Value of a biblical worldview

George Will defends physician-assisted suicide in Washington Post article

George Will is one of the most important conservative political voices in American history. Will, a graduate of Trinity College, Oxford University and Princeton University, has written a twice-weekly column in The Washington Post since 1974. Additionally, he served as a contributing editor of Newsweek magazine for 35 years. Will has received numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

Through his columns, Will has articulated and defended conservative ideology. For example, recently he has come out strongly against Planned Parenthood, referring to it as the “barbarity of America.” However, Will wrote a surprising article last month entitled “Affirming a right to die with dignity.”

In this article, Will veers away from his normal conservative thinking and defends the concept of physician-assisted suicide. He begins his article with the story of a 29-year-old woman who was dying of brain cancer. She only had a few months to live and experienced “excruciating headaches, seizures, paralysis, lost eyesight and the ability to speak.” This woman had to move to Oregon to have the physician-assisted suicide she wanted because it is one of the four states that permits the procedure.

Will stated that “almost 30 percent of Medicare expenditures are for patients in the last six months of life and about 16 percent of patients die in, or soon after
leaving, intensive care units.”

He does admit that there are problems with physician-assisted suicide. In light of the recent Planned Parenthood videos, Americans should be wary of a “slippery slope.”
However, this is not enough to convince Will that America should stay away from legalizing this procedure.

“There is nobility in suffering bravely borne, but also in affirming at the end the distinctive human dignity of autonomous choice,” Will concludes.

Although I have tremendous respect for Will, this argument should set off a number of alarms, including the “slippery slope” inherent in these ideas. Will acknowledges this but states that this concern comes with almost everything, from taxes to public education. While this may be true, there is solid evidence for this serious moral failing. Several European countries have championed physician-assisted suicide, and in each one, there have been chilling developments.

For example, “Doctors in Belgium and the Netherlands kill the mentally ill, the healthy elderly ‘tired of life,’ and … even engage in joint killings of married couples that fear widowhood and/or dependency,” Wesley Smith stated in the National Review.

What may be the most important takeaway from Will’s article is the value of a biblical worldview. Will is a professed atheist, and it shows in his acceptance of physician-assisted suicide. The closing statement of his article, cited above, reveals the worldview with which Will operates; namely, he believes that autonomous choice and human dignity are inseparable.

A biblical worldview would lead us to reject this idea. While autonomy is a part of being a human, dignity is ultimately found in being made in the image of God.

“There is a God who made human beings in his image out of his love and grounds human dignity in the sacredness of the fact that he is indeed the creator,” Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, stated. “You take the creator out of the equation and there is no sacredness to anything including human life at the beginning or at the end.”

Without a proper view of God as creator of our lives and the world around us, we cannot fully grasp who we are as humans and where our dignity comes from.

“Conservative isn’t enough,” Mohler concludes.

Christians must always see themselves, the people around them, and the issues placed before them through the lens of God’s Word.

Sutherland is the opinion editor.