So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1 v 27
A grey decision, by grey people, on a grey day in November. Or so the vote in favour of “assisted dying” in the UK appeared to me when announced yesterday.
It’s always a tell when euphemisms are deployed, that what it in the inside is not the same what’s being sold on the outside. If you can’t call it what it really is, there is usually a good reason for that.
Assisted suicide is by its very nature coercive. Once the option is on the table it will not be removed. The pressure will always be there, insidiously working its way into every conversation at the end of life. The idea that physicians will be able to detect coercion makes a number of assumptions, not least that the physicians are not the ones themselves indulging in the practice. Death as healthcare inevitably corrupts.
There’s a lot of talk about choice, how that’s a good thing, but for the poor, unrepresented and marginalised, the only choice they are likely to have is between pain and death – just look to Canada to see how that works.
All this makes for grim reading, but this is the natural outcome of a decaying, pseudo-pagan society. Long ago we jettisoned any policy based on the idea of the sanctity of life, being made in the image of God. We are reducing to a nihilistic utilitarianism.
This is where the Church should come in. If we are sent to anyone, it is the poor, the marginalised, those who are cast out by society. But to do this we have to recapture a sense of who we are. Far too long have we basked in the fading gleams of our decaying culture, hoping that somehow the echoes of what once was will sustain us in the current climate.
How many Churches will preach this Sunday on the evils of assisted suicide, confident in the value of a human being made in the image of God Himself?
And how many will pass this by (too risky a subject! people will be offended!), or only make weak and vacillating references?
If our roots are no deeper than the society in which we are embedded, then it should come as no surprise if we share in the same decay. For if salt has lost its saltiness, what use is it? It will be thrown out.
Only those who have salt in themselves, the kind that is refined through fire, will be able to stand in the evil day. Stand yes, and rescue others – the least of these, the ones the world considers useless, but yet the ones amongst whom Jesus will be found.
The Age To Come 
We’ll only make a dent in this when we preach a Gospel of hope and emphasise the significance of each individual. “It was a cold, brutal world into which the Gospel and the Creeds came. Huge numbers of people were owned as slaves, body and soul. The free remainder had better take care to be male and adult, if they hoped for any dignity or respect as of right. Dad could execute you if he didn’t happen to take a shine to you that morning. Females of all ages went from hand to hand like bits of coinage. Life was generally “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Hope was at a premium. If you believed in the gods at all, you couldn’t think of them as worth worshipping. The Stoic hoped to be brave, the Epicurean to “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die”, the Platonist that his soul might transmigrate to a better body next time. History was cyclical and had no purpose; certainly there was no benign will behind the forces of nature. Most people lived lives of quiet desperation, attempting to console themselves with sex, drink and often violent entertainments. Huge numbers of people had no choices, and worse still bore the scars of having been torn violently apart from parents, spouse, children and their homeland. Does this remind you of anywhere you know?”
“It is often said that love was the obvious characteristic of believers in the early centuries. Yes, but not subjectively: they did not sit around congratulating themselves on how loving they had become. Rather they had hope, even in bitter circumstances which could never be altered. This was how they made sense of their experience.”
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nicene-creed-viii-christian-hope-pdm-turner-dr-priscilla-turner/]
Our lives are planned, but not by us. This last Sunday, when I had prayed as usual that I might be useful to someone at church, I sat after lunch with a young couple who turned out to be Farsi-speaking refugees from Islam, both believers. They had run out of money for accommodation in this v. expensive city. They are now living in my house, in two spare rooms with their own bathroom, use of kitchen, washer etc. They are paying just for food for all of us, she cooks evening dinner, which suits me fine, living as I do mortgage and rent free in my lonely widowhood. This till they can get employment, or we feel we need to part, whichever comes the sooner.
They testify that one factor in their leaving Islam was that our Faith says that the individual is significant.
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Wow, that’s amazing, living the Gospel! Thing is, we have a message and a life filled with so much hope, I can only wonder sometimes that we try to hide it, or worse swap a sumptuous three course meal for the thin gruel that the world offers.
We’re heading back to that world you speak of, until and unless we the body of Christ get our act together and start remembering who and whose we are.
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I made a second preachment on the same cause of the Creed which I’ve posted here: Nicene Creed IX: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nicene-creed-ix-christian-hope-part-two-pdm-turner-turner/
Both are especially relevant as we go into Advent and think about death.
A whole volume, with a sermon by my dear late husband [CJGT Obit: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/christopher-john-godfrey-turner-dr-priscilla-turner/], which our pastor speaking at his funeral termed the best he had heard anywhere on any topic, and other sermons on the rest of the Creed, may be found under these ISBNs:–
We Believe: Understanding the Nicene Creed (C&P Books) A sermon series by Karl A. Przywala, Christopher J.G. Turner & Priscilla D.M. Turner, with Greek texts and bibliography
Jacketed HC 6×9: ISBN 9781777171216
HC 8×10.88: ISBN 9781777171230
SC 5.5×8.5: ISBN 9781775106234
Ebook: ISBN 9781775106272
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For “cause” read “clause”. Sorry, Peter.
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Looking for my typo, not finding it sorry
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‘Twas MY typo, not yours. But I can’t find my posting now. Was probably in a reference to the Nicene Creed.
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How RARELY any church hears sermons on suicide… unless it is mentioned at Judas Iscariot’s and usually as a just punishment. We need to hear more, especially with the glut of depression in the West!
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Very true – we have got to tackle these things!
I do wonder to be able to speak on it successfully, you first need to have taught the full gospel?
That we are sinners, so suicide, far from being a way out, may well “bring on many changes” yes – however not necessarily good ones.
But also that there is never-ending hope and redemption in Jesus. And there is no hole so dark that his light cannot enter. And when you are His, you are no longer your own.
It seems to me that suicide can be an act of despair, sometimes I wonder if it can also be an act of pride. The ultimate declaration of self-possession. I’m writing something on that now.
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