I agree that the legislation enacting euthanasia a difficult decision, and that it's fraught with dilemmas. Not the least of which is that those who are going to have to do the administering of lethal chemicals are opposed to it bar some exceptions. I also think it somewhat lazy when we don't appreciate the distinction between those who lose their lives in the act of saving others to those who deliberately go about to destroy their own lives. Those who died saving others were in fact upholding both the sanctity of life, and the virtue of self sacrifice. They, no doubt would have preferred to keep their own lives,if they could, but preferred the lives of others over their own- and is therefore an unselfish act- quite different from one who is intent on relieving their own suffering.
Many people today, that is secularists seem to accept the belief that humanity is of no greater value than any other animal, and we should treat each other, the way we are expected to treat animals that are beyond saving and should therefore be permitted and aided to take their own life.
Christians see this as an oversimplification. Believing that we are made in the image of God has been the foundation for human value for the West for centuries, it won't die easily.
Secularists believe in the sanctity of the individuals rights above all else, it is a self centred prioritisation. Christians don't agree with this centering of all criteria on their own choice, believing that we were given the privilege, not the right to life, when we were born, and therefore don't have the right to determine the end of our lives. That our lives are ultimately not our own, but answerable to a transcendent reality. No one, of a right mind, likes seeing another suffer, and in this we understand the sense of compassion that people want to show for the sufferer.
Viktor Frankl understands suffering as he experienced life, death and suffering in four different Nazi death camps. His pregnant wife, his parents and his mother were all murdered by that regime. Not to mention the daily suffering of those in the camps with him,he was daily forced to observe as a psychotherapist.
'If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering...
'There are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one's work or enjoy one's life; but what can never be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. In other words, life's meaning is an unconditional one, for it even includes the potential meaning of unavoidable suffering...
'[In Auschwitz] the question that beset me was, "Has all this suffering, all this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends on such a happenstance--as whether one escapes or not--ultimately would not be worth living at all."
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
For Frankl then, suffering could have meaning right up to the end if we hold to the idea that life itself has meaning. But if we accept the nihilist axiom that life has no ultimate meaning or purpose, then neither can there be any meaning in suffering and death.
I see a move towards euthanasia as a move acknowledging a culture edging towards the belief that life has no ultimate meaning or purpose. A move that follows a path of dehumanizing people. A dangerous path. A path that I believe that is already claiming the lives of many young people as shown by our suicide statistics.
The nihilist philosophy of Nietzsche, was a strong influence in Hitler's view of reality.
