Keep praying now after the assisted suicide vote!

It is deeply disappointing that MP’s have today voted in favour of the bill to legalise assisted suicide.

This is another sad day for our country following closely the vote earlier in the week to decriminalise abortion for women up to the moment of birth. It is sign of the growing disregard for Christian ethics and a reformed pseudo-morality built around the idols of autonomy and utility and crowdsourced values.

This is realistically a terrible bill in every sense. It was badly drafted, has many hastily added amendments, was not given adequate debating time and has precious few safeguards or opt outs, even for those in favour of the principle.

At the level of everyday life for people in this country, it will now acceptable and legal to kill people made in the image of God prior to birth and near the end of life.

A Biblical perspective

We want to care for people in a way that minimises suffering while they stay alive, but we do not have the right to actively end someone’s life by medical intervention. Since all humans are made in the image of God, we accept the intrinsic dignity of all people even at the end of their lives. 

Furthermore, it is also wrong to think the avoidance of suffering against our will is a Christian goal. Sometimes God does take us through paths of suffering for His own good purposes, even though it is not what we would choose for ourselves.

It also seems naïve to believe that this will not in practice lead to vulnerable people being put under pressure, real or imagined, to end their lives prematurely which will extend beyond the terminally ill to the lonely, the mentally ill, and those living with disabilities and chronic health conditions who might feel obliged to end their lives to take control and to ease the burden on others.

However devastated we might be by this setback, we can respond by praying the bill might still be hindered in its implementation and even if applied that it might be rarely used and mostly ignored. But most of all, with complete confidence in our sovereign Lord, we are praying that He would somehow use these days to save many people, turn back the tide of evil and turn them towards the Saviour. We work with all our energy towards that end as we hold out the hope of the gospel as life begins and life ends.