The suicidal religion of autonomy

In the 1967 teen sci-fi classic directed by John Christopher Tripodsheroes Will and Fritz have just destroyed the “Masters”, an alien race that has taken over Earth, when they encounter some of their hapless slaves. These are people controlled by electronic “hats” embedded in their brains.

One of them rises from the fallen body of his alien master and declares to his fellow slaves: “The masters are no more. Therefore, our lives no longer have a purpose. Brothers, let us go to the Place of Happy Deliverance.” This, of course, refers to the euthanasia center that the Masters have carefully provided.

Although I must have read this at least thirty-five years ago, it came to mind when I first heard advocates for assisted suicide complaining that some people oppose assisted suicide for “religious reasons”. This puts the matter exactly in reverse, as if it were said that some people do not believe in eating kosher or in pilgrimages to Mecca for religious reasons; because of course these are things you believe in IN by one particular religion, for reasons specific to that religion, which of course are not shared by all others.

The demand for permission to commit suicide and for assistance to do so is a similarly peculiar belief in one particular religion. The religion in question is humanism, and the peculiar faith is the belief in “autonomy.”

Similarity to Tripods the scene is this: for the humanist, autonomy is a master to be served. The entire purpose of human life lies in the ability to make choices that maximize pleasure. And when it turns out that this master, the all-powerful ruler of autonomous choice, no longer exists, then life is considered to have no purpose. The only thing left to do is suicide.

It may seem strange to talk about being enslaved by autonomy; isn’t autonomy related to freedom and the opposite of slavery? But part of the genius of Christianity is seeing that the opposite is actually true. Sin – independence from God – thinks it gains freedom, but in reality it finds bondage. Trying to escape from God’s rule brings no more freedom than an airplane flying from its wings or a fish escaping from the water. Those who have embraced autonomy as a central ethical principle do not find that it liberates them into a brave new world of happiness and fulfillment. On the contrary, they find that it traps them in a way of thinking that gradually dehumanizes and destroys.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of assisted suicide. The argument of supporters of this idea is autonomy, autonomy, autonomy and once again autonomy. The campaign for this autonomy is driven by a quasi-religious belief in autonomy, and it is not difficult to see why.

Praising our personal autonomy, believing that our individual choices provide the meaning and purpose of our lives, faces an impossible problem in the face of impending death. For a while, the illusion (because that’s what it is) of autonomy can be maintained with treatments that alleviate symptoms and delay the end of life. But eventually the time will come when reality will break through. Death is the ultimate negation of autonomy; this is the thing that’s coming From us and which our will is completely unable to resist. The approach of death is therefore terrifying for humanism, not only because of its utter hopelessness (a humanist funeral is one of the darkest occasions one can experience), but because it constitutes an inevitable rebuke to the entire humanist project.

When death is so close that its inevitability can no longer be ignored, it suddenly turns out that the master whom the humanist has served all his life has disappeared. Hence the complaints of assisted suicide activists that the dying today “don’t have a good choice.” This is not so much a statement of reality (in fact, it is completely false) as a lament for a dead deity. A man deprived of further choice has no further value or purpose in a humanistic religion. There are no more choices. Therefore, our lives no longer have a purpose.

Except one. There was one possible choice left, one way to refuse to submit to the irresistible power of death. The point is to make the moment of death itself a choice, an exercise of will. Like King Saul, who fell on the sword so that the Philistines would not overtake him, so he seeks to avoid the shame of defeat by death by being the cause of death; thus maintaining to the end, even when it no longer had any credibility, the belief that I was the captain of my ship, I was the captain of my soul. By pulling the trigger myself (or pressing the button on a “medical device,” to use the term in the Leadbeater Act), I will maintain my faith in autonomy to the very end. Let us go to the Place of Happy Deliverance. Before death stifles my ability to choose, I will finally cheat it by choosing it myself.

That is why assisted suicide is such an article of faith for humanists. That’s why Dignity in Dying spent huge amounts of money on TV advertising “When I can’t stay, let me choose how I go.” This is why Humanists UK argues that UK law should ensure this “the choice to face the end of life with dignity and autonomy.” Note the complete identification of these last two; dignity and autonomy are indistinguishable in humanistic religion.

It also explains the motivation of supporters of changing the law. They are, almost universally, humanists explicitly or functionally. This explains why almost universally those who are not against it. It’s not that they oppose it on “religious grounds”; they simply do not share the one particular religious reason that drives him.

So the question is why should UK law be shaped around this one religious view? Especially one who is so fundamentally self-centered and so fundamentally dour? Who see no value or meaning in humanity beyond that which we ourselves can generate through our own choices? And whose devotees are so enslaved to their master that they prefer death to the prospect of life without it?

Fortunately, Britain was founded and, constitutionally speaking, still stands on a much better foundation. One who understands that human life is not an individualistic project of self-creation, but a precious gift of God of infinite holiness and perfect goodness. Who told us to project His image and entered our world to save us from our self-destructive attempts at autonomy and elevate us to unimaginable future glory. Therefore, human life is not an accident from which we must salvage some value through our own assertion in the face of the brutal facts of reality, but is a precious gift to be received from the moment of conception and to be treasured for as long as it lasts. As we approach its end, we do not notice that our life has been stripped of meaning, but rather that its true, eternal meaning and purpose are brought into focus.

The issue of assisted suicide therefore confronts us with the question of whether we want to replace this foundation with another, derived from another religion that demands suicide precisely because of its atrophied view of what human life really is. The issue is not whether Parliament should reject “assisted suicide” on religious grounds. Rather, it is a question of whether she should accept it when demanded by one and only one religion, in the service of her own esoteric and destructive god of human autonomy.

The Reverend Dr Matthew Roberts is Minister of Trinity Church, York, and former Moderator of the Synod of the International Presbyterian Church.