The Northern Territory is now the only jurisdiction in Australian not to have Voluntary Assisted Dying legislation—

which is ironic, given that it was the first in the world to pass such legislation back in nineteen-ninety-five…

before it was overturned by the federal government two years later.

With those federal restrictions now quashed…

a report recommending the implementation of such a law was handed down earlier this year…

and Labor’s Chief Minister, Eva Lawler made a commitment to tabling a bill if re-elected.

But Territory Labor were trounced at the recent election.

The incoming Country Liberal Party have made no commitment to supporting such a bill.

Indeed, according to the Australian Christian Lobby… 

the Party said that they would not support such legislation two years ago.

But, in a surprising move, the Catholic Bishop of Darwin, Charles Gauci, said that…

while the Church had concerns about such a law…

and wanted to make sure there were “provisions to protect conscientious objectors”…

he vowed that they would not be running a scare campaign prior to the election.

“In the end, people have to make up their own minds”, he said.

 

That…

I have to say…

is a refreshing change.

After all… 

the churches have been almost universally strident in their opposition to Voluntary Assisted Dying.

Some suggest that it’s wrong because “all human life is sacred”—

which, logically-speaking, is a non sequitur.

Some suggest that it’s wrong because life is a “gift from God”—

which is also a non sequitur.

But, perhaps the clearest opposition statement has comes from the Australian Lutheran Church…

which claims to reject “euthanasia in all its forms, because such killing is contrary to the word and law of God”.

Unfortunately, when we turn to the Bible…

nowhere do we find a condemnation of or a prohibition on the taking of one’s own life.

In fact, there are at least six characters in Biblical stories who take their own life… 

and yet none of them are criticised…

and…

in the case of King Saul… 

quite the opposite.

In seeking to establish Biblical support, then, opponents usually turn to the Ten Commandments…

and to the sixth prohibition— 

often rendered into English as “You shall not kill”.

Unfortunately, the verb in the original Hebrew usually means to kill someone out of hatred, malice, or anger.

So, the commandment would be better translated as “You shall not commit murder or manslaughter”.

As such, it is not relevant for a discussion of voluntary assisted dying.

Beyond that, opponents rely on so-called Biblical notions of God’s sovereignty over creation—

so that, to kill oneself is to usurp a privilege that only belongs to God…

because God alone chooses the hour of our death.

Needless to say… 

such a conception of God made sense in more primitive times—

in the world of the Bible…

a world that lacked a sense of impersonal causality.

But given all that we know now about the way that the world works…

it’s not a conception of God that we can cling to in any rational way.

It simply paints God as cruel, fickle, and capricious.

 

But, to a very large extent…

the religious arguments against voluntary assisted dying are a good example…

of the way that the Bible has been used and misused through the ages.

On so many significant issues the church has gone to the Bible…

only to pluck out some isolated verses, which— 

on a superficial, surface reading—

seem to support what they want it to say…

and then they have used it to declare, “But the Bible says…”.

Throughout history, that’s been the basis of so much of the church’s ethical thinking and pontificating.

Without considering the cultural, historical, and literary context of the Bible…

the church has plucked out bits and used them to condemn certain practices—

or even declare them illegal—

and to legitimise ones that are abhorrent.

We saw it in the church’s attitude to people who committed suicide—

which denied them a funeral and excluded them from being buried in church grounds.

It happened with slavery.

It happened with divorce.

It happened with pre-marital sex.

It happened with inter-racial marriage.

It happened with colonialism.

And we continue to see it in the horrific persecution of— 

and discrimination against— 

the LGBTQI+ community.

Far too often, the construction of Christian ethics has involved a cherry-picking of verses from the Bible…

ignoring their cultural, historical, and literary context…

and imposing our own socially, culturally, and theologically constructed biases.

 

The irony, of course… 

is that the church’s approach… 

is exactly the sort of thing that Jesus is critiquing in this morning’s reading from Mark’s Gospel.

In this story, the Pharisees criticise Jesus’ followers—

and, by implication, Jesus—

because they don’t abide by their definition of purity…

based upon their interpretation of the Bible.

In response, the author of Mark’s Gospel has Jesus cite Isaiah at them:

“This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines”.

We can’t simply take a piece of scripture…

strip it of cultural, historical, and literary context…

proclaim that we’re following the “plain meaning”…

and turn it into some sort of universal moral precept;

any more than we can take a piece of scripture…

impose our own biases and prejudices onto it…

and claim some universal moral precept.

In this quote from Isaiah…

and in the redefinition of their society’s notion of purity—

that purity is not something external but internal…

that evil comes not from without but from within—

we begin to encounter a very different approach to ethical thinking.

In effect, what this story suggests is that morality is not something external…

and it can never be about following a set of rules—

certainly not a set of anachronistic…

restrictive…

biased…

and politically motivated rules.

As the situational ethicists remind us…

morality is, in the end, something internal.

It’s something that flows from the will and from the heart.

Morality, at its core, is about love.

Rather than obeying some set of rules—

which will, inevitably…

reflect particular historical, cultural, religious or political biases… 

in varying degrees…

and which can actually result in negative or harmful consequences—

acting morally is about seeking to do what is most loving.

That forces us—

at all times and in all situations—

to discern loving ways and means, and loving consequences.

The end can never justify the means…

but, as Martin Luther King jr reminds us, the reverse is just as true:

“It is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends”.

Instead, as this reading suggests…

what is good or evil—

what is moral or immoral—

is something internal not external.

It’s not about advocating, defending, or enforcing rules or precepts.

It’s more basic, more fundamental.

It’s about how we reflect the nature of God in all that we do and say.

It’s about how we love…

and how we make love known.

In the end, morality is as simple, and as difficult, as that.