The Bible doesn’t give us neat answers on assisted suicide. But these 3 stories will help

Quite suddenly, assisted dying has become an urgent issue for the UK. Labour MP Kim Leadbeater has introduced the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill to Parliament, and the Commons will vote on 29 November. If the Bill becomes law, terminally ill people with less than six months to live will be able to choose to die with the help of a physician.  

It’s a move that raises profound moral questions, and passions run high. Both sides believe they’re acting in the best interests of suffering people. Those campaigning for people to be able to end their lives with the help of medical practitioners argue that people who are terminally ill and in pain should be allowed to do so; ‘my body, my choice’ is the slogan. Those against this point to the danger of assuming that choice is ‘free’ when it involves family pressure (even unspoken) over inheritance, for instance, and the uncertain provision of palliative care. If someone is terrified of dying in pain, uncared-for with feelings they’re a burden to their children or the state; their freedom is not really all that free.  

Cards on the table: I don’t think Christians can argue that it’s always wrong in principle to end a life early, or that we should always preserve consciousness or bodily function to the bitterest of ends. It’s not the principle that bothers me, but the practice; it’s quite impossible that legalising assisted dying won’t exert pressure on people to choose death because they think it’s their duty to their children, or because they’re frightened of pain.  

What does the Bible say, though? It implies that human life has enormous value, certainly; it commands us not to murder; it tells us to care for the widow and the orphan, shorthand for all kinds of vulnerable people. All these add up to a presumption against approving of assisted dying.  

We shouldn’t pretend that the Bible offers a knock-down text to settle the issue, though. It does, however, offer three case studies.  

The case studies

The first is the death of Saul at the battle of Mount Gilboa. In 1 Samuel 31:4, Saul is critically wounded and facing a humiliating and painful death at the hands of the Philistines. He asks his armour-bearer to give him an assisted death: ‘Draw your sword and run me through, or these uncircumcised fellows will come and run me through and abuse me’. The man refuses, ‘terrified’, so Saul falls on his own sword and dies.  

The second is in 2 Samuel 1, and it’s a different account of the same event. The future King David receives an Amalekite refugee from the battlefield who tells him that Saul had asked him to kill him. So, he says, ’I stood beside him and killed him, because I knew that after he had fallen he could not survive. And I took the crown that was on his head and the band on his arm and have brought them here to my lord.’ 

The story does not end well for the man, who is executed for his action even though he was following Saul’s orders.   

The third is the story of Abimelek in Judges 9. He too was wounded and asked his armour-bearer to kill him. In his case, there was no hesitation: ‘his servant ran him through, and he died’.  

Each story involves a request for assisted dying, though in the first case the request is denied. The second story contradicts the first, and looks as though it’s a fabrication – perhaps the young Amalekite had observed what was happening, somehow managed to abstract Saul’s crown and armband from the battlefield, concocted a plausible story and brought them to David in hopes of a reward. In any case, David believed him, and it’s very instructive. The third is quite straightforward.  

The two accounts of the death of Saul each support the same fundamental assumption: that to take the king’s life, even at his own request, was to commit a terrible crime. The (presumably Israelite) armour-bearer refused to carry out the order; it took an enemy Amalekite (by his own account, at least) to strike the blow.  

Was the sense of wrongness felt by the armour-bearer simply because Saul was the king? David’s repeated references to the Amalekite killing ‘the Lord’s anointed’ might imply this. If this is true, though, it doesn’t mean the story has nothing to say to us in the context of our discussion.   

King Saul and his armour-bearer

Let’s think about Saul’s situation at the end of the battle. His sons have been killed and his forces defeated. He himself is grievously - perhaps mortally – wounded, and in terrible pain. He faces abuse, humiliation and perhaps torment at the hands of his enemies. He is in grief at the deaths of his sons. His exhibition as a captive would provide a massive boost to the Philistines and would further sap the morale of the Israelites. His personal circumstances and royal duty lead to the same conclusion: it’s best to die.  

The armour-bearer’s horror at being asked to kill him might well be a function of Saul’s royal status. But it’s significant that he, an Israelite, refuses to kill him in spite of Saul’s extremity. He’s a member of Saul’s community. They are bound together by shared loyalties; they are on the same side. In that fairly small society, there might well have been ties of family and clan. They worshipped the same God. 

