Illinois is considering legislation to legalize assisted suicide. 

Now, the surface-level reason for so-called “death with dignity” is that those who suffer from very painful, terminal conditions should be allowed to skip the pain if they are going to die anyway. 

However, we shouldn’t naively believe that assisted suicide will only be limited to these cases. Sooner or later, you’re going to hear the root argument emerge: I have the right to do what I want with my own body. So if I want to die, you shouldn’t stop me.

Fatal practices almost always follow from fatal ideas, and assisted suicide is no exception. 

So let’s trace this topic far back to its very (seemingly) innocent foundation. Fundamentally, our culture elevates your will as more important than your nature. 

What you want to be is more important than what you are. That’s why when you are a boy but you want to be a girl, we don’t counsel you to reconcile with who you are. We give you hormones to reconcile you with who you want to be. 

You see, we aren’t content to let our will flourish inside of the limitations set by the reality God put us in. We’d rather fracture reality so our will can fly free of its constraints.

Sadly, this isn’t just about keeping boys from trying to turn themselves into girls. This is also about keeping the living from trying to kill themselves. You see, if your will really is the most important thing about you—more important than even your life—then when you want to die, you should be allowed to. If you can be whatever you want to be, you should be able to avoid being whatever you want to avoid being.

The grim conclusion of this idolization of the will should immediately scare us away. 

There’s got to be something fundamentally wrong when your philosophy says boys can become girls and the living can take their own lives—as long as they want to. But some would rather accept the fatal conclusions than give up their philosophy, which is why today’s world sees “enlightened” adults arguing for legalized death.

It’s tempting to believe that you own yourself, so that you can do whatever you want with yourself. 

But as Christians, we know that you simply don’t own yourself. You belong to Someone else.

This especially applies to those who have been bought by the blood of Christ: 

“You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). 

Christ has purchased us, so while we are no longer slaves to sin, we are slaves to the Lord. We can’t go around doing whatever we like with our bodies. 

“My body, my choice” doesn’t apply when your body is God’s own temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). 

You at least have to get His permission to mess with it.

But Christ’s sacrifice is not the only way in which God owns us. God owns the lives of all people, saved and unsaved. The fact that God has created you means He owns you. 

“The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters” (Psalm 24:1). 

Because God created you, He is the one from whom you received your own life—He

“gives all men life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:25). 

And as Lord of the universe, He not only has the unique position of life-giver, but also has the unique position of life-taker: 

“I put to death and I bring life, I have wounded and I will heal.” (Deuteronomy 32:39). 

Accordingly, He has commanded us not to usurp His role: 

“You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13).

Now, some might say that suicide isn’t murder, because you are doing it to yourself. However, this is precisely where the error creeps in again. Our modern worldview is so based around the idea of self-determination that we forget that we don’t even own ourselves! God owns your life. So suicide destroys something that God owns.

It’s convicting when ancient authors recognize truths that we “enlightened” wise folks have completely missed. The Greek philosopher Plato penned this very argument against suicide in the 4th century B.C.:

“I too believe that the gods are our guardians, and that we are a possession of theirs. . . . And if one of your own possessions, an ox or an ass, for example, took the liberty of putting himself out of the way when you had given no intimation of your wish that he should die, would you not be angry with him . . . Then, if we look at the matter thus, there may be reason in saying that a man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.” (Phaedo dialogue)

So assisted suicide illustrates a soberingly stark truth: When you idolize your own will above everything else, there’s nothing left to keep you existing other than your own brute will. 

And when you feel like giving up, there’s nothing left to even keep you alive.

Praise be to God that we don’t own ourselves! We are so frail and finite as human creatures that we can’t even give ourselves an unbreakable reason to keep on living. But God does. 

There is a higher power overseeing our lives, so that even when our own will falters and we see no reason to keep going, God provides us a reason: we belong to Him. 

Of course, this is just the philosophical angle on assisted suicide. God doesn’t merely own you and so make suicide wrong, but God provides true forgiveness, salvation, and hope, and so makes suicide unthinkable. 

And so, while the fact that “you don’t own yourself” is probably not the best method for counseling someone in a crisis situation, it does slice to the core of the philosophical problem and dismisses the intellectual excuses that the “enlightened” might provide. 

Ideas have consequences. 

So let’s make sure we start with the right ideas.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email to your state senator and state representative. Urge them to oppose the End-Of-Life Options Act.