The country where death is now just a lifestyle choice. Holland, Daily Mail, Euthanasia v The Sanctity of Life

The country where death is now just a lifestyle choice: A mum with ringing ears. Babies whose parents don't want them to suffer. They've all been allowed to die by assisted suicide in Holland

·        Andre Verhoeven planned to retire at 65 to travel the world with wife Dora

·        He was diagnosed with acute leukaemia and was told there was no cure

·        He chose to end his life at 64 and died in January last year

·        Gaby Olthuis suffered ‘24-hour noise’ in her head, ‘like a train screeching'

·        To end her suffering, she was given a lethal potion to drink at her home

·        She left behind two teenage children, a boy of 13 and a girl aged 15

No one would have predicted that such a devoted husband and family man would one day choose to die by a lethal injection administered by his own GP.

Andre Verhoeven married in his local Catholic church, lived in an unpretentious town south of Amsterdam, and worked as a respected teacher at the nearby secondary school.

He had planned to retire at 65 to travel the world with his wife, Dora.

Instead, he was diagnosed with acute leukaemia, a cancer of the blood, for which he was told there was no cure. Because of complications from the cruel illness, he became paralysed from the neck down.

You might be entitled to think that what people do in Holland is their business and nothing to do with us in Britain. But you could not be more wrong.

If campaigners have their way, the law will be changed here, too, to allow those who wish to end their life to do so at a time of their choosing. For opponents of euthanasia, this raises grave moral questions, as well as concerns that unscrupulous relatives might take advantage of elderly family members — whose estates they might covet — by encouraging them to end their lives.

One of the most vociferous and courageous voices in the campaign to legalise assisted dying was Debbie Purdy, who passed away last week at the age of 51 after refusing food for a year. She had said her hunger strike was painful and difficult, but that her life with progressive multiple sclerosis was ‘unacceptable’.

News of her death came as 80 prominent public figures in the UK called for the legalising of euthanasia here, warning that already one Briton travels abroad every fortnight to euthanasia clinics even as the issue continues to be passionately debated.

Read more here:

What does the Bible say about Euthanasia? Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry

by Matt Slick

The Bible does not specifically mention euthanasia, but it does address issues closely related to it.  Euthanasia is known by different terms such as mercy killing, assisted suicide, etc.  It is the act of assisting someone in his or her own death who is terminally ill, suffering, and in great pain.  The goal of the assisted suicide is to prevent the continuation of pain.

The Bible tells us that we are not to murder (Exodus 20:13).  Murder is the unlawful taking of life, and killing is the lawful taking of life.  Technically speaking, if a nation said that euthanasia was legal, then on a human level it would not be murder.  But as societies often legislate moral issues in contradiction to the Bible, just because a society might say that euthanasia is good does not mean that it is.  We are to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29).

We are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26), and it is the Lord God who gives us life (Job 33:4) and who has numbered our days (Job 14:5).  This means that God is the sovereign Lord who determines the day that we die.  Therefore, we are not to usurp God's authority.

In the Bible . . .

In the book of Job, when Job is under great distress and in great pain, his wife says to him “'Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!' 10 But he said to her, 'You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?' In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” (Job 2:9-10).  Basically, Job's wife wanted him to euthanize himself to avoid the pain of his life, but Job refused to do so, and in this he did not sin.

Heb. 9:27, “And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.”

The Bible tells us that it is God who appoints people to die.  Essentially, assisted suicide is an attempt to deny God his sovereign right to appoint who dies when.  We must be careful not to take into our own hands the right that belongs to God.

There is nothing in the Bible that tells us we must do everything we can to keep someone alive for as long as possible.  So, we are not under obligation to prolong the life of someone who is suffering.  If someone is terminally ill and in great pain, we should make the person as comfortable as possible during this process of dying.  We should not hasten his death. Instead, we should let death take its natural course but make every effort to comfort those who are suffering.

Finally, like so many things in the world, when a small compromise is made, many injustices are eventually allowed. If euthanasia is permitted under the emotional and moral claim that it is best for the individual, what is to prevent the government from eventually stepping in and determining who else needs to be terminated?  Might the definition of euthanasia be expanded to include those who are suffering from chronic depression or just don’t like living--or are not productive in society?  We must ask that if the door to killing people in their old age is opened, can it ever be closed again?

Think about it.  The beginning of life is now open to destruction in abortion, and the end of life is now being considered for destruction as well.  Like a vise that closes from either end, how many of those in the middle will fall prey to the depravity of man's moral relativism and love affair with sin that always brings death?

Read more from  the Christian Institute on Euthanasia

Britain warned, as euthanasia rate in the Netherlands soars

The sanctity of life

Christians believe that there is something special about human beings.  Being human is not the same as being anything else in the cosmos - different in nature from being a rock, a tree, a spider or a chimpanzee.  Humans are 'in the image of God'.  That means we share something of the nature of God - we know the difference between good and evil, we have the ability to be creative, we have a capacity to love and seek justice, we have a responsibility toward everything with which we share the planet, and we have a nature which is in some way eternal (some people call this a soul).

Everything Christians believe about the sanctity of life follows on from this.  And the most wonderful of those facts is a belief that God knows every human individually - from the life in a womb that ends tragically early to the great-grandmother who celebrates her hundredth birthday.  Christians also believe that God has a total and unconditional love for every human.  (This is exhilarating but also challenging, because it means he must have loved Hitler as much as he loved Saint Francis of Assisi).  It means that God loves you, wherever in the world you are reading this right now.

Several things follow logically from this:

Human life has a purpose

Evolution has not just led us to an existence in which we are what we are because we were the species that is best at surviving, but because God willed it to be this way and wants us to do something with life.

Human life is very precious

In Christian ethics all humans should treat all humans with honour.  It is utterly unacceptable when people are abused mentally, physically or tyrannically.  It is all too clear that Christians (even Christian leaders) fail in this on some occasions.  This is shameful.

Humans need to respect themselves

That means Christians try to do something worthwhile with their lives.  For almost all Christians it means they try not to throw their one beautiful life away by viciously abusing drugs, alcohol, tobacco and so on.

Humans need to respect others

Out of this has come the laws that have made the UK civilized - about the death penalty, abortion, euthanasia, contraception, embryo experimentation and so on.  All these are controversial and Christians have differing views.  However, they try to have their debates about it in the context of seeking God's best for humankind.

Human life has absolute dignity

Perhaps the most important belief of all is that God himself has lived on earth in human form, and so he has conferred utter dignity on human flesh.  Christians believe that in Jesus God himself was walking and talking on this planet.

From Christianity.org