Against the culture of death

There can be little doubt about the real darkness of the culture of death into which the West is intentionally descending. Euthanasia now accounts for approximately 1 in 20 deaths in Canada. The government has now killed almost as many Canadian citizens as were slaughtered by the forces of the Kaiser and then of Hitler in the First and Second World Wars combined. Then there is the recent example of Noelia Castillo, about which Bethel McGrew wrote for WORLD Opinions last week. At age 25 she won a longstanding legal battle with her own father to have the right to die by medically assisted suicide. Her case, while extreme in its details, reflects the routine moral logic that is now normative in Western societies. And then there is the transformation of abortion from something even its advocates wanted to be “safe, legal, and rare” to a basic human right and thus, one might say, essential to being human.

Each of these examples offers a microcosm of our current cultural moment. Society has decided that care and support for the weakest in this world, whether babies in the womb, somebody with terrible psychological and physical struggles, or simply the elderly who have become a burden to society, should take the form of a medically assisted death. And instead of seeing each increasingly tragic example, such as that of Castillo, as a moment to reflect on what kind of a society embodies such values and how they might be reversed, it presses on regardless, using the full force of the law to do so.

And while the specific circumstances in each case are no doubt unique in some respects, the overall tendency of the culture of death is to put into place highly subjective criteria as precedents for future decisions. How much paralysis is too much? How much mental distress qualifies one for death? When does the baby in the womb really pose a risk to the mother’s health? And, to say the quiet parts out loud, what kinds of life does society think is worth preserving, and what duty do we all have to those alive who no longer think life is worth living—and who have perhaps come to that conclusion because of the way society itself has taught them to think? Does that duty amount to nothing more than providing clean needles, a few drugs, and a discreet room in a hospital? How have we reached such a low point in our attitudes to the value of life and of human beings?

It is truly ironic that medicine, one of the crowning achievements of humanity—something that only humanity could develop, with both its exceptional intellectual abilities and its compassion for those who are suffering—has become the means of facilitating death. As I argue in The Desecration of Man, we have used our exceptional abilities to make ourselves of no account whatsoever. Only man can crack the atom, write a great symphony, even overcome his instincts for self-preservation to help others. He truly is an amazing creature. But while made in the image of God, he has used that magnificent status to turn himself into a tawdry nothing. But this is also entirely predictable.

In the narrative of the fall, Genesis describes how Adam and Eve took the forbidden fruit in order to be like God and yet were immediately ashamed. They used their human exceptionalism—their ability to think great thoughts and their freedom for morally significant choices—to reduce themselves to nothing, something they did willingly as we do today. And nothing demonstrates that as pungently as the rising taste in Western societies to use medicine as a means of killing, not curing, and our celebration of such. Societies trumpet euthanasia as a human right and as embodying “dignity.” But surely there is more “dignity” in societies thinking about ways they can help those struggling with illness and depression to realize that life is still worth living? The death chamber is the easy way out—not so much for individuals as for society as a whole.

And that presents a challenge to Christians and to their churches. We must not only oppose the culture of death in all of its forms. In a sense that is the easy part—signing petitions, writing op-eds, voting for life-affirming politicians. But we must demonstrate in our practical witness what life itself means—life lived for others, life that is more than simply feeling good, life that treats all people as persons, from the able-bodied to those with severe physical and mental struggles. That is where the church as a body comes in, for it is there that we can realize the re-consecration of man through word, sacrament, worship, and lives lived to the glory of God. If the world now considers the culture of death to be natural, we need to make sure that the church finds the culture of life to be intuitive.