What Does Christianity Say About Life's End?
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“For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”
The Christian worldview presents life as a blessing from God. He gives it to us though He doesn’t have to. He sustains it at every moment because He is the everlasting source of life itself. We must therefore steward this gift well, especially where it is most vulnerable. Let’s consider what Christianity has to teach about life stewardship in light of what science reveals about the ends of our lives on Earth.
“The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.”
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Assisted Suicide
Christianity tells us a person is a being who is created and loved by God, and that because of God’s love, persons have a right to life. The question often arises, "Does a person have a right to death?" As in, how much say should we get over how we die? Obviously, most of us do not get much say at all, or we might choose to never die. Death is a scary thing, and even people who believe that Heaven is on the other side often fear the pain and agony it might take to get there.
But, with the advent of the hospice movement (popularized in America by Dame Cicely Saunders in the 1950s), people are getting used to the idea that we sometimes have a choice in what our final days are like. More people use living wills to control their end-of-life health care and what medical procedures will be attempted in their last days. All this, it is generally agreed by Christians and non-Christians alike, is a good development. We can hide from death all we want, but at some point, each of us will arrive at our final moment, and we ought to prepare for it as best as we can. Some even say that the secret of living well is to face one's own mortality with honesty and courage. (My philosophy is: If life is short, why would I waste it eating kale?)
Science influences end-of-life issues because of how it informs our definition of death, and also because it has made assisted suicide easy and (we think) painless. It has made what use to be a messy affair, involving jumping off of a bridge or killing oneself with a weapon, into a clinical procedure, done peacefully with chemicals in the privacy and comfort of one's bed.
But the idea of control over one's death leads to complex moral questions. Is suicide always wrong? Is choosing not to use every possible means of staying alive just a form of slow suicide? It is "kind of" suicidal of me to eat double bacon cheeseburgers, knowing that each one probably shortens my life span by at least several minutes?
The Roman Catholic Church has been a clear voice when it comes to these questions, because of the Church's obsession with getting all of its beliefs down in writing, in the form of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
"Suicide contradicts the natural inclination of the human being to preserve and perpetuate his life. It is gravely contrary to the just love of self. It likewise offends love of neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation, and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is contrary to love for the living God."
Paragraph #2281
Other parts of the Catechism say that withholding care is sometimes morally justified (paragraph #2278) and that steps should be taken to alleviate suffering even if those actions could potentially shorten one's life (paragraph #2279). Intentionally hastening death, though, is a no-no.
And while the Bible doesn't say, "thy shalt not commit suicide," most Christians agree that the sixth commandment prohibiting murder (Exodus 20:13) applies to one's self (bacon cheeseburgers not withstanding - I hope).
Historically, Christians have tried to draw a line between moral and immoral end of life decisions, and the Catholic guidelines have served generally well: It is not moral to purposefully end one's life, but one needn't take every extreme step to prolong it. It takes wisdom to determine what steps are reasonable.
The underlying issues here involve two important questions: Who is in charge of life and death? And what is the purpose or meaning of suffering? As our creator, only God Himself has the right to number our days. Christians agree that suffering is evil, a part of fallen creation that will be swept away when Jesus returns to establish His everlasting Kingdom. But the Bible says that God makes "all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28 ESV) And the testimony of the Christian Church historically has been that suffering falls under the category "all things.”
Suffering and God
It is a mystery that’s difficult to understand, but our sufferings can transform us and shape us in ways that are beautiful, if we submit them to God. Most of us who were raised in the Church have heard testimonies of people who say that suffering has been a wake-up call to see things they could not see before. As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain (1944), "we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." (p. 91)
God is so powerful that He can take pain, which was meant for evil, and use it for good, even the ultimate good, salvation.
While there are many things we can justifiably do to avoid pain in ourselves and others (and science is constantly giving us more), the one thing we are forbidden is to reject and turn back to God the gift of life itself, because to do so is to tell God that He cannot use our pain for His redemptive purposes. God is our creator and sustainer, and we simply don't have the right to do that.
Comas, Brain Death, and the End of Life
One interesting way that science informs our moral choices is to help us decide when a person is dead. That seems like an odd thing to need help with, because most of the time, a dead person is clearly dead. But now we’re able to keep people's bodies functioning with machines beyond the point when their hearts beat on their own or their lungs breathe on their own. So, we need greater insight to know when a person is actually dead and not just in a coma or other unconscious state.
Neuroscientists have (more or less) shown that a person's thinking and feeling can be tracked through the activity of their brains. People therefore use the term "brain-dead" to describe someone who is not really there, but whose organs are kept animated by machines (or, in some cases, by involuntary bodily reflexes). There are many movies where someone wakes up from a long coma to find their world or circumstances changed, and occasionally true stories of this kind show up in the news. It is important that people have an idea of what is "the point of no return." What happens in a brain and body at the moment of death that is different from a temporary coma, and how can we know when we are keeping a person alive, or just keeping a dead body from shutting down?
That can be a tough question to answer, not just because of the science, but because of how it affects us in actual life. Nobody wants to be the one to pull the plug on a loved one the day before they were going to wake up. And nobody wants to be a person in a coma, perpetually trapped inside their own body with no way of escape, because loved ones can't let go. The good news for almost all of us that when we die, we'll be obviously dead – perhaps wrinkly and decrepit from old age, or flattened by a city bus, or keeled over on the golf course from a massive coronary, or (I hope for me) eaten by a huge shark (sharks are awesome).
Most of us will not have to pull the plug on anyone, or have someone pull the plug on us. But it is still helpful to think through these issues, and it is responsible for us to each make a living will. Consider the case of Terri Shiavo. Because her family members (her husband vs. her parents) fought about what she would have wanted, she was kept in a "vegetative state" for several years, but then removed from external support and allowed to die from thirst or starvation. Was she still present in her body? Her parents said yes, her husband said no. Would she have wanted to be kept alive indefinitely in hopes that a miraculous cure or awakening would occur? Her parents said yes, her husband said no. These are difficult issues to resolve, and it’s important to have those hard discussions with your loved ones while you can, and get your decisions down in writing.
Scientists are now able to do brain scans of unconscious people to tell whether or not they are thinking, but ethicists still debate about using this as a definition of death. For families with loved ones in an unconscious state, it is incredibly difficult to let go. Ceasing life support, even when one is confident that it is the right thing to do, can lead to tremendous guilt.
Jesus is Lord over life and death
How exactly do we determine when a person is dead? What means of keeping a person alive are “extraordinary” medical practices, and which are required by the Hippocratic Oath? The Christian worldview is able to give us guidance on these questions, even if an answer in any particular case is difficult. When we try to make these decisions wisely, there are a few things we need to remember:
Life, no matter how difficult, is a precious gift from God who loves us.
God, as the sovereign King of the universe, is the only one with the ultimate authority to give and take life. Sometimes He delegates that authority to humans (such as the places in the Old Testament when God commands war or the death penalty).
For those who have accepted Jesus’s free gift of grace, death is nothing to fear.
Death can be postponed, but not avoided. None of us will make it out of this life alive.
In God's economy, suffering is not for nothing. It can be offered to God as a sacrifice.
If we keep these truths in mind when we pray for wisdom and understanding regarding end-of-life issues, we will have the power to navigate the difficult questions, and trust in God's grace for our shortcomings. Life is a precious gift, from beginning to end, even when it doesn't look like it.