Suicide is a sin – why cannot we are saying so?

Assisted Suicide is not unsuitable since it’s a slippery slope – though it’s that, and that’s bad.

Assisted Suicide is not unsuitable since it lacks safeguards – though it does, and that’s bad (but we shouldn’t allow for a second the concept killing innocent people could ever have “safeguards”: a contradiction in terms).

Assisted Suicide is not unsuitable since it could bring financial pressure to bear on people to kill themselves – though it might try this, and that can be bad.

Assisted Suicide is not unsuitable because it would goal certain people groups greater than others.

Assisted Suicide is not unsuitable since it could possibly be exploited by domestic abusers.

Assisted Suicide is unsuitable, since it is unsuitable to kill innocent people, even oneself.

We might even dare to make use of an old-fashioned biblical word and call it a “sin”.

We can and will go further.

The shedding of innocent blood – including one’s own – is a really serious sin, since we’re made within the image of God (Genesis 1:27; 6:9) and he alone has the authority to present and take life.

Of course all sin is an offence against God and usurps his authority at some level, but when taking human life, we’re committing treason of an especially high order, seizing something particularly near God’s heart. No other creature bears his stamp, his image and likeness. An attack on a human being is in a single sense probably the most immediate physical proxy we’ve to attacking God himself.

God takes it personally (cf. Ezekiel 16:21).

The only really vital reason why this Bill is unsuitable is that it legislates what’s in God’s eyes immorality, and immorality of probably the most serious kind. It condones, by making legal provision, the shedding of innocent blood. This is an abomination, invites God’s wrath, and brings a curse on the land (Numbers 35:33-34). 

At a time when many are rightly enthusiastic about the potential of some “Quiet Revival”, what might occur to those tender saplings of spiritual hunger and recent life if our nation – not genuinely challenged and warned by the Church within the vital terms and with the suitable strength – legislates and starts to practise yet more bloodshed, on top of the 250,000 babies a yr we’re already killing? And this with the Church’s tacit blessing?

Someone might object that the Church has objected, but in fact we’ve not likely.

Our objections to this Bill (click on the video below) have generally gone along the lines of what is acceptable within the culture – and maybe that explains why no-one is saying the apparent and most vital thing, that suicide is a sin, an offence against God.

It is politically very incorrect to say so: it is healthier to speak about those searching for death for themselves only as victims. They often are also victims in various ways, and there may be much tragedy wrapped up in all of those cases. I personally have lost friends to suicide and it’s devastating. There is something so particularly gut-wrenching when that is how a life is ended.

But we cannot allow any of this to cloud the central and all-important point.

Assisted Suicide is not unsuitable due to all that it could lead on to.

It’s unsuitable since it’s unsuitable.

Always.

Full stop.

So why won’t we are saying so?

This article first appeared on the website of Brephos and is printed here with permission.