedy, ministers should be listened to by citizens and policymakers alike, with their messages taken as sources of politically relevant insight. This follows, she argues, from the first principles of democratic legitimacy. If the people wish religious inspiration to guide their personal and public response to collective tragedy, the people have every right to have just this; to deny it would be to reject in Richard Parker’s lofty words that “here, the people rule.”
We can add to her arguments the recognition that, in times of crisis and grieving, there would be something coldly indifferent about a strong separation of church and state in the way Sajo recommends. If people seek comfort and guidance from religion in times of tragedy, to demand that they have only an aesthetic comfort, without any cognitive guidance—to say that they may lose themselves in dirges and requiems but take no heed of the sermons accompanying them—is to give cold comfort, indeed.
Having shown that religion still plays a powerful role in the limited arena of collective sorrow, Matthes argues that an opening is forged for seeing Protestant religiosity in a more positive light outside times of national tragedy. This positive influence is disclosed, she maintains, in the way the faith engenders a concern for those in need and on the margins of social and economic life. Specifically, she says religion can promote the common good apart from crises because it can speak so helpfully to just what Sajo and others say must remain the province of secular political advocacy: human rights and human progress.
In taking this stand, Matthes responds to the counterargument that, once re-affirmed in the public square, public religion with its diversity of sects might exacerbate existing social tensions. Theological disagreement, she contends, does not negate the positive contributions of religion to the common good. A diversity of ministerial voices can actually serve to stimulate the American people to greater reflection. Her point seems to be that serious debate about the implications of the transcendent truths religion advances witnesses to the seriousness of truth and transcendence in a way that can provoke our increasingly “apatheistic” age—an age indifferent to the claims of religious transcendence—to concern itself with the truth of the matters these ministers debate. Even when expounding differing theologies, therefore, the Protestant pulpit proves its value by stimulating us to enter into a state of mind “where seeking the Truth is a lifelong project.”
A Genealogy of Political Religion
Notwithstanding this recognition of the value of pluralism, Matthes’s work argues that a particular kind of theology should exercise the greatest influence on public life. The liberal theology that underwrote the homilies delivered by mid-century liberal Protestants following the tragedy of the Pearl Harbor attack should be recovered, deepened, and deployed as a religious witness in the United States today.
Matthes develops this claim by providing a fascinating survey of American Protestant sermons delivered in the wake of nationally salient crises: not only the Pearl Harbor attack, but also the assassination of JFK, the assassination of MLK, the 9/11 attacks, and the Newtown massacre. She appears to present this review as a social science exercise, but that approach seems inconsistent with the logic of her project. The samples of sermons she reviews are far too few to serve the purpose of a positivist social science exercise. Instead, the project appears much more to be a selective culling of sermons that advance what she sees as distinct theological types—and an argument for the superiority of one such theological position.
Her work, if not fully described as such, is more akin to a genealogy in the Nietzschean sense. As Allan Parson remarks, for Nietzsche, genealogy is “arrived through processes of exclusion and inclusion” by which our pressing contemporary needs shape our conceptualizations of past events. Genealogy, for Nietzsche, is “not to be thought of as purely historical,” but as the construction of a stage on which values are placed in contention, even as we make use of selected specimens from the “long hieroglyphic record” to build our accounts.
Matthes’s genealogy starts in the Alpine heights of mid-century liberal theological promise. Protestant theology by the early 1940s had liberated itself from the Fundamentalists—a bruising battle quite truculently fought throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and from which liberalism clearly emerged triumphant, as large numbers of traditionalists were driven out of the mainline denominations. This triumphant theology still remained vigorously Christian in self-identification, but gone were notions of special divine providence, or of God working through the course of human events.
Read More -
Don’t Trivialise Death
The Bible is clear. In the opening account of the beginnings of human history we learn that our earliest forbears disobeyed their Creator and suffered punishment, as they had been warned. That punishment is death – cruel, ugly, horrible, unnatural death. That is our inheritance from that beginning to this day. Death is the consequence of sinful disobedience. Trivialise death and you trivialise sin.
I do not fear death. There are reasons why I would welcome it, but I definitely have no thought of ending my present life. I want all that to be clear.
Like most people, I have never been pre-occupied with thoughts of death or dying. However, also like most people, death has been no stranger in my life. I was a teenager when my sister died and later my mother. My mother’s death, in tragic circumstances, deeply affected me. I had thoughts then about there being some deeper meaning to life. Mum had taught me prayers as a child, and I had been to Sunday School, but I had more questions than answers on life. Dad died the year after I was married, and one brother a few years later. My closest brother died later still, and after sixty-eight years together, my dear wife departed last year. I am acquainted with death.
A dictionary definition of ‘death’ says:
1/ Final cessation of vital functions;
2/ Event that terminates life.
This turns us to the meaning of ‘life’ where the definition is not so simple. In fact, it is lengthy and complicated. Personally, I think of words like ‘being’ and ‘existing’. Briefly, one has to know about life to understand death.
In this enlightened age we tend to ‘go online’ for more information about most things. So, I searched ‘death and dying’, and wow! I was surprised. What I had always understood to be a taboo subject was up front there. I was presented with many options as to where I could go for information: ‘Goodreads.com’ offered me 1,347 quotes on death and dying. Among other options were ‘Death is nothing at all’, ’82 death quotes that comfort and inspire you’, ‘119 death quotes that will bring relief’, and there were many others. Those that I sampled were generally upbeat about death, and I was supposed to feel warmed and reassured after reading them.
Read More
Related Posts: -
Reflections Concerning a Flower of the Soul
Christian, do not be down on yourself. Run to new heights in the love of God in Christ, by trusting in Him and adoring His hand toward you in seasons of ease and difficulty.
