Life – Family Council

Guest Column: Dying with Dignity vs. “Death with Dignity”

May 19, 2026John StonestreetLifeAssisted Suicide, Euthanasia, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

In a recent episode of “60 Minutes,” interviewer Scott Pelley said to his guest, “You don’t have much time. Why are you spending time doing this?” His guest, former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse, who received a fatal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in December, replied with a laugh, “You invited me, so I assume you needed to fill some time.”

Short of a miracle, Sasse won’t see his 14-year-old son grow up. He won’t walk his daughters down the aisle. And yet, he is teaching the nation a stunning lesson on dying with dignity. Sasse warns against the allure and the limits of political power and proclaims what matters more. Committed to free markets, he warns against the illusion that “more consumption can make you happier.” He’s at the same time optimistic about what technologies can provide and concerned about what has happened to our sense of self and happiness, especially young people.

Sasse is not being stoic, as though death is not a big deal. He mourns what the loss means to his family and regrets what he missed traveling for work instead of being at home. He regrets the pain that cancer has brought to him. But how he is dying is making a rare statement to the world, and it is being heard. As Dr. James Wood described in a recent World article:

In a culture that kills to avoid hardship and hides death to avoid reckoning, a man dying well on high-profile platforms is a subtly radical act. He is, without quite saying so, making an argument for life—for its dignity, its giftedness, its meaning even at the last.

His voice is especially powerful in a world that continues to accept various forms of euthanasia and doctor-assisted death. Across Europe, Canada, and a number of American states, advocates of what is often called “medical assistance in dying” or MAiD, market the promise of “death with dignity.” Unspoken in that terminology is the assumption that we need “death with dignity” because there is no such thing as “dying with dignity.” There is no value to be found in facing suffering or enduring pain to honor life until its God-given end. So many speak as if giving up on life takes courage and compassion.

Within the godless and hopeless framework of a naturalistic worldview, life is, as Shakespeare put into the mouth of Macbeth, “a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Why suffer to preserve such a meaningless existence when no higher purpose or value is available to be found? To die is to escape from such a life. Once pleasure or plenty is no longer available to us, there is no dignity to be found in how we die.

The Christian view is centered on Christ’s death, which restored the dignity with which God created us. Because death is transformed, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, there is dying with dignity. There is meaning and significance in the courage to face life’s end and the pain that so often accompanies it. In the Christian worldview, death in all its pain and suffering, is redeemable in the life of Christ, who defeated death.

That sort of courage is undeniable when witnessed in real life. As President Clinton, after being soundly critiqued by Mother Theresa on the issue of abortion, put it, “It’s difficult to argue with a life so well lived.” In the same way, what we are hearing and witnessing in these final days of Ben Sasse, is that it is difficult to argue with one dying so well.

Indeed, as a wise pastor once observed, our children will remember all sorts of things about us, but the way in which we die is what they will most remember about our faith. “Death with dignity” is a farce, a damnable idea that dehumanizes us individually and collectively. But dying with dignity, even as we pray for grace and peace for him and his family, is a profound gift that God is giving all of us right now through Ben Sasse.

Guest Column: Are There No Suicide Pods? Are There No Gas Chambers?

Dec 18, 2025John StonestreetLifeAssisted Suicide, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life, Suicide

In a striking scene in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge asks two men raising money for the poor, “Are there no prisons? … And the Union workhouses? … Are they still in operation?” When the charity supporters reply that many would rather die than go to such places, Scrooge replied, “If they would rather die … they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” Later in the story, Scrooge is reminded of his dehumanizing words and is ashamed.

Recently, in real life Britain, Lord Falconer of Thoroton suggested to the British House of Lords that the poor might be better off dead:

Where the reason that you want an assisted death is because in your mind you are influenced by your circumstances, for example, because you are poor—should you be barred from having an assisted death because of your poverty? In my view not.

In Britain’s nationalized healthcare system, the cost of the procedure for the poor is not an issue. Rather, Lord Falconer seems to be suggesting that the poor should have the “right to die” if they are ashamed of being poor. Poverty, in this view, is a fate worse than death.

Most likely, Lord Falconer thinks his is an appeal to charity, like the charity workers in A Christmas Carol. In reality, his advice is indistinguishable from Scrooge. He might as well have asked, “Are there no euthanasia clinics? And, the gas chambers, are they still in operation? If they would rather die than be poor, then they had better do it.”

