The Borders of Life: Types of Euthanasia

As we saw last time, the world struggles to speculate about when human life has value, and when it’s “ethically permissible” to end it. Who decides, and how do they decide, when a human life is worthy of life?

As Christians, we believe in the amazing value that God Himself places on human life. But for much of the world, we’re simply animals. Perhaps a bunch of molecules which came together by chance. And so, maybe our value is based on how valuable we seem to be to the community around us. Or maybe it depends on our mental ability. Or our current level of happiness. Or, our value is simply determined by those around us, or the government.

And these questions don’t just apply to the unborn or recently born. We have to ask about the other “border of life”. Someone who is very old. Or someone with a serious illness. Someone who is suffering. And so on.

And once again, the world comes up with elegant words to describe ending such lives.

Euthanasia usually refers to ending someone’s life with their permission. But lately, the word has been expanding to include just about anything.

We have active euthanasia, when someone uses specific means to end a life, or we could say to bring life to an end quicker. For example, you can kill someone using a drug.

Passive euthanasia is when you take away something that someone needs to live, and kill them in that way. For example, you stop feeding someone.

Voluntary euthanasia is the person was in agreement, and not coerced. Non-voluntary euthanasia is when the person cannot express their wishes either way. Perhaps they’re unconscious. Abortion is a form of non-voluntary euthanasia, because the baby is unable to say if it would like to live or not.

Finally, there’s involuntary euthanasia, when the person has not expressed a wish to die, or has specifically expressed that they do not wish to die.

And we should mention the related word “suicide”, which is self-murder. To kill yourself is to take the life of someone made in the image of God. It’s murder.

Obviously killing someone without their permission is also murder. Involuntary euthanasia. Non-voluntary euthanasia is also murder. You’re not permitted to kill someone just because they can’t tell you otherwise.

Active euthanasia would also fall under the category of murder.

So that brings us to passive euthanasia. Normally, if you take away something that someone needs to live, that would be murder. If you asphyxiate someone, you’re taking away the air that they need to breathe. That would be murder.

So normally, in most cases, what we call euthanasia simply refers to murder. But in the modern world, we can have some very complicated situations. And there’s no way to cover every possible situation, but let’s look at a few principles. That is, let’s at least look at some of the questions that we need to think about ahead of time.

A classic example is when someone is unconscious, and it seems likely that they will never regain consciousness. And there are basically machines in the hospital that are keeping them alive.

We have to admit here that there are many stories of people like this who actually, surprisingly, have regained consciousness, and have gone on to live normal lives. (Not that living a “normal life” is how you measure a person’s value. Careful!)

But that being said, we know that these days there are situations where you could keep a person’s body functioning almost indefinitely, even though they may not be conscious or even really “alive”. That is, you might keep their organs functioning, even though they have no ability left to think or feel. Is their soul still in their body? These are difficult questions.

But this being the case, I think that there may be situations where you may eliminate the artificial means of keeping that body functioning if the person has given prior permission, or if the family makes the decision when the patient can’t.

This would be passive voluntary euthanasia, or passive non-voluntary euthanasia, which may be an appropriate ending of life and not murder. Remember, you’re removing an artificial aid to life, not simply starving the patient (for example).

Here’s another important possible situation. What if you give someone some medicine to make the last part of life more comfortable? And that medication also accelerates death? Well, here are some questions to think about. What is the actual purpose of the drug? What are the risks that it may accelerate death? What are the chances that the person may recuperate? Basically, I don’t believe we should be intentionally hastening someone’s death in that kind of a situation.

Now, what if there is a common and relatively safe medication that could extend life? Is it biblical to reject it? Because remember, even medicine is a gift from God, a means that He may use to heal. These are things we need to think about.

These issues are becoming even more complex as governments begin to feel they have a voice in end-of-life issues. For example, if we rely on governments to take care of our health, they need to pay for it and administrate it. And it’s undeniable that ending life early can save huge amounts of tax dollars. We all want to believe that the people in government have our best interests at heart, but what one politician believes is not the same as how the overall system works. And that system simply isn’t going to care about you personally the way a loving family member would.

Today, more and more people are being pressured to sign documents that express their desires for end-of-life treatment. Now, it’s certainly not a bad thing to make your family aware of what kinds of treatment you may want and so on. But we need to think carefully about what the Bible says about these issues, and who we’re giving the control to, especially when money is involved.

First, we need to have a clear understanding of what murder is, biblically. Second, we need to recognize that every situation is different. So different, in fact, that it’s quite possible that we (or our families) won’t really know what we want until the actual moment arrives.

It’s nice to have a clear list of categories of what we want to happen in what situation, but chances are good that our situation won’t actually fit in one of those neat categories.

The Bible emphasizes the responsibility of the family to take care of the family. And so I would encourage anyone, if someone in your family makes one of these documents, to leave as many options open to the family as possible, so that the people closest to you can decide in the moment, when they have all the facts. You may need to simply name the person who will make the final decision. But if at all possible, that person should be a family member (or in unusual cases, a friend), and not a doctor or government or insurance company.

We’ve raised a lot of questions this time, without giving a lot of answers. I think there are some important biblical principles that we haven’t talked about yet. And those principles circle around suffering and death. So next time we’ll get more into Scripture and continue to think about these very real, often painful, and usually difficult questions.