Well, it's great for us to be here today and to think together of this subject of euthanasia. It's a kind of dark subject, isn't it? And I have felt that this week and beyond as I've thought about it. I have parents still living, they're 87 years of age, getting older and frailer. And as I thought of this subject, I did think of them a lot. I also have a 15-year-old son who last year in his RE class studied the subject of euthanasia. And so for all of us, whether we're teenagers going into fourth year in school, 13, 14-year-old, or whether we have elderly parents, or whether we are growing older ourself, this is a subject that relates to us all. And in this half hour, I hope that we can find help and guidance, comfort and blessing as we think of this subject together this morning. It's great that we're all here today. Reginald Crewe was a British citizen and a member of the Swiss organization, Dignitas. He was 74 years old and had developed motor neurons disease. At the end of 2002, he had lost all use of his arms and legs and his neck was becoming weak. His time was spent in a wheelchair or in a bed. In January 2003, he traveled to Switzerland with his 71-year-old wife, Wynne. Within 24 hours of their arrival, he had been given a fatal injection and died. This is a real-life example of what is called euthanasia, assisted dying, or mercy killing. The word euthanasia comes from two Greek words which translate as good death. It's ordinarily defined as the termination of a human life by act or omission, when that life is deemed to be no longer worth living. Euthanasia can be active, as in the example that we've just thought of, or passive, by withholding treatment. Euthanasia can be voluntary when the patient asks for it, or involuntary when the patient is unable to ask for it, but the next of kin make the request. Euthanasia or assisted dying is different from the case where a patient requests to be left lethal medication to self-administer. that is called, I understand, assisted suicide. It's also different from measured medical treatment whose main aim is pain relief and not the termination of life. The main aim of euthanasia is the termination of life, not the relief of pain. Currently, some countries in our world permit euthanasia. The Netherlands in 2002 legalized voluntary euthanasia. The state of Oregon legalized voluntary euthanasia in 1997 with the condition that the patient must have a life expectancy of less than six months. The states of Washington, Vermont, New Mexico, and California have followed the state of Oregon. In 2002, Belgium legalized voluntary euthanasia for adults, following a study showing that one in 10 deaths in the country were by involuntary euthanasia. In 2014, Belgium legalized euthanasia for children. In Switzerland, since 1937, there are establishments such as Exit and Dignitas, which offer assisted suicide without the requirement of the involvement of a physician, or that the patient be terminally ill, or that they belong to that country. The Northern Territories of Australia in 1996 legalized euthanasia for nine months. For ourselves in the UK, there is a bill being brought before Parliament. It was tabled on the 16th of October just last month by King Kim Leadbeater, a Labour MP, and this debate will be on assisted suicide. While the subject is being talked about in many countries, primarily because people are living longer through advanced medication, and health systems are being overburdened, it has been legalised in relatively few countries. The assisted dying bill brought to the House of Commons by Keir Starmer in 2015 was defeated by 330 votes to 118. Within Islam, euthanasia has no place, or within Judaism, traditional Christianity has opposed euthanasia. But today, we want to consider the four main arguments for euthanasia, and we want to respond to those arguments. Firstly, pain relief. The first argument for euthanasia is that an elderly person with only six months to live, terminally ill, in great pain, should be put out of his or her misery, either by voluntary or involuntary euthanasia. The argument is that their life is over. Their pain is terrible. Why make them suffer at the end of their life? It's not a compassionate action, they argue, to them or to their families. And so an elderly person living in Oregon can request a lethal dose of medication from her doctor and keep it in her home till her suffering becomes unbearable and then self-administer that dose. So relief of pain is the first argument for euthanasia. None of us like to suffer or to see our loved ones suffering. The response to that argument of pain relief is that there is another way to relieve pain than by death. In the UK and in many other countries, the choice is not just between suffering and euthanasia, but there's the third way of palliative care. The World Health Organization has researched the effectiveness of pain relief in advanced cancer sufferers and reports that 85% of patients can be relieved of their pain by common pain relief. A further 10% can have their pain removed by carefully