Death as a Solution to Life

Death is an extreme solution to serious problems but one we are increasingly prepared to embrace when necessary. More and more, causing or accelerating death is seen as a good option when the status quo seems intolerable. We’re seeing this now at every stage of human life whether at the beginning with the abortion solution, at the end of life with the euthanasia solution and in the midst with the suicide solution. Even though we are not so inclined to sponsor death in matters of war, capital punishment or the assassination of political enemies, we are more tolerant of death when it comes to our own personal choice. We imagine that there could be an occasion when we would want to reserve for ourselves the possibility of taking our own lives or having assistance in doing so. We might also be prepared to approve of the taking of another life when we deem that life of having little possibility of living in a condition of happiness and in the case of unborn children if their living causes unhappiness of the mother.

Trying to ignore a sense of guilt, causing a death is compared with the “momentary discomfort” of a medical procedure like pulling a tooth that will be brief and in view of a more favourable condition in the end. We will, of course, try to kill as humanely as possible so as to avoid severe pain of either the victim or the survivors. Killing someone is admitted to be unpleasant, nevertheless dying can be quick and seems to be preferable to lingering and unacceptable pain.

It all makes sense, I suppose, if life has little value in and of itself. If it is only valued by some subjective measure of personal well-being then easily we can judge a life to be no longer worthwhile and therefore suitable for termination. Heaven help us when we are prepared to leave this determination to a government committee whose eyes are partly preoccupied with cost-analysis.

Fewer of us value human life because of the view that we are designed and created in the image of a Creator. Once upon a time this assumption was something that motivated many people, churches, institutions and societies to do whatever was necessary to guard individual life. No better known statement of this is found than in the American Declaration of Independence, which reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” From this principle came the protection of individual life and the logical conclusions that led to the recognition of the equality of women to men and the emancipation of slaves.

Today, of course, there is a concerted effort to remove from our democratic values and principles of justice any foundation that is related to there being a Divine Creator. Since Evolution replaces God as explanation for how there can be living beings writing columns in newspapers there is little solid ground left to justify the protection of human lives. After all evolution is unguided, without purpose and is often brutal. We have no intrinsic worth to the cosmos in this view. It is all so “scientific.”

In the church where there is still some kind of notion of Creator, there is less inclination to remember that the Creator is also Judge and that there is an afterlife that will be heavenly or hellish depending on what the Judge determines. With no Hell to worry about, annihilation or Heaven are both easily embraced as preferable to whatever suffering we might be experiencing. Death is an effective solution to intolerable struggle.

There are consequences to this. I believe that this has led to increased numbers of people willing to consider committing murder-suicide. A parent who is despondent wants to end her life and in order to spare her children the pain of being motherless she kills them too. It seems a kindness. A father is determined to take out his bitter rage against the mother and in order to make it more dramatic he takes out children before turning the gun on himself. An angry young man who seeks death decides to do so through “death by police” and in the process murders school mates or people who just happen to be there.

Another trend in Canada is that of using abortion for child-selection. A recent editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal has stated that census data shows that there appears to be a bias against female babies in the rates of abortion among certain cultural groups. The killing of babies is used as a tool for gender selection. Two important Feminist causes seem at odds. The availability of abortion-on-demand to women who choose runs up against the equal worth and dignity of girls and boys. It will be interesting to see how we go about justifying the limitation of a mother’s right to know the gender of her fetus in order to protect the unborn when it has been commonly argued that the fetus has no more value than an appendix or some other lump of flesh. Does that lump of flesh now become something to protect if it is female? Will we be forced to acknowledge that at some point it is important to give weight to the value of an unborn child such that at some point it will outweigh the personal desire of the mother to abort it?

We have entered a dangerous era for modern society. By ushering our Creator God out the back door, we have come to accept that every person can choose his own set of values and that society can only ground its collective values on an ever-changing social consensus. By dismissing a Creator who gives us a lasting value and purpose we find that we have also dismissed a reverence for life itself. The elusive, fleeting pursuit of happiness is all that’s left and failing that, death has become our cheap solution to life’s struggles. Heaven help us to reconsider the value of life.