Brittany Maynard's God

We recently spoke of the death of Brittany Maynard, calling it an act of cowardice or, worse, self righteousness. You may read about it here: http://www.examiner.com/article/brittany-murphy-s-death-pure-selfishness . We have received several criticisms of our editorial, and they all boil down to two things: that God is a loving and merciful God, and that we cannot judge the acts of others. They are interesting criticisms.

The second point we can quite frankly dismiss almost without thought: aren't those who criticize our thoughts guilty of judgment of us? Yet if judgment of the thoughts and acts of others is wrong, on what grounds do they judge us? We will skip the intermediate steps which that question entails and cut straight to the chase: no one argues against judgment when they like the judgment. If we were to have said that Maynard had the right to do what she has done, no one would have jumped up shouting, 'You can't judge her!'. So the implication is clear: the assertion that we cannot judge the thoughts and acts of others is itself little more than a selfish, self righteous claim invoked when one doesn't like the conclusions being drawn. As such, we dismiss the point as an argument for assisted suicide. Or as an argument for anything else, for that matter.

The first argument, that God is loving and merciful, is simply a red herring with regard to any human act or construct. We do not argue that God isn't loving and merciful; but what have those fine and lofty ideals to do with whether an act or thought is right anyway? It is as though those who employ that line of argument are saying: because God fully understands what so and so is going through, he will forgive it. Again, we do not argue that God does not fully understand things, or will further not take individual circumstances into account. Yet the idea that that must mean He will forgive them is presumption, plain and simple. We must be very careful about presuming the Will of God.

That God loves us and is willing to forgive us is without question. Yet love and forgiveness mean little if you don't want them, and wanting them requires that you ask for them with contriteness. Contriteness means understanding that what we did was wrong and required forgiveness. So we ask: might Brittany Maynard have been contrite before she did what she did (which seems unlikely as she went ahead and did it), or at least before her act came to fruition?

The answer is that we don't know; as we've just said, we must be very careful about presuming the Will of God. Since we don't know, we cannot presume anything about the state of her person. Yet even that is still a separate question over whether what she actually did was right or wrong. And we can draw useful conclusions about that: it was wrong. No one has the moral right to take their own life (sacrificing it, in war or as a police officer or when defending a family member or friend for example, is not taking your life, just for the record, but is offering it for a greater good).

Quite frankly, we cheapen human life to think that what is wrong is in fact right no matter the exact state of the person involved. Yet the god invoked in support of Brittany Maynard apparently would not say that. He would say that what she did was okay, because, you know, he loves her and would never, ever judge her.

Yet the sad fact is that the god of Brittany Maynard would be quite happy if we did all just kill ourselves.