End of life assistance

Just a few days to go to the Westminster election. My inbox has been bombarded with emails from various Christian organisations pleading for me to engage with the democratic political process and make my vote count. Yet one email stood out. It was an encouragement to engage with our Scottish Parliamentary process over Margo McDonald’s “End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill” by 12th May.

This issue is a very personal one for me. My Grandfather and my Father both died of Motor Neuron disease, a rare yet seriously debilitating, degenerative, and terminal illness within whose community of weakness this issue has been debated for many years. I know the pressures on families who suffer together in these times of desperate illness. There are pressures on time and energy, thoughts of how much care can I give and how much professional help should we bring in, strain on finances and deep questions such as what does dignity look like when you are helpless? I was also struck that my theology was rather shallow when it came to constructing a biblical understanding of physical frailty when faced with total helplessness and total dependence. It is one thing to be dependent on God when you have the ability to choose independence, it seems altogether different to depend on God when all independence and in human terms hope is removed.

Yet in those times, we as a family discovered there was strength available in our weakness. Sometimes we received it from medical staff, uncompromised in their devoted care; at other times from God’s people, seeking to honour the week in their community, and yet other times it came direct to us from the Lord himself. I don’t deny there were very hard days but I would want to affirm that there was peace in the storm, strength in the travail and love expressed that our Scottish reserve may have inhibited in any other circumstance.
I want to encourage the churches of our nation to make their responses to this parliamentary Bill. To seek to address in their responses, their knowledge of the suffering experienced at these difficult times in the life of a family and to challenge those aspects of the Bill which would be seen as inconsistent with your understanding of human dignity and worth.

As Baptists we have historically made significant contributions to the political agenda and social welfare of our nation. Today I am calling our churches to continue in this tradition by responding to the Scottish Parliament’s request for comments.

As well as making a personal contribution to this debate I would also like to make a contribution to this debate as General Director of the Baptist Union of Scotland. In order to help make this contribution I would invite you to send me copies of the letters you send or have sent so that I might reflect well our shared concerns.