At the moment…

both the Queensland and Tasmanian parliaments are considering voluntary assisted dying bills.

And, of course…

sadly…

church leaders…

especially those from the Catholic and Anglican churches…

are up in arms;

notwithstanding the fact that recent polling shows…

in Queensland…

that more than two-thirds of all Catholics… 

and three-quarters of all Anglicans support such laws.

But, according to the Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane… 

such laws undermine “the foundational values of society”.

Really?

What values would those be?

Compassion?

Self-determination?

According to the Anglican Dean of Hobart, “we remain opposed to any form of assisted suicide”…

and he tried to stoke fears by claiming that it would lead to more “elder abuse”––

even though the draft legislation has very stringent safeguards…

and that has not happened anywhere else such laws have been enacted.

But it’s a common tactic:

to rely upon a ‘slippery slope’ argument––

or to waffle vaguely about ‘values’ or ‘the sanctity of life’ without defining what they mean by that––

because they can’t articulate the real reason for their opposition… 

without people laughing at them or criticising them.

And, in fact, I think we see a clue to that real reason here.

It’s the attempt to link voluntary assisted dying to suicide––

even though they are patently different.

And, although the days of people who committed suicide being denied a funeral service––

or a burial in a church graveyard––

are gone…

the warped theology behind it hasn’t.

 

Of course, anyone committing suicide is a tragedy––

especially for those left behind.

But the ‘traditional’ Christian notion that it’s a reprehensible sin…

is found nowhere in the Bible.

Rather, it owes its origin to Augustine in the fifth century.

Drawing upon Plato’s thought…

he argued that suicide usurped a privilege that only belonged to God… 

because only God could determine the time for an individual to die.

In other words, the idea that suicide is a sin is based on a primitive notion of God––

a notion of a sovereign God…

who micromanages the whole of creation… 

and who directly interferes and intervenes in human affairs.

The God we are left with is ultimately responsible for everything that befalls us––

a cosmic control-freak…

more concerned with God’s power and authority;

the ultimate ideologue:

fickle and capricious…

legalistic and authoritarian…

harsh and uncaring.

And yet… 

few people who tacitly hold such a view would be comfortable articulating it as such…

and know that they need to maintain the façade that God does care…

and that God is, ultimately, loving…

so, they resort to language like “paradoxical” to describe God––

which is no more than a mask for saying that… 

somehow… 

their images of God are, in fact, contradictory.

 

And don’t we see that sense of contradiction played out all the time?

We’re told that we––

like God––

should “love the sinner but hate the sin”…

which really amounts to an excuse for hatred and oppression.

We have spoken of God as loving––

indeed, as love-personified––

but then we have threatened people with eternal damnation if they don’t “believe in Jesus”…

or “accept him as their personal saviour”.

Love and hate…

grace and damnation––

these are not paradoxical ideas…

nor are they paradoxical qualities of God.

They are inherent contradictions.

God cannot be both.

And yet, so much of our theology and inherited tradition…

wants us to do just that––

to hold together irreconcilable contradictions in our understanding of God…

and in our understanding of God’s relationship with us.

And, frankly, we end up engaging in abstract theological gymnastics…

as we try to conflate and integrate the conflicting scriptural images…

the images that we have inherited from our tradition…

and what we, in our guts, know must be true.

 

And I think we see some of that, here, in this morning’s reading from the letter to the Romans.

Paul is struggling with his understanding of God.

He begins with the premise––

inherited from his Hebrew tradition and scriptures—

of God’s grace towards Israel…

in choosing them to be God’s people and entering into covenant with them.

And yet, that tradition doesn’t mesh with his experience…

nor, indeed, with Israel’s history.

Israel has–– 

from the very beginning and right through to Paul’s own time––

continually rebelled and rejected God and God’s ways.

But Paul won’t say that God has rejected Israel. 

If God isn’t faithful to God’s promises––

if God cannot be trusted in that––

then God cannot be trusted at all.

God’s faithfulness is…

for Paul…

an unquestionable assumption.

And, I think, rightly so.

A God who is not consistent––

who is not faithful and who cannot be trusted––

is no God at all.

And yet, Paul is struggling to make sense of that in terms of another theological assumption:

namely, the sovereignty of God––

the idea that God is, ultimately, in control of the world;

along with the ancient worldview that lacked a sense of ‘impersonal causality’.

For Paul, then, if Israel has rejected God…

then, that must ultimately be God’s doing.

And then…

through somewhat strained logic…

he suggests that it could only be as a means to make God’s love and grace––

previously restricted to Israel alone––

available to non-Israelites as well.

And yet, unable to give up on the people of Israel––

because God had graciously chosen them and entered into Covenant with them––

the inclusion of the Gentiles could only be as a means to make the Israelites jealous…

and to bring them back to God.

It’s a twisted logic––

one that makes God out to be manipulative…

and willing to appeal to what ought to be base emotions.

There’s nothing noble about it at all!

But, in a sense, that’s what Paul is forced to do…

if he wants to hold together images of God that he has inherited––

images of God that he has always been taught and believed to have been true;

along with what he now knows–– 

in his heart of hearts––

to be of the very essence of God’s nature:

that God is merciful to all.

And, despite his fumblingly illogical logic, Paul’s bottom line––

Paul’s most fundamental understanding of God–– 

is that God is merciful;

that God is compassionate…

that God cares and loves…

and God’s grace is universal and God’s acceptance is impartial.

Given more time to wrestle with the inherent contradictions…

and to realise that his final image deconstructs so many of his prior assumptions…

I would like to think that Paul might have reached a more consistent image of God––

one that fully informed the way that he responded to those in his care.

He was, of course, constrained by his culture and his worldview…

in a way…

hopefully…

that we, some two thousand years later, are not.

 

Isn’t it time, then, that we––

in the Church––

threw off all of these primitive, ignoble images of God…

which still dictate what we assume… 

and what we say… 

and which still imprison many in lives of pain, suffering, and mental anguish?

Isn’t it time that the Church-universal reassessed so many of its positions…

surrounding gender and sexuality…

voluntary assisted dying…

abortion…

and its interactions with those of other faiths––

not from the perspective of a sovereign God…

but of a God who loves and cares for all…

period?