The Extent of Personal Freedom

Man’s days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed.

Job 14:5 (NIV)

Many individuals long to have control over every moment of their lives. Today’s rallying cry is “personal freedom.” Perhaps that is why increasing numbers of people are welcoming legalization of doctor-assisted suicide as a means of extending so-called personal autonomy. Yet individuals do not have nearly as much authority over their lives as they might pretend.

Job’s life is a powerful reminder of just how little control people actually have. Reduced to abject poverty, bereaved of his family, and deposited naked on an ash heap, Job knew better than anyone that he could not command his circumstances. In a series of replies to his dubious comforters, he cried out for God to explain why so much tragedy had befallen him. When God does not answer, Job sank into despair, wondering why the Almighty would afflict so weak a creature as man (vv. 1-3). One can sympathize with his argument: If God has determined the length of man’s life and the number of his days, why not simply leave him alone to work out his days in peace? Why compound his suffering? Even in his lamentation, however, Job did not try to throw off God’s sovereignty. He wept and questioned, but he also confessed his life and that of everyone else to be solely in God’s hands. For one as weak as Job, the sovereignty of a gracious God was a protection, not a threat.

The euthanasia debate is ultimately about control—a disagreement between those who believe human beings ought to have absolute authority over every aspect of their lives, and those who recognize that they do not. Euthanasia advocates often spin the debate as a matter of personal choice. Consider this line from the Hemlock Society: “Hemlock respects the right of those who do not wish an assisted death . . . If some choose to live without intervention, that is their privilege, but no one should decide how much pain another must be forced to endure.”¹ This represents a deep misunderstanding. Christians who oppose euthanasia are not trying to foist their own personal choices on others; they are saying that the decision to die is not a personal choice at all. God alone gives life, and He reserves for Himself the authority to take it. Of course, Christians wish to alleviate pain (and there are wonderful palliative medicines to serve this end), but people simply do not have the moral right to opt out of living.

Part of the pastoral task is to remind people of their God-ordained limits—the limits of their knowledge, the limits of their abilities, and the limits of their authority. The world needs to hear from Christian pulpits that “personal freedom” does not extend to every corner of human existence. Finitude is not a curse for a mortal human being; it is a blessing. For even as Job learned, it is often in the moments when people are least in control that they most profoundly experience God’s mercy, grace, and goodness.

Footnotes: