Willing the good of the other

Glory to Jesus Christ, Glory Forever!

2016 was a historic year for our country, and perhaps more broadly the world, as Canada joined a handful of other jurisdictions to open the pandoras box of euthanasia to its citizens. In that year 1018 Canadians were successfully euthanized, a short six years later in 2022 and that number has since climbed to just under 45,000. Nearly 5 percent of deaths in BC and Quebec are now attributed to euthanasia, so called Medical Assistance in Dying or MAiD, and these numbers continue to climb in every province each year. Unlike the introduction of legal abortions in Canada, the inauguration of euthanasia has been met mostly unchallenged. More waves are made by McDonalds when it reintroduces its McRib sandwich every few years. 

Why is that? Why do we lounge indolently towards this revolutionary upheaval in human existence? Compassion being equated with taking life? If you don’t hear how antithetical this is to Christ and His Gospel, I’m afraid you may very well be descending into the very same contorted and twisted life of Zacchaeus prior to the profound moment of his repentance before Christ. 
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Prior to Christ, Zacchaeus was a man with many of the same impulses we all share. The Gospel today is not speaking about someone whom we can all comfortably sit back and judge for his misguided ways, but rather for his relatability. Zacchaeus, like every human ever created, was wired for worship, and it is precisely our objects of worship which will ultimately shape and guide our lives. Of course, in his case, Zacchaeus had the many relatable old favourite gods of comfort, security, stature, and mammon on the altar of his soul. 

Wherever he went, it was his reliance or more truly his slavery to those ‘idols’ which he diligently tended to that would inform his daily living. The heavy-handed oppression of his kinfolk through his job of tax collecting likely began with trepidation, as all sins do, but in time, he undoubtedly was unphased and quite likely even thought highly of his hostile behaviours over that of his poorer brethren. Everybody is a saint or at least approaching sainthood in their own minds sometimes. We do the same with our sins if we were to be honest with ourselves. 

For millennia the sins of grandeur, those being the lust of wealth, pleasure, honour, and power have been old hat, though quite effective. Generation after generation would demonstrate their compulsion and slavery to these objects of sin. But modernity has brought yet another, and potentially more destructive sin to dominate the hearts of men, that being the glorification of self-determinism. In many ways, this sin has not only appeared, but has become crowned as the highest good. That man should be free to choose and determine his or her life as he pleases provided it isn’t hurting anyone, or so the flawed logic attempts to purport. The rise of self-determination in this last century was born of the fruits of the rise of atheism. So many of us without really knowing have been as one modern theologian recently remarked, “bathed in the corrosive acids of relativism, materialism, and scientism” – being denied sadly the transcendent, the good, beautiful, and true in its authentic form. Raised in such a culture, even for the faithful, the atheistic perspective might seem natural. Without an objective standard of the good, why would Zacchaeus ever need to repent and seek out Christ? 

With the moral underpinning that it is sufficiently good to do as one pleases, particularly if it doesn’t come in conflict with secular laws, then Zacchaeus might never have repented, and this episode would have been very different. Imagine Zacchaeus measuring Christ’s beatitudes against his own moral subjectivism and saying to Jesus, well I respect that that is your opinion, but that’s not mine. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Well, sadly, many of us do that very thing all the time.  

The passion of self-determination is not one we should look at passively. It is a real and present danger in our times, and I do believe it has the right requisites to degrade humanity till we are literally no more. This polite, who-am-I-to-judge culture flies in the face of our theology, of our cosmic connection to one another. My life is inextricably tied to the welfare of my brother. I will not live fully free until my brother is fully free. And to imagine it is in some way polite, kind, or even loving to allow him to determine his own good which is not in line with actual good is to neglect him, thus showing I don’t really love him. It is not loving to passively allow someone to destroy themselves as I carry on by worrying about my own affairs. And yet this has become the world we live in. Worse still, if I do decry the sin of self-determination, I do so mostly by pontificating about it on the internet or amongst my friends rather than actually living it. 

Returning now to euthanasia, in a few short months the federal government is set to expand the eligibility of MAiD to those suffering with mental health issues such as depression. In many jurisdictions south of our border, billboards have begun to appear advertising, “My Life, my Death, my Choice,” following on the heels of the eye-rolling slogan, “my body, my choice.” Words flying in the face of St. Paul when he taught in his letter to the Romans, “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”    

When euthanasia was first allowed in Canada in 2016 it might be said that it flew under the moral radar of pro-lifers because we fell prey to believing that perhaps in serious and foreseeable terminal health issues, MAiD could be seen as merciful. We went from seeing euthanasia as only being used in extreme situations, to health issues with no foreseeable date of death, to now standing at the threshold of the general ubiquity of individuals diagnosed with non-terminal mental health issues. Is this a thinly veiled attempt to save public healthcare dollars at the expense of the lives of the most fragile and vulnerable? How insidious it is that, as we avail death for the most marginalized in our society, we make ourselves feel better, patting ourselves on the back and calling it compassionate care! Imagining ourselves to be saints for protecting the self-determination of an individual to end his or her life. Of course, much lip service is offered up to say the system is flawless and does not allow suicidal people to pass through its rigorous check and balances, but scholarly research is already available that casts serious doubt on those claims. 

To love another person is to will the good for that person. The good, ought to be an objective good, pointing to God. It is not good to leave people to their devices, no matter how much they insist. It is not at all compatible for Christians to watch the world burn all around them, and to say I respect the freedom of the arsonists to burn their houses down. Christ could not have passed by Zaccheaus and would have respected his choose to remain a slave to extortion and robbery. True love for Zaccheaus sought to free him from sin. Desiring that all men be free, is to order all things to the supreme value of good, who is God. 

Moral relativism praised by society will certainly hurt those among us with the smallest voices. The little ones Christ warned us not to hurt, because it would be better to tie a milestone to our necks and cast ourselves into the sea then to hurt them. Let’s be loud and clear, MAiD is eugenics. Rather than force society to feel the burden of the cross of our sick brothers and sisters, we offer death, and clear our plates of their cries. Self-determination is our collective sin. I am also to blame that my brother chooses death over life. I fear dear brothers and sisters, that eventually, and perhaps sometime soon, if left unchallenged, we will find ourselves surrounded by only those cultural elites, the best looking, the strongest, smartest, and richest. 

For individuals who wouldn’t describe themselves in this way, you may feel even more pressed because your neighbours are no more. Death itself will change, because even those who live long lives will choose MAiD in order to manicure their deaths. Our impatience with weakness will grow even firmer, and ultimately, the lack of diversity of life, will cause us to be intolerant towards anything which does not compete at the highest level. We will judge those who we see as using up valuable public resources selfishly for their disabilities. We must stand athwart this issue with all our will. And like Christ, to will the good of Zaccheaus, rather than to protect his fallen life choices and his sins.

+ Homily for Zacchaeus Sunday (January 28, 2024)