Physician-Assisted Suicide and Who We Really Are

June 5, 2017 at 5:15 am Leave a comment

Euthanasia

Physician-assisted suicide has gained limited acceptance in many regions of the country because it has been peddled, in part, as an option for those suffering from the excruciating pain of certain types of terminal illnesses. Supervised suicide was sold as a way to alleviate physical misery. A new study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, however, suggests that the actual reasons people choose assisted suicide are quite different from that of physical suffering. One of the researchers in the study, Madeline Li, explains that many people consider assisted suicide because of:

…what I call existential distress. [For some people,] their quality of life is not what they want. They are mostly educated and affluent – people who are used to being successful and in control of their lives, and it’s how they want their death to be.

In one instance cited in this study, a marathon runner found herself confined to her bed because of cancer. She wanted to take her own life because “that was not how she saw her identity,” Li explained. In another case, a university professor wanted to die because, according to Li, “he had a brain tumor, and he didn’t want to get to the point of losing control of his own mind, [where he] couldn’t think clearly and couldn’t be present.”

This study reveals that physician-assisted suicide can turn out to be not so much a palliative response to physical pain, but an angry response to the loss of how we see ourselves. A marathon runner wants to end her life when she can longer run marathons. A university professor sees no reason to live if he is no longer able to think at the level he once was. It turns out that when people lose what gives them their identities, they often lose the very will to live.

If nothing else, this study should serve as a warning concerning the dangers of finding your meaning, purpose, and identity in something you are or in something you do, for these types of identities can all too easily be shattered by the wily ravages of this world and this life. This is why, as Christians, we are called to find who we are in Christ.

When a rich man comes to Jesus in Mark 10 and asks Him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus responds by citing a sampling of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.” When the man boasts to Jesus, “All these I have kept as a little boy,” Jesus responds, “One thing you lack. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.” The rich man, the story says, “went away sad, because he had great wealth.” It turns out that this man found his meaning, purpose, and identity in his wealth. And when Jesus asked him to give up the source of his earthly identity, he could not – even to follow Jesus eternally. May we never make the same devastating mistake.

Physician-assisted suicide carries with it a whole host of ethical problems, including the temptation to place profits over people. Just last week, The Washington Times reported on a doctor who claimed that some Nevada insurance companies refused to cover certain life-saving treatments he requested for his patients because they were too expensive. Instead, these companies offered to help his patients end their lives. If this story is true, such a practice is nothing short of appalling. But sadly, far too many people do not need a creepy suggestion from a greedy insurance company to consider taking their own lives. They only need to be so turned in on who they are in this life that they forget about who they are in Christ.

Suicide may be some people’s answer to a loss of identity. But suicide cannot give someone a new identity. It cannot give someone hope. Only Jesus can do that. So let us find ourselves in Him.

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18)