King Saul and the Amalekite refugee

The Amalekite, on the other hand is at best an outsider. In 1 Samuel 15:3, his people were the first to attack Israel on their way to the Promised Land, and Samuel commanded Saul to destroy them all. Whether he’s telling the truth or not, he’s condemned for killing Saul, even at his own request, while the one who refused is implicitly praised.  

So the underlying story here turns out to be very instructive. The death-blow is (allegedly) struck by an enemy; the friend is overwhelmed by horror at the thought of it, and will not strike.  

Abimelek and his armour-bearer

The case of Abimelek is different again. A son of Gideon, Abimelek murdered 70 of his brothers and took power in Israel by force. He massacred the citizens of Shechem and burned alive 1,000 of them in a tower. His injury comes when he attacks the city of Thebez and a woman drops an upper millstone on his head. He asks for death to avoid the shame of having been killed by a woman. Throughout his story nothing is said about God. Abimelek is simply a gangster, and his death at the hands of his armour-bearer illustrates the moral vacancy of his life. He has never created the sort of society where life matters – even his own. His armour-bearer - unlike Saul’s - is indifferent to his death.  

Now, it’s important to stress that these are stories, and there’s no simple parallel to the issues around assisted dying today. These issues also look different in different contexts. For instance, in the developed world there’s no excuse for failing to provide adequate palliative care to minimise pain at the end of life; if this isn’t done, leading people to choose an early death to avoid suffering, it’s the state that bears moral responsibility. In other parts of the world the ethical balance might tilt in a different direction.  

Furthermore, it’s fatally easy to imagine that all Christians have to do to come to a view on assisted dying is to decode the Bible, as if we might solve a crossword puzzle. These are issues that affect people profoundly. For many of us they’re personal - and as someone who’s lost two dearly loved brothers to a degenerative disease, they are for me. We do our own arguments no favours when we discount the strength of the ones we oppose.  

However, these three Bible case studies do have something to say to us. They make us question the social model we’re envisaging when we talk about assisted suicide today. When someone is terminally ill, in pain, in extreme mental and emotional distress, a burden to their friends and to society at large - all descriptions that align with Saul and Abimelek - are they still to be held within the bonds of a community, and their life as valued as ever it was? Or are they to be treated according to their financial value (Saul and the Amalekite), perhaps seen in purely functional terms so that their death is just less of an issue (Abimelek)? All these motives are in play as we think the assisted dying issue through in our own time. 

As Members of Parliament weigh these issues - as believers weigh them and make their representations to their MPs accordingly, there are many arguments to consider and many stories to hear. Some of these can be very moving - stories about people suffering who just want to be released from their pain. Powerful as they are, they aren’t the whole story. The Bible offers us others, rich in meaning, forcing us to ask deep questions about human value.  

What does this mean to us?

These stories don’t provide cut-and-dried answers to the issue of assisted dying, but they might suggest some pathways for our thinking.  
 

• Perhaps those who believe assisted dying is wrong are more in tune with Scripture, because those who practise it are presented as outsiders who are doing something wrong  

• There’s a personal cost to ending a life. In these stories, it was Saul’s armour-bearer who understood this, not the enemy Amalekite or the gangster Abimelek’s servant. When we tell doctors they’re doing the right thing by helping people to die, are we desensitising them – or even dehumanising them?   

• For Saul’s armour-bearer, his master’s predicament doesn’t mean that he’s lost all value; his life isn’t to be judged by its usefulness or lack of it  

• Assisted dying in these stories is the result of Saul’s and Abimelek’s wrong choices, that backed them into a corner where they thought there was no way out. Perhaps instead of just agreeing with people in this position, we should be thinking harder about how to help them  

• If it really was wrong to kill Saul just because he was an anointed king, perhaps we need to question the idea that one person is more important than another. The New Testament speaks of the glory of redeemed humanity. None of us is worth less than a king, and what applied to Saul applies to us 

 When we look for ways the Bible can speak into the issues of today, we don’t always get the clarity we’d like; that’s the way with stories. But when we let the Bible speak to us, we do find that it helps us to think Christianly. These stories seem to suggest that human life has a unique and precious value, and we shouldn’t lightly discard it.