adjusted pain relief. and the remaining 5% of patients with pain ought to be able to have total pain relief at rest, but may have pain when active. In Holland, voluntary euthanasia is legalized, but palliative care facilities are scarce and undeveloped. The UK, I argue, has the correct approach to pain relief, to ban euthanasia, but develop palliative care. In that way, compassion is being shown to the sufferer. Gilbert Miliander wrote, The principle governing Christian compassion is not to minimize suffering by opting for euthanasia, but to maximize care. The Bible, I think, promotes this approach. For example, in Proverbs chapter 30, verse five and seven, we read, give strong drink to the one who is suffering, that is pain relief to the one who is suffering, to those who are in bitter distress. Let them forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. Proverbs 35 and seven is arguing for pain relief rather than the termination of life to the person who is in great distress. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Good Samaritan sought pain relief to the man who was at the point of death rather than taking away his life. Throughout the Bible, there is this emphasis on relieving the pain rather than ending the life. Perhaps the strongest Christian argument against euthanasia for pain relief is our conviction that for a non-Christian, his life to be ended by euthanasia would bring them into greater pain in an eternity apart from God. Ewan Golacher, professor of medicine in the University of Toronto, in his book, How Should We Then Die, published this year, challenges the promoters of euthanasia about their ignorance regarding what comes after death. Medical practitioners, he argues, cannot be certain that there is not life after death. and so they should not be conveying a person into a state that they are ignorant and uncertain about. He points out the irony that Christians who do claim to know what lies after death and are looking forward to heaven after death oppose euthanasia and want to remain for as long as possible in this life. Sometimes the last six months of the life of a terminally ill person are a time of preparation for them to meet their maker. Their mind is compelled by their circumstances and condition to be unusually focused on God. I read recently of a wonderful story of a nurse receiving palliative care who three days before she died became a Christian. We cannot deny anyone that opportunity of particular and unusual focus on God at the end of their life. And so I promote that we support palliative care organizations as much as we can. One in four Britons who would benefit from palliative care don't receive it. we should encourage our government to develop and promote those centres rather than supporting the bill that is coming before Parliament about assisted suicide. Secondly, death with dignity. Perhaps you accept that medication could relieve our pain, but you ask, what kind of state will I be in? Will I have tubes all over my body? Will I be rambling, hallucinating, crying like a baby, howling like a wolf? A second argument for euthanasia is that it lets a person die with dignity. Dignitas and exit in Switzerland promote this idea of dying with dignity. In response to this, The General Medical Council in the UK is committed to allowing people to die with dignity. Caring physicians attempt to get the balance between the burden and the benefit of treatment at end of life. Terminally ill patients can refuse invasive treatments to die with dignity, euthanasia, shouldn't be the only alternative. The doctor will not ask the patient if they want more pills to swallow where there is the risk of nausea or diarrhea. Treatment does not have to be accepted just because it is there. My mother-in-law, who suffered from cancer and passed away in her early six days, she refused the second round of chemotherapy. It's perfectly legal and ethical for a doctor to withhold treatment or a patient to refuse treatment that will be too burdensome, too invasive, to die with dignity. Dr. Smith, Anthony Smith, and I recommend his book shortly, he mentions a case from his own experience when he was a young doctor seeking to provide great attention and care to all his patients. He mentions one Lady Ellen, a woman in her 90s who had fallen and broken her hip, but after surgery had begun to walk reluctantly. One day he found her curled up in her bed. She took no breakfast, she took no drink throughout the morning, and he decided that he would have to care for this 90-year-old, and he set up a drip. She was refusing this intervention in her life, but he insisted in caring for her in this way. As he was engaged in this battle with the 90-year-old, you can imagine how the experienced ward sister came along and asked him, does everyone have to have a drip in order to die? Two hours later, the 90-year-old passed away. We can die. with dignity without selecting euthanasia. If we had to choose how to die, many of us would prefer to die in old age with our boots on, sudden fatal heart attack perhaps, swift