A short note on dying

Apropos Euthanasia, I was initially surprised to see them pulling in protagonists from the religion debate  (Here's Andrew Copson, putting it all pretty well) as I'd never really thought about it as a religious thing. I am of course wrong, as I remembered pretty quickly once I spoke to A about it; and even more so one I read the Church of England on it. 

I'm sad that I'm wrong. I'm sad that we (that's the church) seem once again to put ourselves on the wrong side of this debate, and once again in a fairly rubbish way (see end). I'm no expert on this, but I think - and I'll use Andrew's phrase here - we, like the law as it stands - 'fail the test of compassion.' Suicide may be a sin against hope; prolonging a life of pain and misery is a sin against love. 

I think we should note a few things though:

1. It is complicated. I haven't spent any time on the argument because it's tricky. The detail is really going to matter and it's going to get hard: 'we know it when we see it' won't work
2. It is going to be difficult. It requires getting people to kill other people. And they won't be able to refuse to do the killing based on their beliefs. That's going to hurt.
3. It's going to go wrong (I) because it won't be enough. Wherever the line is drawn, there will be some very emotive cases of people who will still be banned. That's going to be depressing.
4. It's also going to go wrong (II) because there are bound to be edge cases where people die who shouldn't, either because they've been pressured (perhaps subtly) into it, or because they make a poor decision. 

None of that means we shouldn't change the law. On the contrary, I think hard, complex things where medical advance has changed the landscape out of all recognition probably could do with some legal revision. I just think that we should acknowledge that some people are going to lose out. But it's a price worth paying for the liberation from misery of others.

As an aside, I really wish the Church would stop making objections based on areas that aren't its competence and make more arguments based on its competence. In this case, its main objections seem to be a concern about human rights legislation and NHS overload - let lawyers and doctors (they have) make those points. Instead, the church's position should be compassionate, pastoral and theological. It might for example want to talk about God, or the church fathers. Instead, their key statement to the latest enquiry doesn't even mention Jesus. Anathema