Giving Opportunity Away

If you are looking for something to stimulate the tear ducts, this will definitely get you going.

A UK widow writing for The Conservative Woman makes a profound observation about the nature of choice-making in a post entitled “I am so grateful my husband ignored those who would have assisted his dying”. What Gabriella Dunn has to say about her personal experience applies far beyond the issue of assisted dying.

We might say it presents us with a particular type of choice that goes back all the way to Eden.

Changes on the Way

Dunn was the second wife of a man diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. When his children from his first marriage saw their fit and healthy father begin to deteriorate, all began to counsel him to consider assisted suicide as an option. Though understanding of their motives, Gabriella was horrified.

She writes:

“Choice is presented as a neutral act, creating an opportunity for those who want it, but not impacting on those who don’t. This is profoundly false. In my husband’s case the introduction of the element of choice introduced the possibility that life, including his own life, was not of value in itself and this was confusing and distressing.

If the choice of assisted suicide is presented, our relationships at the end of our lives and the way we end our lives will profoundly change.”

True? Absolutely true.

Caveat: some choices are indeed almost always morally neutral, like choosing which way to drive to work, which brand of gas to fill up with, or whether to have salmon or halibut for dinner. We are not talking about one of those. Not at all. We are talking about the introduction of moral choices that should never, ever be entertained. God has already spoken, either in precept or principle. Viewing such choices as options, opportunities or even possibilities is to defy God and reject his wisdom.

A Neutral Act?

Yet our society presents even the most profoundly moral choices to us as neutral acts, creating opportunities and providing better options where none existed before. This is how the serpent presented the original temptation in the Garden of Eden: “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Look at his pitch: “There’s no negative here to worry about, just a series of potential advantages.” Naturally, he makes no mention that Eve’s choice will invariably impact Adam, her relationship with God, the entire human race and even the planet on which she stands.

Six thousand-plus years downstream from Eve’s allegedly neutral choice, the bigger and more aggressive animals in my backyard still intimidate, injure and sometimes devour the smaller ones. That little detail was conveniently absent from Satan’s pitch, along with half a zillion others.

Those ‘Resilient’ Kids

Enablers tell the same lie about the choice to divorce. “Kids are resilient. You have a right to experience real love. Pretending to be happy when you’re not is hypocrisy. When he looks at you funny, it’s abuse. You go, girl!” It’s all happy talk, with no consideration of the real, long-term impact on you, your husband, your children, your extended family and your society.

Society? Oh yes, let’s not kid ourselves about that. Everyone who takes the divorce “option” without sound biblical reasons for doing so is tacitly encouraging others who may not be in quite the same situation to pull the ripcord and hope against the very well established odds for an unlikely soft landing.

Like Eve, they move us toward a world we will not recognize once the bitter fruit of our choices has fully ripened.

Unforeseen Consequences

Here’s another choice relentlessly presented as neutral to gullible Canadians: How do you like your cities with bankrupt pot stores on every corner? 45% of them are not financially viable. How do you like regular marijuana usage up 26% from pre-legalization? By the way, since smoking marijuana is as dangerous as tobacco, how do you like the public healthcare bill that will come with all those new users? As a taxpayer in Ontario, how do you feel about the extra $31 million annual tax dollars now required to deal with all the unregulated operators?

But how was legalization presented? All opportunity. “Increased tax revenue, reduction of crime, therapeutic usage, blah, blah, blah. Legalization will allow people who are already using pot to do so without clogging the criminal courts.” After all, if you don’t want to smoke pot, nobody is making you, right? It’s just another morally neutral option.

Freedom of Choice

Need we bang on about legalized abortion for the umpteenth time here? Surely not. The loss of life, the obvious hardness of heart it institutionalizes in both medical professionals and the women they service, the guilt, the health issues for mothers, the social conflict, the coming judgment …

Moreover, the social and economic impact of fifty years of legalized baby murder in North America cannot possibly be overstated. Our massive legal and illegal immigration issues are directly related to the reduction in live births that followed the Roe v. Wade decision: the numbers are almost identical. We simply replaced a historically reliable source of tax revenue (natural increase in the native population) with an unreliable one (trying to cover the cost of our obscenely expensive social safety net by inviting others to come live here and pay taxes). Recent studies show tax revenues from immigration do not come close to covering the costs. Immigration is a net economic negative for the native population funding it.

But how was abortion pitched to women? Opportunity. Careers. Freedom. Options. “If you don’t want an abortion, don’t have one.” Today, it’s a choice considered so sacred that overwrought single women are weeping on YouTube about fearing for their lives if they can’t have easy, legal access to it.

The Reality of Impact

Still think increasing our choices doesn’t increase the frequency of sin and suffering? Let me finish with another quote from Gabriella Dunn:

“As it stands, the elderly might sometimes feel a burden on their loved ones but accept their help with humility and gratitude, trying to reciprocate, where they can, with love. The loved ones accept these ‘burdens’ as an inevitable part and sometimes trial of life.

But what happens when assisted suicide becomes available? Once assisted suicide has become a legitimate option, even institutionalised, the elderly will start to feel that they are being selfish if they don’t avail themselves of this opportunity. And the loved ones may be less inclined to accept the ‘burden’ of care because it is no longer part of the inevitable process of aging. Rather, that burden of care could be perceived to be the result of a selfish choice.”

In Canada, this is already happening. The numbers using the MAID program are rising every year. Guilt and hopelessness are big factors in that, and our culture is promoting it.

Simply Wrong

The fact is, all our choices impact others. There is no getting away from it. Every formerly illegal act we legalize increases the frequency of those acts. Every new option offered increases the number of people who will take it, as well as all the social costs associated with it.

Gabriella Dunn writes, “If the choice of assisted suicide is presented, our relationships at the end of our lives and the way we end our lives will profoundly change.” Let us add that they will change for the worse in ways we have yet to enumerate.

Some choices are simply wrong, always and utterly. The Christian remedy is to learn not to give morally wrong options even a moment’s consideration, and to rebuke them sharply when we hear them coming out of the mouths of our brothers and sisters in Christ, even when our country has legalized them.

It’s true that laws don’t prevent bad choices. Paul reminds us in Romans that “apart from the law, sin lies dead” and that “if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin”. Some will argue that decriminalizing bad choices really makes no difference, as all laws do is draw attention to our sins and make us feel bad. But that is not all laws do. Biblically speaking, the penalties that attend violations of the law also disincentivize bad choices. Properly enforced, they are most effective at that. We must never lose sight of the necessity of keeping these godly disincentives in place.

Even as Paul points out the inadequacy of law in certain respects, he reinforces that under law sin still has to seize the opportunity to corrupt the human heart. Under license, we simply give that opportunity away.