Gordon Macdonald: Margo Bill axed in good faith

Published on Friday 3 December 2010 12:06

No surprise that religions oppose euthanasia, says Gordon Macdonald

Margo MacDonald suggests that MSPs who voted against her End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill were unduly influenced by the churches and religious people.

It is of no surprise that Christians, and those other faiths, oppose the legalisation of euthanasia and assisted suicide. It goes beyond ethics derived from specific religious traditions and unites all people who have a shared moral outlook.

Many of the MSPs who voted against the Bill did so in good conscience because they felt that their primary duty was to protect the vulnerable from the pressure to end life prematurely as a result of feeling burdensome to family and friends.

From a Christian perspective, this shared sense of moral duty can be explained in terms of natural law or natural revelation. Human beings are created in the image of God. At one level this entails a spiritual dimension as intrinsic to the nature of the human person, but it also involves recognition that certain underlying principles apply to temporal human existence: the pursuit of "good" as the purpose of life, the rule of law being necessary for human society to flourish, that community is intrinsic to our existence and that it is wrong for the individual to take human life. It is a natural morality which applies universally to all people.

This morality is set aside by radical individualists who seek to control all aspects of life. Such self-idolatry ultimately proves to be an empty boast.

By contrast, the Christian Gospel proclaims God's active intervention in human society to complete the law by establishing a more profound level of morality and a community of love. In so doing, death is overcome and a firm hope is offered of life eternal in which there is no more suffering or pain. That is the real meaning of Christmas.

&#149 Dr Gordon Macdonald is Parliamentary Officer for CARE (Christian Action Research and Education) for Scotland