Euthanasia makes a lot of sense. At least in our culture at this time, it makes intuitive sense that those who are ill without hope for a cure or those who are in pain without likelihood of relief ought to be able to choose to end their own lives. Our culture assumes there are few higher virtues than autonomy and that an individual’s right to self-government should extend even to matters of life and death. Hence we see the rising acceptance and legalization of euthanasia throughout the West, though it comes in the form of several variations and euphemisms—physician-assisted death, physician assisted-suicide, medical assistance in dying (MAiD), and so on.
Christians, of course, have grave concerns with euthanasia. While we sympathize deeply with those who are ill without hope for a cure and those who are in pain without likelihood of relief, we do not believe that humans have the right to take life—even if that life is their own. It is God alone who has the right to number our days, God alone who has jurisdiction over life and death.

How Should We Then Die

Because euthanasia is on the rise—and an especially precipitous rise here in Canada—we need distinctly Christian responses to it. Ewan Goligher has provided an excellent one in How Should We Then Die?: A Christian Response to Physician-Assisted Suicide. Goligher is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and a physician who practices critical-care medicine, specializing in mechanical ventilation. He is, in other words, a man who faces issues of death on a daily basis.

Should doctors help patients end their own life? Is it right and good to cause death (to kill) out of mercy for suffering? Over the last decades, Western society has seen a marked rise in interest and support for the idea that doctors should be allowed (even expected) to facilitate suicide or cause death for their patients under certain conditions. This shift in social values, together with an aging population, means that all of us, whether or not we work in healthcare, will be forced to face this question. Every one of us will eventually face illness, suffering, and death at some point, and we will have to decide whether we would consider seeking and obtaining assistance from a doctor to end our life.

His book is written to help Christians think well about this question. In other words, his book is written to help Christians think distinctly Christianly about whether doctors should help patients end their lives.
He begins by explaining why physician-assisted death has become such a prominent issue and one that is so widely accepted. Having done that, he carefully shows how advocates of euthanasia diminish the intrinsic and innate value of human beings by insisting there are situations in which it is better for people to cease to exist than to continue to exist. “When we say that people matter, we are also saying that it is good that they exist. If people have intrinsic value, then it is always good that they exist. And if we insist that they really matter—that they have deep intrinsic, inherent value—then the cessation of their existence (their death) must always be regarded as a terrible tragedy.” He shows that the acceptance of physician-assisted death depends on a completely different understanding of human life and human worth than any the West has known.
He also shows how euthanasia is an act of secular faith. Euthanasia tends to be offered or accepted where there is the belief that remaining alive is a fate worse than death, and that death is nothing but the absence of life. These claims are said to be grounded in science, yet science cannot prove them, for what comes beyond death is beyond science’s jurisdiction. Hence, lives are ended with faith—secular faith—that what comes beyond death is better than what precedes it. Science may insist that humans have no souls, that we are material and nothing more. But it cannot prove this and therefore cannot prove that souls do not remain when bodies die—a possibility that has terrifying consequences for those whose souls are not prepared for what comes next.
As the book heads toward its close, Goligher addresses the despair of being critically ill and provides a Christian response to it, for he says that Christians “must have something better to offer than death.” And what we can offer is meaning—the kind of meaning that says suffering is not purposeless and not hopeless, but rather a means through which God works his inscrutable will. It is through faith in God that we can pass through suffering with endurance and even with joy. It is through faith that we can escape the despair that so often leads to the conviction that it would be better to just end it all.
For those of us who live in the West, and perhaps especially for those of us who live in Canada (which is leading the charge when it comes to euthanasia), it is becoming increasingly common to know people who have opted to end their own lives. It is also increasingly common for pastors to have to counsel their elderly parishioners away from it and for children to have to plead with their elderly parents not to opt for it. It is widespread and becoming more common, it is accepted and becoming more acceptable. As Christians, we need to be prepared and we need to be able to offer a response. How Should We Then Die? does exactly that and does it well. It prepares and equips us for what is sure to prove one of the defining issues of our time.

I am still in Unalaska, Alaska. That’s three days now in which no flights have been able to land. As much as I am enjoying the place and people, I’m ready to get home!

