Netherlands May Allow Healthy Senior Citizens to End Their Lives

Euthanasia, or so-called “death with dignity,” bills have been proposed and passed across Europe, Canada, the United States, and other places. These bills are marketed as compassionate responses to seemingly intense, lasting, and hopeless suffering. But Christians and pro-life groups have pointed out that this idea of “death with dignity” opens the door to many abuses. And now that’s exactly what has happened in the Netherlands. This new bill is just another example.

Euthanasia bills are just another outworking of the secularization of our Western culture. You see, in a biblical worldview, God is the author of life and alone holds the authority over life and death. We’re made in his image (Genesis 1:27) and have intrinsic worth and value. But, in the West, a biblical worldview has largely been replaced by a secular one. In this secular worldview, we are just animals and when we die, that’s it—we’re dead and won’t even know we ever existed! Thus life has no ultimate meaning or purpose. If we don’t have any intrinsic worth or value, so why not end someone’s life if they want you to (or even if they don’t want you to—after all, who makes the rules)?

Euthanasia bills are just another outworking of the secularization of our Western culture.

Now, who gets to decide that 75 is the age when a person can decide their life is “complete?” Why not 65? Or 55? Or 15? The age of 75 is completely arbitrary, targeting the elderly who may already feel like a financial burden on their families or on the budgets of the government’s social services.

And, according to at least one member of the party advocating this bill, getting the age lowered will indeed be the next step. He sees euthanasia for healthy people as the “next step for our civilization” and believes that “broad political support for euthanizing completely healthy people exists and that he hopes that eventually people younger than 75 can opt to end their lives when they want, though a lower age is not feasible at the moment.”

And who is to say it will stop here anyway? Did you know there are secularists who advocate that Christianity is caused by a virus. What if it’s decided those with the supposed “Christianity virus” need to be eliminated! Far fetched? European nations have already engaged in genocidal eliminations of people: Nazi Germany in the 1940s, of course, against the Jews, and more recently in the Balkans (1990s).

Euthanasia is murder and, based on the standard of God’s Word, it is wrong. We don’t have the authority to choose when our lives are over.

In your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:16)

Learn more about a biblical response to euthanasia in AiG’s Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell’s article, “Is Euthanasia a Biblical Solution to Terminal Illness or Suffering?”

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.