and clean. But even if our death is to be a prolonged process, with the right physician and care, it can be with dignity. And the Bible promotes dignity for the sufferer. The case of Joseph, the counselor in Jerusalem, begging for the body of Jesus, taking Jesus' broken body from the cross, wrapping it in the fine linen, burying his body in the new tomb, indicates the dignity for the body of the sufferer. But alongside of this aspect of dignity for the sufferer, There is meaning in our suffering, defined meaning in our suffering. Tim Keller helpfully distinguishes two types of meaning. He talks about created meaning in our life and discovered meaning in our life. Created meaning in our life is the meaning which we create for ourselves. We take on a course perhaps. a demanding job, perhaps, a promotion in our workplace, perhaps, a property which we're going to renovate, perhaps. We create meaning in our life, and those who are older fill their retirement with all kinds of events and social actions which give them meaning in their life. Perhaps they find meaning in their great-grandchildren, in their golf, in the Rotary Club, and they're meeting up with school friends, we can create meaning in our life. But then, he says, there is discovered meaning. And that is the meaning discovered in the Bible, that God has a plan for all of our life, that every detail of our life is ordered by him. that at the very center of his plan and purpose for us is his son, Jesus Christ, in whom we can have a saving and eternal relationship. And Keller argues that created meaning can break away. It can dissipate. It can be taken from us. But discovered meaning lasts. through the ups and downs of our experience. And in our suffering, we can discover meaning. We can discover that God is working even through our terminal illness, that he is there with his plan, with his purpose. We get to know him better, perhaps, that is his purpose. in our illness or caring for an ill loved one. Perhaps his purpose is to refine us as it was for Paul, to keep his pride down. God gave him a prolonged suffering. Perhaps it is that our love will develop for others who are unwell. The good Samaritan that day loved a Jew at which their nations were at loggerheads. He was developed in his ability to love on that occasion. So as we think of dignity in dying, we're to think also of the meaning, the purpose, the reason that God has this in our life. In my reading, I came across the story of a gifted rugby player who had a terrible accident on the rugby field and was unable to walk. His created meaning in life was taken from him. And as a result of that, he and his parents went to Switzerland and his life was brought to an end. by voluntary suicide. He never went on to the discovered meaning of his life. That God has a reason, a plan, a purpose for all that happens. A third reason given is personhood, and the argument is that the terminally ill person has changed from the person that he or she was. In advanced stages of senile dementia, which many elderly folk are now experiencing around a million in the UK at this time, one in 11 in those 65 and older, the patient doesn't know her family, has been in a nursing home perhaps for a while, their life and person has absolutely changed. Some become irritable, irrational, increasingly uninhibited, They're a different father, a different husband, a different brother, a different friend. And the argument is that because they're no longer the person that they were, then euthanasia can be used. In 2005 in Holland, a patient suffering the early stages of dementia at 65 years old was granted voluntary euthanasia. He didn't want to suffer the full effects of dementia. In considering this argument, we need to think about value. Value. An object can have value for intrinsic reasons or for extrinsic reasons. Boys and girls, think about a mobile phone. You all want them. Some of you have them. Does the mobile phone have value for intrinsic reasons or for extrinsic reasons? I argue that it's only for extrinsic reasons. because we can take photos with it, make calls with it, send text with it, surf the net with it. It has value because of what we can do with the phone. But when the battery dies, when the screen stops working, we throw it in the bin. It has no intrinsic value. But people, elderly people, any human being has both. Extrinsic value and intrinsic value. I'm reading J.D. Vance, the vice president-elect, his biography called Hillbilly, a gripping reading, a graduate of Yale Law School, and he talks about the value and benefit he had from speaking with his uncles. There was extrinsic value in their stories, in their wisdom, in his upbringing. but there's also intrinsic value in every single person. Because we're all made in the image and in the likeness of God, and however young, the unborn, however old and elderly and frail and changed the person might be, they remain a person in the image of God. They have value. Intrinsically, in the eyes of God and should be in our eyes as well. In my job I'm fascinated at times