This month Logos is offering a Get Logos 10, Give Logos 10 deal. They are also offering weekly specials as they approach Black Friday. This week you can get deals on a good number of commentaries, theological resources, and so on. Finally, don’t forget to look at their free and nearly free books for the month.
There is another huge list of Kindle deals today. It includes a long list of general market books.
(Yesterday on the blog: Living Sorrows and Departed Joys)
Train Up a Child
“For years, I looked at Proverbs 22:6 as a promise from God. I believed if I taught my children the truths of the Word of God, they would turn out right and never rebel.” Dianna corrects herself and offers some items for reflection.
Divine Infinity (Video)
In this brief explainer video, Kevin DeYoung explains God’s infinity.
Should Evangelicals Pray with Roman Catholics?
Leonardo De Chirico considers joint prayer meetings between Protestants and Roman Catholics. “As I speak at conferences on Roman Catholicism worldwide and how Evangelicals should relate to it, a question often arises: ‘What about joint prayer? Could or should Evangelicals pray with Roman Catholics?’ Let me offer my rules of thumb as I wrestle with the issue.”
75 Theses on Pastoral Ministry
J.A. Medders offers a long list of 75 theses on pastoral ministry.
Is “Mental Illness” a Helpful Label?
“Considerable controversy has arisen over the label ‘mental illness’ and whether or when such a label should be used.” Tom Karel and David Murray consider whether it’s a helpful label and whether, therefore, we ought to use it.
Psalm Singing: The Church’s Punk Rock
The title might be a little over the top, but the article itself is a good one. It explains why churches ought to include psalms in the selections they sing in their worship services.
Flashback: If God Is Not Sovereign…
Unless God is sovereign we look to the future with uncertainty rather than confidence, with hope that is shaky and trepidatious rather than firmly fixed.

God’s glory and our good are not mutually exclusive. —Erik Raymond

The son of King Jeroboam had fallen deathly ill. His father was understandably worried, concerned to know whether his child would live or die. He knew just where to go for a trustworthy answer. Yet he also knew that he could not go himself.

He came up with a devious plan: he would send his wife in his place. He would send her in secret, he would send her in disguise. And she, in the guise of a disinterested commoner, would ask the prophet on her husband’s behalf. So, taking the gift of a peasant rather than the gift of a king, and wearing the clothes of a laborer rather than the clothes of a queen, she set out on her journey.
She eventually arrived at Shiloh, at the home of the prophet Ahijah. Yet she quickly learned that this prophet was not fooled by her disguise, for God had told him that she would arrive. And God had also told him what message he must deliver. “I am charged with unbearable news for you,” he said—the unbearable news that Jeroboam’s line would come to a tragic end and that, of all his household, this child alone would receive a proper, dignified burial. “When your feet enter the city, the child shall die. And all Israel shall mourn for him and bury him, for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave, because in him there is found something pleasing to the LORD, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam.”
There is much we ought to learn from this tragic story. But today my heart is drawn to one simple lesson: There are times when royalty passes before us and we do not see it. There are times when we are in the presence of kings and queens, of princes and princesses, and we do not identify it. We do not acknowledge it.
Jeroboam’s wife passed through the land and no one knew or even suspected that she was anyone other than a commoner. Yet she was as much a queen walking to Shiloh with dust on her feet as she was sitting in the palace with diamonds around her neck. Her simple clothes and humble demeanor may have masked the reality, but they did not negate it.
A few weeks ago, I stood in the humblest of villages in the distant reaches of rural Cambodia. This is a village that has not yet been reached by electricity or running water. Yet it has been reached by the gospel and all but a scant remainder of its people have believed and become royalty—sons and daughters of the King. They wear the disguise of farmers who tend to rubber plantations and cashew groves. But even though their homes are tiny and unadorned, and even though they wear no crowns and own no robes, they are most truly princes and princesses who simply await their full inheritance.
A week later, I found myself in Fiji, making friends with men who have traveled from across the great expanses of the Pacific to be trained as pastors. Some have come from locations so remote that until they arrived at the seminary they had never even seen a car. They are humble men who have little and who may never own so much of what you and I are certain we could never live without. They pass their days in the guise of students who attend a seminary few have heard of so they can become pastors in places few will ever visit. No one greets them with honor and no one bows in their presence. Yet they, too, are royalty, made by God, known by God, loved by God, adopted by God.
And so, it strikes me that as you worship this Sunday, as you gather with your church, you should keep in mind the reality that you are surrounded by royalty. Maybe you will begin the service with a song like:

O worship the King all-glorious above,O gratefully sing his power and his love:our shield and defender, the Ancient of Days,pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise.

Give praise to your King! And perhaps as you do so, look around, look beyond the disguises—the suits and ties or the jeans and t-shirts—to see God’s family before him, God’s family joined together in worship, God’s sons and daughters rejoicing together in the Father who has made them his own, the Father who is worthy of their most heartfelt praise.