Comments on: Euthanasia http://whathesaid.com/2010/02/05/euthanasia/ Making the words of Jesus Christ easy to read and explore Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:40:19 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: Marc Tumeinski http://whathesaid.com/2010/02/05/euthanasia/comment-page-1/#comment-129 Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:40:19 +0000 https://whathesaid.com/?p=330#comment-129 Jim, thanks for posting this on such a serious moral issue. Like with many moral issues, it may not be addressed directly in the Gospels, or even in the rest of the Bible. (This seems to me a reason why many Christians look at Scripture in the context of the long tradition of Christian practice as well as Church teaching–but that’s a longer and often more divisive topic!)

I would want to think more about this but there may be Gospel passages which at least give some background to thinking about euthanasia. For example:

Mt 10:30-31 we are told how much God cares for each person

Mt 10:28 each human being is made with a body and soul, so death is not just a physical reality or about what is happening to our bodies

Mt 19:18 One of the greatest commandments Jesus says is to not kill

Mt 16:24 Christ tells his followers that they must take up their own cross. In retrospect, this is to be done in imitation of him. Not a literal cross, but it does imply how we look at suffering. I think so often so-called euthanasia is called for as a way to end someone’s suffering. Suffering is real, it is hard, and it is bad–but in the Christian context, physical suffering is not the worst evil, it does not have to be faced alone, and one is not to kill to end someone else’s suffering (nor one’s own, but that gets into the moral issue of suicide).

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