Next week, backbench Labour MP Kim Leadbeater will introduce a Private Members’ Bill to introduce assisted dying for terminally sick people.
This will probably be a non-government bill, often debated on a quiet Friday when most MPs are of their constituencies, and a route that rarely results in a change within the law. However, sometimes a bill is given time to progress – and Keir Starmer has indicated his support to enable this, although the federal government will take a neutral position. MPs in all parties will probably be given a free vote.
Of course, this can be a contentious topic and I’ll discuss my concerns in the approaching weeks. Today though I would like to have a look at how Christians should engage with this debate.
Firstly, all of us come to this with our own beliefs, assumptions and experiences. I strongly oppose the legalisation of assisted dying but some Christians take the opposite view, and plenty of individuals with no religious faith are as uneasy about the implications of fixing the law as I’m.
So we must reject the lazy assumptions of those comparable to the National Secular Society who’ve chosen to border the controversy in binary terms. They expressed support for the bill because it could “prevent those affected by having their selections limited by other people’s religious beliefs”.
Their call for “compassion not dogma” immediately dismisses ‘religious views’ as invalid and heartless. It shuts down debate slightly than engaging with nuance.
Their argument is which you can have your personal faith, but don’t impose it on others. But secularism is not neutral and nobody is saying that secularists must keep their faith out of public policy! The secularist faith is that there may be nothing beyond this life, no accountability and no enduring meaning. These are legitimate assumptions, but they’re based on a faith, an unprovable belief, that they’re true. This shows – to place it generously – an absence of self-awareness by those that consider that only individuals who attend a spot of worship have faith.
This approach insists that folks whose worldview is informed by a non secular faith must not use that worldview to tell public policy … whilst secularists are free to impose the outworkings of their faith and assumptions. I say this gently, but that is a really inconsistent position. It doesn’t bear scrutiny and – I would add – it isn’t very liberal!
This is a hugely emotive subject. Many of us – me included – have personally experienced the suffering of family members from cruel and degenerative diseases, and in fact we long to take this grief away. But we is not going to make higher laws if both sides digs right into a tribal trench and starts hurling abuse at the opposite.
I would like to hunt some common ground for a courteous national debate that encourages curiosity and respect on all sides.
As Christians we must acknowledge that our society doesn’t recognise authority where we do. Quoting scripture to an atheist will get us nowhere. But loving our neighbour by listening attentively, doing our utmost to grasp one other’s perspective, I hope will.
So let’s recognise that folks on either side approach the difficulty from a way of compassion. Those of us against changing the law are neither callous nor uncaring. And we must show respect to others, refraining from labelling their views as a simple and even wicked option.
Because all of us desire dignity. Those in favour of assisted dying intend to make it easier for people at the tip of life to take care of self-respect within the face of pain and increasing dependence on others. This springs from a belief that we should always have autonomy over our own bodies and, where possible, our own lives.
As a Christian I feel in a dignity that’s even richer and deeper. Dignity that will not be found only in our abilities, mental capability or control over our lives. Dignity that springs from the assumption that every individual is a deeply loved, awesome creation of the living God, made in His image and due to this fact with intrinsic and unconditional price.
This debate touches the center of what it means to be human. We don’t speak much of death in our society. We are afraid of losing control over our bodies, of suffering and losing our self-worth. And without the reassurance of God’s love or sovereignty, individuals are searching for a recent concept of humanity, on human terms. As Bishop Robert Baron puts it, we’re searching for to be “inventors of ourselves”.
But if we consider that “God has set eternity within the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11), this explains why these deep concerns resonate on either side of today’s debate. We are still a deeply Christian society at heart.
This issue deserves careful, thoughtful and respectful discussion. In searching for to reply in this manner, Christians can reject this debate as one other outpost within the culture wars and as an alternative place a renewed deal with the value and deep value of every individual right to the tip of their lives.
Tim Farron has been the Member of Parliament for Westmorland and Lonsdale since 2005 and served because the Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party from 2015 to 2017. Tim can be the host of Premier’s ‘A Mucky Business’ podcast, which unpacks the murky world of politics and encourages believers across the UK to have interaction prayerfully. He is the creator of A Mucky Business: Why Christians should get entangled in politics.”