They say that April showers bring May flowers. Well, that might ring true for many parts of the country, but in central Texas, it’s usually May showers that bring June flowers. There’s quite a bit more rainfall in May. It’s always beautiful seeing the Indian paintbrushes, Indian blankets, and pink evening primroses rise up and cover the fields. The scenery from our God far surpasses even the most alluring Bob Ross paintings, as the landscape is dotted with radiant colors that seem to dance with the wind.
But as you know with flowers, as beautiful as the bright reds, the vibrant yellows, and the glowing pinks are…they do not last for long. That is especially true in the middle of a Texas summer. The rains have usually gone, and the heat scorches the once blooming and thriving floral landscapes. The colorful vista becomes light brown, with a dull green intermingled.
Something similar can occur within us, it’s something we are prone to in our fallenness. When the heat of trials are turned up and the fires are stoked, a certain flower that is designed to remain constant in the Christian life, begins to wither in us all at particular moments in time. The flower that I am speaking of is that of Christian contentment. Yet, it is a flower that does not have to fade or droop over from exasperation.
Christians have such a treasure that the world does not possess. By the grace of God, everyone who has believed in Jesus Christ, who laid down His life for sinners as a propitiatory sacrifice to the Father, who has risen gloriously from the dead, can be content––always. That’s moving news! However, it might not sound all that earth-shattering to your ears at first (or your eyes in this case since you’re reading this), but let me illustrate.
For the people of the world who remain at enmity with God, their contentment is only superficial. The burden of their sins remains fastly strapped to their backs. It cannot be shaken off permanently even with a seared conscience (cf. Matt 27:5 ; 1 Tim 4:2 ). There is a settled recognition that something is wrong and that judgment will come because of it. The contentment of the world, when it does appear, it never lasts because the object of their contentment is never sure (cf. Matt 7:24–29 ).
For some, it might be difficult to remember the discontentment that you had in your life before coming to love Jesus Christ. It might be tough to remember the fear of your guilty standing before a holy God. What liberty and freedom you have now. That knowledge of a perfect Judge which once made the skies sullen now makes them bright in the light of the gospel of Christ.
Having said that, even in salvation…as precious as that reality is, discontentment isn’t entirely absolved around us, or in us. For some of you, you do love the Lord Jesus, and you know all about discontentment in your life, even as you are reading this article.
There are at least two reasons for this. First, the world around us thrives on discontentment. Second, what became natural in us because of the fall, in our flesh, is discontentment.
It should come as no surprise that most people in this world are not content. Satan both knows this and loves this reality. He does everything he can to fan the flame toward more unsettledness in the world (always wanting but never having). It’s why in the United States last year according to Forbes, 300 billion dollars were being spent on advertising. For some perspective, it would take 9,500 years to count to that number without sleeping. Don’t let your head spin too much on that.
The number $300 billion is not consumers buying products. It’s only companies paying for their products to be displayed on TV, on the internet, and in print. Just for some additional perspective, that amount of money is more than the GDP of the 41st most wealthy country in the world, which is Chile, which is in front of Finland, Egypt, Portugal, Greece, and most other countries. That’s a lot of money. And that’s just for the US. When you add in the rest of the world by the same article approximately one trillion dollars were spent on advertising in 2021. The advertising business is predicated upon causing you to believe that you need something that you don’t presently have when you have probably been living just fine without having whatever they’re selling and didn’t realize you “needed” their trinket until you saw their message…just some food for thought.
Discontentment is not just bred through looking at advertisements alone. That’s something we all know. It can come through the relationships you have, even with brothers and sisters in the church. It can happen when you go over to someone’s house and see that they have the new this, that, or the other name it appliance. It can be when a family talks about the vacation they just went on to the mountains or through wanting to keep up with the Jones’. Or maybe it’s through social media in seeing someone wear a certain brand of clothing or living in a certain house or doing something in particular that causes you to think…“if only I had that…if only I were there too.”
Dissatisfaction can happen almost anywhere, at any time. There is a battle for your contentment, and it’s a battle that began long before you or I were born. You can trace the battle for contentment all the way back to the garden. Think about what the god of this age says to Eve, “For God knows that in the day you eat from it (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
We can postulate what went on between Eve’s ears. “You mean, serpent, there’s more to life than what I currently know? There’s more that I can have in this world? I have been misled and duped?” This leads us to the underlying accusation, the place where Satan wanted Eve. It’s where he wants you, and me, “Why would a good God withhold that from me?” That right there is an affront to and a charge against a perfect God. It’s nothing new, and it’s what we battle against today.
The goal of this brief post is to show you that God has given you, Christian, a Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. I have seen no better definition of contentment than that of the puritan pastor, Jeremiah Burroughs in the aforementioned work. He wrote in 1648,
Contentment is the inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, freely submitting to and taking pleasure in God’s disposal in every condition.Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment
With those words, Burroughs, based on Scriptural texts (of which we will consider), opens the doors of your heart for greater joy in contentment in Christ.
There is only one word used in the New Testament for contentment. That sounds simple enough. But here’s the kicker, the word is found in three different forms (as a verb, adjective, and noun). The forms have slightly different nuances.
The verb form is “ἀρκέω.” It is used eight times and speaks of sufficiency or satisfaction (depending on the context). The idea is that there is nothing that is lacking. For example, Paul says in 2 Cor 12:10 , “Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions and hardships, for the sake of Christ, for when I am weak, then I am strong.” Paul was saying that amid all the hardships he went through: the beatings, imprisonments, sleepless nights, etc, he was sustained and content.
At which point, the world would say, “that’s simply not possible.” But the reason for this state was due to the Lord Himself. In 2 Cor 12:7–9 , we see the key turn in the lock of the truth revealed in verse 10.
Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.2 Cor 12:7–9
Read More
Related Posts: