Why is Euthanasia a Pro-Life Issue?

My name is Kevin Smith and I pastor in South Florida, West Palm Beach. When I think about matters of euthanasia or physician assisted suicide again, I go back to Genesis 1 verse 27 of all life, male and female, being created in the image and the likeness of God. I’m a native of the Washington D.C. area and several times in the recent decade our city council has considered matters of physician assisted suicide.   

I think in an image of God, pro-life, stand for life mindset, it comes down to again valuing life. We use that phrase from the womb to the tomb. And so as valuable and as dignified as a baby is in its mother’s womb – equally valued, equally dignified is a man or woman in their final season of life.  

There’s some dynamics, I think, in our culture that affects this. One thing being the mobility of our society due to economic matters and people going here for a job or here for education and just the stratified nature of our society. Many times people do not have multi-generational interactions with their family. And so what may have in previous generations been certain kind of relational dynamics between children and parents and grandparents and even great grandparents – Those dynamics are not as strong nowadays. Really in America right now in the United States, if it were not for the influence of certain immigrant groups and immigrant cultures we generally would not even have multi-generational households. And so I think the relational breakdown between the generations of families has certainly influenced a certain type of what we would consider biblically an unloving or an indifferent, then certainly a sinful response, to the challenges and the love that is needed as one’s parents or grandparents come to the end of life.

Let me say as a pastor, some of the most tense conversations I’ve had with church members in a variety of settings has been with people in their forties and fifties regarding how they treat their parents. Who are in their seventies or their eighties. Our culture tends towards selfishness. Our culture tends towards short-sighted thinking. Our culture tends to avoid or want to avoid sacrifice and cost and certainly discomfort.

Biblically I believe that the command “honor thy father and thy mother” is a lifelong command. I don’t believe it ends when you turn 18. Now I’m out of my parents’ house. I’m grown. I don’t have that type of biblical obligation. No, I think that’s a lifelong command and many times we’re thinking about our relatives in their declining years in ways that are certainly unbiblical, which would then make them ungodly and unrighteous.

And so I would just encourage churches as we seek to equip churches to live in the era in which we’re in now. As we talk about the image of God, make sure we extend that from the vulnerability of a baby in its mother’s womb to the vulnerability of a man or a woman as they are declining in age, and maybe even as they’re dealing with things like dementia, Alzheimer’s, and other very challenging matters.

Now, sometimes as a pastor, I engage people who have made what we would consider bad or sinful choices. Sometimes I engage people who are in the midst of those choices and trying to consider things. And one thing I would always say as a gospel minister is that some of the choices we make regarding life in ways that we sometimes marginalize the dignity of human life, marginalize the respect and the value and the worth that should be ascribed to human life…

Those broken ways, those sinful ways are still able to be forgiven and to be redeemed in the blood and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So if someone has made a choice that is not honoring unto the Lord, if someone has made a choice where they did not stand for life or they did not honor the dignity of a declining loved one I would encourage them to repent of that sin, acknowledge it as sin, but nonetheless be fully aware that there is forgiveness in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

But before we get to that point on the front end, I would encourage the church to be very strong in teaching on the image of God. I would encourage the church to be very mindful of the dynamics that happen within our capitalistic economy as people move for education and move for jobs. And so we don’t have multi-generational households, which affects the relational interaction between those individuals. 

And I would encourage the church to be mindful of the dynamics of just the marginalization of marriage, family and family time and our culture in general. All these things can lead, unfortunately and sadly, to a certain type of unloving indifference and insensitivity towards our loved ones as they are aging. It is honoring to the Lord to honor your father and your mother until by God’s design and take their last breath. 

It is honoring unto the Lord to endure and to sacrifice some discomfort, some readjustments of my life as a way to honor the Lord. Just as a personal example, my wife and I in the middle of 2021, at the beginning of the year, my mother-in-law began to live with us. The nation and the world actually were in the midst of a pandemic and she had been living by herself and having some health challenges and she has been with us and our household of two. 

We were two empty nesters and became a household of three. Does that alter the dynamics of life? Of course it does. But also ask yourself this, does that honor the Lord and honor the scripture of honoring your father and your mother? Of course it does. Jesus said if you’re gonna come after me, in Luke 9:23, Let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Jesus. And so I would just encourage us around the issue of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide to remember the value, the dignity, and the worth of that older man, older woman, diseased or stricken man or stricken woman, as an image bearer of the Lord God.