Canada's Debate

The government of Quebec has designated six months for debate of a proposed assisted suicide law. A series of panels are being held to allow doctors, family members, and the dying to tell their stories. In an article for Canada's CBCNews, Lorna Dueck writes the following:

For centuries, Christianity has been prime source material for teaching how to love and care for family and strangers in pain.

Of course we need to be honest with those looking to our distinct truth and what we mean by hope.

For two millennia we Christians have said that this body on Earth is but a shadow of the future self that God has waiting for us after death and we need to regain our practice of how to explain and engage that truth with the reality of dying.

That belief helps us understand that there is no purpose to keeping Grandma, son, daughter or self clinging to life support when a greater beauty comes next.

In debates such as this, how great is our loss if we withdraw the contribution of faith from our collective education and view only individualism as the better way to face the perils of death.

As surely as we wrestle through the physical steps of death, particularly on an issue as fraught with emotion as euthanasia, so will we need to come to terms with the spiritual journey.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/11/24/f-vp-dueck-euthanasia.html#ixzz16j1OtJnw