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All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
--Psalm 139:16
The Book of Days
Voters in Michigan will determine this month whether to make physician-assisted
suicide legal. Rational beings that we humans are, people on both sides
of the issue are evaluating reasons for and against it. We are not able
to make decisions individually or as a society without reasons.
So those in favor of physician-assisted suicide give their reasons. These center around a concern for the quality of a person's life in prolonged terminal illness, with its pain, inconvenience, and expense. Opponents of physician-assisted suicide reason that legalizing the "right" to die will inevitably lead to imposition of the "duty" to die on vulnerable people, emotionally, if not legally. They also argue that this practice could erode the physician-patient trust relationship and the commitment to quality care by caregivers. There is proof. In the Netherlands, similar legislation has led to hundreds of documented instances of individuals put to death without their consent by physicians.* Elderly people there are reportedly afraid to go to the hospital. These are all reasons and there are more.
However, in the argumentation for and against physician-assisted suicide, a basic reason can be overlooked which I think supercedes all others. The reasons whether or not humans may deliberately intervene to end a human life, whether our own or someone else's, I believe ultimately stem either from the assumption, or the disregard for the assumption, that a grand Creator King who rules over all things has spoken. According to the Bible, the length of each person's life -- down to the very number of his or her days on this earth -- was ordained by the Creator. The days of our lives were inscribed in His "book" before we ever even existed. Our thinking is either informed by this reality or uninformed by it. Either we embrace it in our reasoning and ultimately our voting, or we do not. Other reasons may sway us, but this reason grounds us.
-- Steve Wilson, Pastor
For more information, contact
Evangel Baptist Church, Dr.
Steve Wilson, Pastor
1114 College Avenue, Houghton, MI 49931
906/482-6626, evangel@up.net
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