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1“Mercy killing” is a difficult but very real and important issue.

We are faced with it on the battlefield, and we increasingly come across it in civilian life. On one hand, we do not want to take a person’s life into our own hands and end it early. On the other hand, we do not want to keep the process of dying going for longer than necessary. In short, we want to save lives, but not drag out death.

As a Christian I believe that life is a very special gift from God. He alone has the right to decide when a life should end. He is the king of this world and each person. He alone is in control. And only God knows what is best. His timing, even when it comes to someone’s death, is perfect.

I don’t believe that we should ever end a life early, no matter what the situation. To do so is to ‘play God’. But neither must we go to too far to keep someone alive. Let me explain: speeding up a death is wrong; keeping back treatment can also be wrong; but to allow death to occur naturally is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, it may well be OK to let a terminally ill person die when they are at the end of their strength, rather than dragging out their death with more and more treatment. But each person and each situation will be specific; there is no textbook answer. So anyone facing this issue should pray to God for wisdom (James chapter 1, verse 5).

Wrongly, euthanasia is now an acceptable way of solving various health, social and financial problems. This focus on death as an answer to the world’s problems is the total opposite of what we read in the Bible. In this book, which is at the very centre of what Christians believe, we are told that death is an enemy (I Corinthians, chapter 15, verse 26), while life is a special gift from God (Genesis chapter 2, verse 7). When given the choice between life and death, God told his people to “choose life” (Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 19). But euthanasia rejects God’s gift and chooses death instead.

— Chris, an Our Daily Bread reader

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