Re: Dying well (Letters, Feb. 2015, p. 4). Could somebody, a fellow Christian, explain to me what “dying well” is?
Is it possible that a Christian could even be thinking of assisted suicide, or euthanasia, or whatever the euphemism is, when we, Sunday after Sunday, offer the Apostles’ Creed to God, saying, “…I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”
Nowhere does anyone seem to wonder what will happen to him, or the doctor who stabs the needle, after the deed. No one ever thinks of the massive guilt that would follow such a breach of a commandment by God, for the doctor, the patient and the family.
It seems to me that real faith is not so shallow, so self-centred, and the race for the infamy of such a death is being rushed ahead without any spiritual thought of consequence at all.
There is a time to live and a time to die, timed by the Almighty, and if the church wraps [its] consent in a silken veil of words, I shall leave and never set foot in a church again.
Jean Parkin
Nanaimo, B.C.
