Canada’s Suicidal Prayer

As medically assisted suicide becomes widely prevalent in Canada, available to an expanding list of persons suffering from physical or mental ailment, a sad prayer approving of what Canada calls “medical assistance in dying” from the United Church of Canada has appeared, written by UCC cleric David Sparks and Sheila Noyes, former co-president of Dying with Dignity Canada:

Prayer in the Midst of Fear

I am afraid. I feel fear penetrating my mind and my heart. I feel fear in my gut.

I am afraid to die. I do not know what lies beyond the barrier of death. I am afraid to release myself to the great unknown.

I am heartbroken and afraid to leave my family. I am still needed!

I have let go of hope for healing, and I hold on to hope for the next life.

I am afraid that my family and loved ones, children and grandchildren will be troubled when I tell them I plan to die using medical aid in dying (MAID).

(Prayerfully speak of other fears)

But, in the midst of my fear, I have hope that my family and loved ones, children and grandchildren will understand the choice to end my suffering.

I hope they will be proud of my decision and will understand that MAID is consistent with the love and compassion of Jesus. I have such peace in knowing this is my choice. My family loves me but they cannot feel my suffering, they cannot comprehend my helplessness.

I have hope and assurances that my death will be gentle. I am grateful that I can make this choice, for I am terrified of dying in pain and being helpless.

This choice to determine when I have had enough gives me peace even in the midst of the fear.

I feel that fear throws up a barrier between you and me, Loving God, a barrier so hard to penetrate, and I want that barrier down.

Come to me, Compassionate God, come to me as fear weighs me down and gets in the way of the joy and peace I want to feel and share around. Come to me and embrace me with your Eternal Love.

In the deepest part of me, I believe it will be your love that casts out fear for this waiting time and for my final journey through death.

I pray in the name of the suffering Jesus. Amen

Note this prayer asks family members to be “proud” of medically assisted suicide, which is “consistent with the love and compassion of Jesus.” One wonders why Jesus, who suffered more than any other human, did not Himself seek assisted suicide.

Christianity of course has for its entire history disapproved of suicide. Our lives and our bodies belong to God and not to ourselves. All life is precious, including the very old, the very ill, the very depressed and all suffering persons. Humanity apart from God is prone to see life as valuable only if useful and successful in earthly terms. But every person, even if bedridden and unconscious, is part of God’s plan, is an actor in God’s redemption, and in some ways replicates the suffering of Christ on the cross, whom the world also disdained as useless.

Canada has perhaps the world’s most permissive laws for assisted suicide, allowing it for virtually any reason. Persons with disabilities can request death without any serious medical problems. Even United Nations human rights officials have raised concerns that Canada’s suicide laws have “discriminatory impact” on the disabled and potentially violate international human rights standards. In his recent Canadian trip, Pope Francis lamented “We need to learn how to listen to the pain” of the poor and most marginalized, lamenting the “patients who, in place of affection, are administered death.” Canada has 10,000 deaths by euthanasia annually, which started with a 2016 law initially allowing assisted suicide to terminally ill persons, but later expanded to non-terminally ill. In 2019, one patient requested death because of hearing loss. Others seek death because of mounting medical bills. How gross and horrible.

The church of course should seek to defend and encourage all human life, especially when vulnerable and despairing, not accelerating much less blessing their death by suicide. But the United Church of Canada is famously liberal theologically, ethically and politically. In 2017 it endorsed medically assisted suicide as a “faithful option in certain circumstances,” while urging “ongoing reflection and dialogue in communities of faith,” of course.

Like liberal Mainline Protestant denominations in America, the United Church of Canada has been shrinking for over half a century. It was founded 100 years ago as a merger of Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and later Brethren. Denominational distinctives were lost, and the church has been declining both in numbers and in spiritual vitality. Sixty years ago it had 1.1 million members. In 2018 it had 388,000 and certainly is smaller by now.

As with Mainline Protestant denominations in America, the United Church of Canada does not really reflect on the causes or consequences of its membership collapse. Its officials barrel ahead, as though they are still influential, and nothing is wrong. But in effect, they are committing institutional suicide. By refusing to admit any misdirection and by steadfastly continuing policies that are killing the church, erasing all boundaries between church doctrines and ethics and the world’s, these churches are literally killing themselves.

Perhaps these self-immolating churches wish God to bless their self-destruction, just as the United Church of Canada prayer asks God to bless medically assisted suicide. These largely spiritually empty churches are determined to disappear. Their apparent desire for vulnerable persons to follow their path of self-destruction under the mistaken claim that God will bless such a death is grievously, horribly, tragically wrong. More faithful and robust branches of Christianity must make clear God’s desire that all persons may live with confidence that their lives are important to Him until the very end.