The Gift of Life

by Fred Vilbig

Life is a gift from God. You and I did not cause ourselves to come into existence. At one point we did not exist, and then we did. When we didn’t exist, we couldn’t cause ourselves to come into being, so Someone created us. That was God. Our lives, our very existence is a gift from God.

If you give your child a gift and they willfully destroy it, I think that we would all have to acknowledge that the child is ungrateful. The greater the gift that is destroyed, the greater the disrespect that is shown. There is nothing greater than life. It is the basis, the foundation of all other gifts. If we don’t exist, if we’re not alive, we can’t receive any other gifts. There is no greater gift than life.

That is why assisted suicide is such a great sin. We are taking the greatest gift that God gave us, and we are destroying it. We are throwing it back in His face. We are, in effect, saying no to all of His gifts. We are saying no to Him.

Proponents of assisted suicide will say that it is monstrous to force people to suffer the horrible pain of cancer or some other terrible disease. It is merciful to put an end to their suffering. The Dutch assisted suicide law permits euthanasia only when great suffering is present. But that misses the point of suffering.

Pain and suffering entered the world through sin. They are the consequence of sin.

Jesus came and suffered and died for us to overcome that pain and suffering and death. It is obvious that He did not end pain and suffering since it is still around us. Jesus had to suffer and die, but He overcame suffering through the Resurrection. He told us to follow Him.

As hard as it may be to see this, Love is the point of it all. God is love, and God is our destiny, so love is our destiny. Trusting in God, holding firmly to Him in all of our pain and suffering, even through death, is an act of love. Trusting God even in the midst of terrible suffering is a statement of our love for God, and it makes our love for Him grow.

Assisted suicide is a rejection of God’s will for us, a rejection of God. It is a rejection of that fundamental gift from God: life. And although it may be hard to understand, it is a rejection of the grace of suffering; the blessing of suffering if you will.

Rejecting Gods gifts to us is a terrible thing. In effect, we are rejecting God Himself. Since there is no greater reality outside of God, if we reject God, we end in nothingness. Is that really where we want to end up?

It seems to me that assisted suicide will be the next great battle that we are going to have to face. Assisted suicide is a slippery slope to the mercy killing of the inconvenient, the flawed. Life is the first gift to each of us, the fundamental gift. Condoning assisted suicide, much less participating in it, is a heinous thing. It is fine to manage pain to the greatest extent possible, but doing it by destroying life is not the solution. We need to pass through our pain and suffering, trusting in God the whole way, and find God at the other side. And that is where we will find Heaven.

May God have mercy on us all.