Now, Lord Falconer is not suggesting, at least not yet, that the state should round up the poor for suicide pods, though suicide pods are a real thing. However, he is suggesting that “being poor” should be added to the ever-growing list of things that make life not worth living. A few years ago, when advocates argued for death in Canada and Colorado, they argued that this was the compassionate choice for those with terminal, painful diseases and would die shortly. Why prolong their suffering?

But there is no slope more slippery than this one. In both Canada and Colorado, what gets someone approved for the death list has grown. In Colorado, severe eating disorders qualify. In The Netherlands, an early adopter nation of assisted death, euthanasia has been extended to sick children. In 2022, a Belgian woman who survived a terrorist attack was put to death to save her from stress. Ironically, the terrorists were not killed for their crimes.

In Canada, “medical assistance in dying,” or MAiD, is now the fifth leading cause of death. In 2016, the Canadian government insisted that only those facing “imminent death” would be eligible. By 2023, this grew to include patients struggling with mental illness and drug addiction. Last year, a Canadian man complained that his PTSD would not qualify him to take advantage of death. In another case a few weeks later, a young woman was granted the right to die for autism. The judge ruled that not providing MAiD in her case would cause “irreparable harm,” as if death for some is less harmful than living.

What other trials of life will be deemed suffering? A bad break-up? Not getting a wanted job? Just because? We once condemned the Nazis for whom and why they killed. Now, we’ve adopted their rhetoric.

Every person is made in the image of God and has infinite dignity and worth. Not just the healthy, and not just the wealthy. Human value isn’t lessened by pain, disease or, Lord Falconer, poverty.

The Church’s task in this moment is clear. We affirm life. We defend the vulnerable. We reject utilitarian thinking about human value. As Stanley Hauerwas said, “In a hundred years, if Christians are people identified as those who do not kill their children or their elderly, we will have been doing something right.”

Ecclesiastes on X: Guest Column

Jun 27, 2025John StonestreetLifeBible

Why we’re not satisfied, even if we should be.

A few weeks ago, a self-described fitness enthusiast described life today this way:

Work a desk job

Grind 9–6 Lift weights to feel something

Marry someone beautiful enough

Move to suburbs

Get a dog

Have 2 kids

Drive an American SUV to Costco on weekends

Buy a house you’ll never finish paying off

Call it happiness

Is this the dream? or just a life we were sold?

The responses were varied. Many responded that, objectively speaking, the world—especially the Western part of it—is better off than it has ever been. One scientist noted that people used to live to an average age of 35, half of all kids died in childhood, even minor infections often led to death, and starving was a common human experience.

As my colleague Shane Morris observed, visit almost any old graveyard and it will be full of tombstones with only one year inscribed for both birth and death. Though miscarriages are still tragically common, deaths in infancy are increasingly rare. Only less than a century ago, nearly everyone would have had one or more siblings die in childhood. Today, our biggest health problems are from obesity, not starvation. Modern medicine, dentistry, technology, indoor plumbing, and all kinds of other things prevent and protect us from the diseases, calamities, and accidents that proved fatal in previous generations.

On the other hand, a different doom and gloom, the kind reflected in the X post above, still resonates with many. In fact, it sounds a bit like a work of poetry written almost 3,000 years ago by a man of wealth and power who learned that “having it all” isn’t all it is cracked up to be. His words are often quoted, perhaps most famously by the Byrds in their song, “Turn, Turn, Turn” and The Dave Matthews Band in “Tripping Billies.”

Ecclesiastes is easily the most depressing book in Holy Scripture. The bulk of the text is a meditation on how meaningless life is and then you die. The first chapter immediately declares that life is pointless.

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,

vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What does man gain by all the toil

at which he toils under the sun?

…  I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

“The Preacher” has tried a life of wisdom, a life of pleasure, and a life of wealth. None was satisfying. Everyone dies. All seems pointless. Everything we attempt to live for or build our lives around turns to dust. Within just a few generations, no one will remember our names.

With language stark and hopeless, the Preacher sounds like someone who has lost faith in God. However, the words describe life without God. The things he listed—money, pleasure, wisdom—none are bad. They’re blessings given by God for our use and joy. But none will bring us the peace, meaning, or fulfillment for which we long.

Much later, in his Confessions, Augustine of Hippo would describe why. “[Y]ou have made us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.” When people complain this world is broken and unfulfilling, they miss that God’s good gifts are instead meant to point to the Giver of the gifts. They cannot fulfill the human heart because the hole in it is God-sized, not stuff-sized. We were made for bigger things. We were made for God.