when I meet with people who have dementia and I meet with many of them and when we sing one of the Psalms which they sung in their youth or when I read a familiar passage of scripture there is this evident recognition beyond the fog, beyond the mist, beyond all the transformation which the illness has brought to them. It penetrates into the very depth of their being. They are people of value in the image of God. This belongs, of course, to the unborn child as well as to those who are much older. The patient might be a shadow of herself, like Deneuse Castle or the monastery up the Mavilla Road, but traces of their grandeur are still seen. And those buildings are protected, aren't they? You can't go round to Mavilla, former monastery, and start knocking down the walls. They're protected. The value of those buildings is recognised by our society. How much more so a person who's a shell of their former self to be loved and treated with dignity and compassion by us. Lastly, autonomy. Pro-euthanasia groups argue, coffee will be served here and we can chat about all this, okay? Pro-euthanasia groups argue that humans should have the right to decide when their life should end. Most of the time, we want to live but there might come a time when we want to die. And the argument is we should be allowed to choose that time. I think that argument is a caricature of human nature. Autonomy does not mean that we have the right to choose anything that we want. My neighbor has a nifty Porsche. I'm not allowed to go and take that nifty Porsche whenever I want. We have limits to what we desire, what we're interested in, what we can do. There are boundaries that are set in many areas of our life. And I would argue that going into this region of choosing when we can die is going over the boundary of what we're permitted to do. Sometimes there is erroneous diagnosis that patients have been told they are terminally ill only to thankfully discover months later that it was a wrong diagnosis. Perhaps the liver secondaries were inoffensive cysts, the bone secondaries were wear and tear changes. Besides that, don't we believe in a God who can perform healing and miracles? And aren't we fascinated by this statistic that 70% of Britons who were interviewed in this particular survey believe that the countries who have legalized euthanasia in some form have embarked on a slippery slope that the restrictions and limitations in Canada and in Switzerland and in Holland have not been retained, but that euthanasia has spread out to far more groups than the government intended at the beginning. We can't handle this responsibility ourselves because it's not our responsibility. The Bible teaches that God numbers our days. He sets the limit to our life. Man does not have that authority to choose when to die. The question in our reading, the king was absolutely amazed that this would be landed at his doorstep. Am I God to kill or to make alive? Perhaps you object and claim the double effect treatment is a euthanasia by the back door. Some pain relief does shorten life. Is that euthanasia by the back door? But those treatments which have the side effect of shortening life, their principal intention is to relieve pain. Life is in God's hands. He's decided when it will end and how our life will end. So let's value life every moment, every day. Illness and death are invasions, interruptions, an enemy of mankind. Let's value life. Let's visit the elderly. Let's appreciate the elderly in our congregation and in our families. but let's also know about dying. I recommend the book, Euthanasia, by Anthony M. Smith, a Christian doctor who worked in a hospice for many years. Christians has often said to me in my ministry, I'm not afraid of death, but I'm afraid of dying, of the indignity of it, of the pain of it. This book will help us. Euthanasia by Anthony M. Smith, a Christian doctor full of wisdom and examples around this area. Be sure of where we are going after death. Death is not the end, but the beginning of a new era in our experience. It's not a wall, it's a gate. It's the corridor that takes us from this life into the next life. While we have a clear mind, while we have time, while we have opportunity, let's be sure of where we are going, that by trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone and his perfect life and in his death on the cross for the sins of many, we have the hope of going to heaven after this life. Let's support those who support others. Perhaps in this study, one of the benefits and challenges that I've had is thinking about what families are going through as they care for those who have terminal illness, the decisions they have to make, the support and love they have to give as they see their loved one along this last stage of their journey. Think of them, support them, help them out in whatever way You can. Let's all pray for wisdom for ourselves, for our government, for those who rule over us. There are many difficult situations, many cases which are not black and white. Let's seek God for guidance and help in all of this.