I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.
Deu 30:19
A few months ago, my mom decided to leave this realm.
We value free will in the wrong places
Here in Switzerland there are two organizations that want to help people to die gracefully. So they call it.
Today, it seems that we value free will in the wrong places.
There is nothing graceful about suicide. Neither for the ones staying behind nor for the ones committing it. And especially not for the people aiding the process.
I strongly believe there is a life after death. Not much is required of us to have a great eternal after-life. Believe that Jesus Christ is God’s son, who gave his life to restore the relationship between God and man by becoming man and giving his life. Carrying the guilt, shame, and consequences of our selfish life style. Becoming Lord in my life.
In his own words: not to lord it over you. To serve and help you spread life. It is not about good and bad, it is about bringing life.
There is nothing more final in bringing death than suicide.
Somehow I cannot go back and fix what has been done. And there is no way it can bring life.
Love is to respect the decisions that somebody takes.
Yes, things will be easier at times when somebody is not around any longer. A person in pain can be a burden and sometimes even a pain to carry. But such is life. Such a departure only brings grief and convenience. Still, it lets us – after a while – go back to our comfort zone. Out of sheer necessity to protect our hearts.
Natural death brings grief for a while, but after that it brings joy. I can look forward to see the person in the after-life. I know the person is in a much better place now, fully healed, restored, even advanced to a life form we were created for in the first place. If the person was reconciled with God.
What about people that do not believe in Jesus Christ? It is sad to see them go. It hurts – but we know they had their chances. God gives people chances, enough chances. He is fair. Not our kind of fairness, as we tend to define fairness as absolutely equal number of opportunities and years with the same possibilities and environmental influences.
Circumstances, length and happiness of a life do not matter. It is not about me. It is about God and others.
In the last weeks I had to take a close look at what I described so far. Here some of my thoughts.
If God is a God of love, how can he send such pain and aggravation to some people, while others just seemingly float through life?
It became even more real to me that we understand love the wrong way. Love is a decision, not an emotion. Love is to lay down my life for others – not only through physical death. Jesus did this for us, and we do it for others.
Love is to respect the decisions that somebody takes. To value free will. And God does this too. As much as it hurts him, he loves us so much, that he respects our decisions, even if they lead to eternal life without him.
Not that he does not try to intervene. But if I decide to not hear him, he will respect that. That includes that he will not mess with the consequences of your decisions in your life. You will have to live with them.
If you involve him in your life and have him take the lead, those consequences can be changed by new decisions or prevented by right decisions in the first place.
That is love.
Couldn’t God leave people alone since he knows their decisions already?
If God is a God of predestination, does it matter what we do? Is suicide not predestined for us as well then?
Yes, if God were a God of predestination, that would be true. Yet, then he could not be a God of love. If he had predestined us, he had predestined our decisions, and therefore the consequences. No room for free will, therefore no room for love.
God is a God of prevision. He sees the end from the beginning and planned the beginning from the end. How that? He is Einstein’s observer outside the system. He lives outside time, and therefore knows all that happened, happens, and will happen.
If God is a God of prevision, he foresaw the suicide and maybe has given the person enough chances before that, making natural death equivalent with suicide – just another way to go, in a literal sense?
Granted, my mom had many chances in her life to find God. She had done so three times in her life I know of, only to reject her decision based on people’s faults. Rejecting God because of his ground personnel.
I know God met my mom in her last moments – but I have no idea about her decision.
Couldn’t God just stand back then and leave people alone since he knows already that they do not take the right decisions?
Well, as he knows what happens, he probably could. But he would invariable change the future, since making a decision and answering with no is definitely different from not being confronted in the first place. And, again, it would rob us from our free will. And there are other people both involved and influenced by our decisions – their lives would be altered too.
Her decision to kill herself was based on pure selfishness.
In conclusion, I understand my mom, and even though I don’t agree with her way of dealing, I respect her decision. I hope she made that last decision and answered with yes. I will see.
All I know is that her decision to kill herself was based on pure selfishness. So she told me.
I can’t change it anymore.
I will let the dead bury the dead, and concentrate on the living. That may sound cruel, but that is what she wanted.
I am just concerned about the people that “help” others in all that. Either as witnesses or handing them the poison. How deceived they are – they think they are doing good, but good is not God.
It is not about doing good, but about bringing life.
And my decision in all this?
I decided not to help her. She wanted me as a legal witness to her death. In this capacity I would have had to testify that it was no murder. But, frankly, I can’t. I cannot agree with their definition of murder. If she took the poison out of free will, nobody carries any responsibility, they say.
The last few weeks between my mom and myself were hard. She was disappointed and angry that I could not do her a last favour and participate in her killing. She argued with free will, forgetting my free will.
I did not go there out of love. Love to my God and to my family. I chose life. Looking back, I am glad I decided that way.
I honour free will. Therefore I had to let her go, even though I know of the possibly terrible consequences—and I know of the God of last chances in last moments. I told you, I do not know how my mom decided in the end.
I honour free will. And that is why I am against assisted suicide. Too big the danger that soon elderly and sick people are morally or even openly pressured into killing themselves—to make room for the young and healthy, to take away a burden.
I honour free will. And you?