Assisted suicide? Justin Welby? It’s all about God

There have been two questions I’ve been asked more than any others in the last few weeks. First, what do you think about assisted suicide? And second, what do you think about Justin Welby? There’s plenty that could be said in answer to both. But at heart, the answer I want to give is the same: It’s all about God.

Of course we want to talk about the ethics of medicine, the sanctity of life, the devaluing of the weak, the protection of the vulnerable, the application of justice to the wicked, the goodness of marriage, the sinfulness of sexual immorality, and many more things beside. But they are, in a sense, derivative; for all of God’s laws flow from God Himself. When terrible ethical failures happen, it is because there is first a failure to know and love the one true God.

How then does this work out? Why are the rise of assisted suicide and the fall of Archbishop Welby connected to who God is?

First, they are about God’s existence. Christianity stands apart from the rest of the world in saying that there is one true, living, self-existent, unchanging, all-powerful God, who made this world and who governs it with absolute authority and constant care. And so the idea of autonomy, that no-one but the human individual has authority over the life of that individual, is both untrue and nonsensical. It is not true, and it could not be true; autonomy can only be a characteristic of God. Our lives are not, in fact, our own, to do what we like with; and it is the absurd belief that they are which has led to the twisted belief that people must be free to kill themselves and be helped to do so by the state.

And this is also the issue with Justin Welby. I have no idea how culpable he may have been over the (non-)reporting of John Smyth; what is beyond question is that he has encouraged and led the Church of England to treat Christianity as if it is a DIY project, in which beliefs about God and His law can be revised at will as we humans see fit. Only with such a view can the absolute clarity of the Scriptures on marriage and sexual immorality, and the universal testimony of the church for 2,000 years, be disposed of in the way Welby has sponsored and supported during his tenure in Canterbury. And no-one can think that, unless he believes that the God who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, does not in fact exist. I’m not saying that Welby does not believe in God; I am saying that the God he believes in cannot be the God of the Bible.

Secondly, they are about God’s character. For God is eternal, life-giving love. All of God’s moral law in Scripture is the outflow of this. It describes the duty of His image-bearers to act likewise. That means that life is not ours to take any more than it is in our power to give; that we should sacrifice ourselves for others, not seek to liquidate the weak for the benefit of the strong. And of course it is reflected powerfully in marriage, in which we are to sacrifice ourselves sexually, refusing to follow our desires, for the sake of our spouse, our children and all of society. It is because of God’s character that it is wrong to treat both life (in the case of assisted suicide supporters) and chastity (in the case of Welby) as disposable.

Thirdly, they are about God’s glory. God’s ineffable majesty, the wonder of His spotless goodness, the searing heat of His holiness, and the indescribably beauty of His being, are what we are made to behold and adore. And so the purpose of human life is not simply to avoid pain and maximise pleasure, such that when this is not possible we have lost our dignity and might as well end our lives. Rather, the purpose of our lives is that we come to know God; that seeing His glory we may love Him, and be transformed to resemble Him (2 Cor. 3:18). The approach of death does not announce to us the end of human value, but the approach of the time when we may finally enter into it.

And for the same reason the gospel of Christ demands the pursuit of holiness, without which none shall see the Lord (Heb. 12:14). Welby’s campaign for the Church of England to bless sexual immorality was not only deeply unholy in itself – conducted with dubious tactics and outright lies (for example, saying that the doctrine of marriage was left unchanged while in fact tearing it down to the foundations) – but also abandoned any idea for seeking to know God’s glory and reflect it in our lives. In its place was a licence to indulge wickedness, and to dishonour God’s name by invoking Him to bless things which He Himself has condemned.

Finally, they are about God’s action in Christ. What God has done in the gospel is to send His Son to suffer, die and rise again, in order to bring us from death to glory. Therefore for Christians suffering is not an unthinkable thing to be avoided, by suicide if necessary; rather, it is the route to glory, our privileged following in the footsteps of our Lord, used by the Spirit to sanctify us. And so even the pangs of death are not valueless; if born with patience and trust in Christ, they will reap an eternal harvest of righteousness. Such things are incomprehensible to our neo-pagan society, but they are displayed by the patient endurance of every suffering Christian. We proclaim to the world that Christ will bring in a new world, with no suffering, mourning, crying or pain, and all are freely invited and called to join it.

For the Christian gospel is a message of redemption. Rescue by Christ from the curse of sin into the Kingdom of God, in which we are freed from our slavery to sin, delivered from the just judgment for sin, transformed into true images of God, loving to live by His laws, sharing His glorious resurrection life. Secular Britain believes in a sort of horrific inversion of this: that the problem is ‘religious’ rules which limit our autonomy, and salvation is to be found in being granted the licence to escape from these and follow our own desires. That may take the form of (sexual) self-indulgence or of self-murder. And Welby sought to lead his church into the same inverted gospel, in which we are set free from God’s laws to live according to our own, ‘coming out as … a joyful liberation into full selfhood’, to quote the Cof E school guidance which Welby sponsored. His successors may, of course, yet succeed.

And so both these issues are really about God! We can, and we must, be ready to respond on these issues by appealing to their terrible human cost. But that will never get to the root of the matter. The thing that has gone terribly wrong with secular Britain, and with degenerate forms of Christianity too, is that they do not know the one, true, living God, revealed in Jesus Christ (Heb. 3:12). It is ignoring Him that leads to drastic sins in church and society; and it is only in Him, God the Father Almighty, through His grace to us in his Son Jesus Christ, by the power of His Holy Spirit, that we can be rescued from them.