Choosing to Die

Saturday, Brittany Maynard will die. Last week she checked off the last stop on her bucket list, Grand Canyon. She stood on the edge hugging and kissing her husband. Brittany has aggressive brain cancer and at age 29 has moved to Oregon, the state with the most permissive euthanasia laws. There she believes she can die with “dignity.” Her body is swelling. Her speech is at times gibberish. The headaches are unbearable. She has already picked out her posthumous Christmas gifts. After she’s gone she wants her mother and stepfather to visit the Incan site of Machu Picchu in Peru because she says “it’s a very sacred, spiritual domain.” She wants her family to go there and feel her there — after she’s dead.

There is so much to be said about this tragedy. But her Machu Picchu comment says it all. I’ve been there, high in the Andes of Peru. To the Incas it was a place of human sacrifice. Walking its steep, verdant paths one can feel the demonic presence that still pervades this mist-enshrouded mountain, its altars once flowing with human blood. Brittany’s wish reveals her New Age outlook on life, a viewpoint devoid of the Christian hope of heaven or the fear of an eternity without God. The secular press has been oozing with compassion concerning the potential suffering which she’ll avoid. But let’s get real for a moment. I’ve read many articles about her and there’s not a shred of a reference by her, or any of her family, of a Christian worldview. Consequently, there is no judgment to fear by deliberate, pre-mediated suicide and no possibility of God intervening by grace or healing.

I don’t judge her, I just feel sad. And angry. Angry at a nation that has forsaken God, preachers who fail to warn of hell, and a culture that never considers eternal consequences of actions. I pray that when Saturday comes she’ll reconsider that God may not be finished with her life and she may yet be an instrument of his love with a graceful death, not a premature exit. Someone needs to say it boldly, though in our permissive age it sounds harsh. The suffering she’ll avoid is nothing to be compared with what the Bible says she may endure for eternity, barring a last minute death bed reconsideration.