In the assisted suicide debate much has been made of the notion of “dying with dignity”. By that, is meant without weakness, without pain, without loss of function, without dependency, without helplessness, without a loss of self.

Now in one way this makes sense; nobody would call those things good. But in another way I wonder if this can be a cover word for pride – i.e. dying with pride.

Our original sin, our baseline of rebellion, is to attempt to dethrone God and put ourselves in His place. To me, “dying with dignity” may be just another manifestation of that. We will have control of our lives, we will enthrone ourselves, and we will be the arbiters of how and even whether we live or die. Or at least the closest approximation we can achieve.

Of course it is all foolishness, we are not able to be God, but it doesn’t stop us from trying.

But the Church has a better message. Our dignity, our real dignity, comes from being made in the image of God and bearing His likeness. No decay or brokenness can change that. We are made as treasures in jars of clay. The jars may – will – get chipped, cracked, leak and break. We were sown perishable: born in death, all our bodies can do is die. But yet the treasure is not lost, for God loses nothing, rather we will be raised imperishable into bodies that will not fade with time.

What we don’t want to do – as the redeemed of Christ, is to get sucked into a false sense of compassion, of ‘dignity’, of concealed pride, and lose what, and who, really gives us dignity.

Nothing I say here is to diminish the pain of brokenness, of losing our function, our abilities, our very identity. We live in this world of decay, and creation groans to be redeemed from it. But that’s not the end of the story. We have been saved by the One who has captured and defanged death.

‘Where, O death, is your victory?
    Where, O death, is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthian 15 v55-57