The Idols of Death and the God of Life.
By Dave Doveton, Anglican Mainstream.
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore – choose life…” Deuteronomy 30:19
The decision by the House of Commons to pass the “Terminally Ill Adults” Bill (or as it is more popularly known, “Assisted Dying”), has provoked an outpouring of emotional responses – both positive and negative. Christians have rightly condemned the decision, which came after a long debate full of harrowing personal anecdotes. I will not examine the complex pastoral and personal issues that swirl around this sensitive topic. There is no doubt that many people are in circumstances which lead them to contemplate suicide or see it as a solution – heaven forbid, a good – or envision it as better than present emotional or physical suffering. I will instead focus on its wider cultural significance.
This is not just a matter of giving people ‘freedom of choice’; this is a watershed, an indicator that the culture, in the words of Joseph Boot, “has not simply reached a bump in the road but has been sucked into a kind of vortex of democratic insanity”[i] in its downward spiral.
The downward spiral has been commented on by many who have highlighted how the sexual chaos, the rising authoritarianism, and the embrace of death are all part of a descent due to idolatry. Boot summarises how self-idolatry ultimately results in the will to power,
“The essence of all sin is idolatry, and it was so from the first. The plan of the tempter was that every person would be their own god, determining what would be good and evil for themselves…Idolatry has many facets, but the most central is the worship of self…in all forms of idolatry people succumb explicitly or implicitly, deliberately or inadvertently, to the notion that reality is to some degree chaotic, and that forces (spiritual or material) can be placated, manipulated or bribed to conform to my own will.”[ii]
The assertion of the right to kill myself is the ultimate assertion of control. It is an assertion of my own will to power over the will of the Creator and sustainer.
Idolatry is progressive and leads to an inversion of what we see as precious or worthy. The truth is that God is of highest worth – worthy of worship (worth-ship) and devotion. When we dethrone him, we substitute other idols as objects of devotion – whether that be ourselves, other people, creatures, animals or even inanimate objects. St Paul teaches that the hierarchical order of worth in creation is inverted, and that which God meant to serve us and fulfil our lives becomes our master and we become its slaves.[iii]
A culture on a downward spiral in the manner described by Paul is a culture implicitly in a death wish. The implicit has now broken cover and has become horrifyingly explicit. Graeme Archer describes some of the signs that should have alerted the guardians of truth to what was inevitably to come.
“So, it isn’t surprising that a state which sanctions Hate Marches in its capital thoroughfares, loud with chants for death; that rips down its built history (Smithfield is going! What next? St Paul’s?) and whose museums it permits to linger only that they may hector its citizens about the sin of their supposed racism. It doesn’t surprise me that such a society would eventually find its apotheosis in the form of this Bill. If the culture upstream celebrates its own extinction, why are we surprised that politics downstream finds a way to codify your own obliteration into law?
Welcome to the age of death: look at the adverts on the Tube, grotesque beyond the imagination even of P.D. James, whose Children of Men novel foresaw and described our childless pitilessness in many ways. Even she didn’t imagine that the “Quietus” would be represented by adverts showing an ecstatic young woman dancing around her fitted kitchen in joy that one day the state will kill her.”[iv]
We may take his point further – Church leaders have rightly pointed out the evil of the Bill, and its assault on the sanctity of life. However, the irony is that many of these same leaders[v] have openly endorsed changes in the culture such as same sex blessings and transgenderism that once adopted by the culture, are then codified in various ways into law as a ‘good’. These changes were equally idolatrous in their nature, as assertions of individualistic, autonomous will over the Creator’s stated design for life and health and freedom (as I have argued previously)[vi].
Opponents (Christian and other) have rightly stressed the fact that once state approval is given to assisted suicide, a line has been crossed, and a slippery slope lies ahead. There is ample evidence from those countries (Canada, Netherlands, etc) where assisted dying (or the equivalent) has been law for some time that this is the case. A clear understanding of God’s word would however show that we have been on a slippery slope for some time now. What Pope John Paul II called the culture of death emerging in western civilisation – and denied by many who were blind to the signs – has now suddenly leapt into focus.
That which the enemy of our souls offers – theft, death and destruction has become the answer and something to be celebrated. Not only that, but the claim to a kind of freedom that proponents of the bill assert turns out to be a chimera, as John Paul II observed,
“To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom.”[vii]
As we pass through this season of advent with its theme of hope amidst the darkness and depressiveness of a culture turning ever more away from the God of life. The light of hope we have in Christ should spur us and encourage us to proclaim the gospel even more powerfully and confidently.
“…to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Luke 1:79.
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[i] Joseph Boot, Dead Men Walking, http://www.ezrainstitute.ca/resource-library/blog-entries/dead-men-walking
[ii] Joseph Boot: The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society, Wilberforce, London, 2016, p543.
[iii] Romans 1:18-32; Paul outlines the inversion of Genesis 1:26 in Romans 1:23. See also John 8:34.
[iv] https://unherd.com/2024/11/what-the-death-bill-tells-us-about-life/
[v] Most notably bishops of the Church of England.
[vi] https://anglicanmainstream.org/prayers-of-love-and-faith-baal/
[vii] Pope John Paul II, EVANGELIUM VITAE, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html.
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