The false love story of euthanasia

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

The movie Me Before You opens in theaters today and has generated a social media debate over life, disabilities, and euthanasia.

(Spoiler alert: This article discusses the film’s plot and ending.)

In the movie, Will Traynor (Sam Claflin) is a handsome, wealthy adventurer who is paralyzed from the neck down in an accident. He determines that after six months, his parents will take him to a euthanasia clinic in Sweden.

But during those six months, Louise Clark (Emilia Clarke) serves as Will’s caretaker. Will and Lou fall in love, so she works to stop him from killing himself.

Clarke and Claflin have both said the message of the pro-euthanasia movie is simply to live life to the fullest and never take anything for granted. #LiveBoldly has become the film’s social media hashtag, and pro-lifers are all over it.

“Every life has value. Telling a person with a terminal illness or disability that they’re better off dead is a dangerous lie,” Lila Rose with Live Action tweeted this week.

John Stonestreet said that lie is so seductive because it is wrapped in sad stories that elicit sympathy.

“Christians, I think, often are tempted to allow our heartstrings to be tugged with this sort of thing,” Stonestreet said. “But if we do that, we forget that the ultimate message of the cross is that life comes through suffering and that some of the hardest times are ultimately some of the best times.”

Life is filled with suffering, Stonestreet said, and Christians need to counter narratives like Me Before You with stories of true love in the midst of deep suffering: “How many individuals do we know who made an enormous difference in the lives of those around us not in spite of their suffering but actually because of their suffering?”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on The World and Everything in It.