Is man intervening or helping along God ...?

Question

... in the act of assisted suicide?

Answer 1

Man is intervening. God will take us whenever He is ready. It is not up to us to make God's decisions for Him.

Answer 2

Are you asking whether assisted suicide fits into God's plan, or whether Man is helping God kill itself?

To the first question, I think the question depends on your religious perspective. If you have Calvinist leanings, then it absolutely fits into God's plan, along with everything else he predestined to happen. If you tend to believe in a devil or other force that has a possibility of messing up God's plans, then the question becomes, Would the man have been useful to God's plan. Most religious people would agree that that question can't be answered, because God's plan is unknowable. It is possible that God was causing that man to suffer for rehabilitation, in which case you would be interfering with his plans, but it's also possible God was causing him to suffer out of retribution, or that the Devil was causing him to suffer, in which case you would be aiding God. This turns the question into a policy question, over what should be done given that you do not know what God's motivations are. I wouldn't be surprised if any answers you get are in line with people's political views on Abortion and the Death penalty at that point.

What can be said, though, is that in that case, since God's plan is unknowable, the decision to assist in suicide is a personal one; no one can tell you whether it is right or wrong, because no one knows whether it is right or wrong.

As to the second question, a common theme in mythology and religion comes from the idea of Gods dying through their own intervention with man; Wagner's Ring cycle is a great example of this. Usually when this happens, either in a mythology or a religion, it's because the God or Gods aren't happy with their limitations (especially pseudo-limitations caused by not having any limitations, such as not being able to die), and eventually the desire pushes them to set things in motion to remove those limitations and extend their power, causing the Gods to die.

In mythology, this kind of story usually has a cautionary theme about the responsible use of power and people's need to curb their desires. So, if this were a reality, I would suspect that any irresponsible use of power or uncurbed desire could be viewed as an act of assisted Deicide.

Answer 3

Definitly intervening with God. God will understand if you commit suicide, but he will never completely accept it because you are giving into the devil when you want to take this easy way out. God gave you a destiny, but you have free will to do what you want before your time comes, that does include suicide. You or no one is ment to die like that. Life isn't suppose to be a walk in the park all the time. Somtimes it gets hard, but theres always another way out and i'm not talking about suicide. If you are depressed then start praying a lot for assitance. I was depressed and i didn't know what to do with my life. I started asking God for help and i told him exzactly what i need. I needed new friends and new job. He gave me everything that i asked for in a matter of time. A week afterwards i went to a local bar and i met this girl named Stacey. We emidielty became friends and she even got me a job at the company she worked at. Time heals a lot. You must be patient. Even if God wanted to help you after you commited suicide he couldn't because your life would already be in the devils hands. Don't leave your family to suffer in the pain of your death eaither. Can you imagine your daughter dieing.. if you had one?

Answer 4

If you take God out of the question, I believe that assisted suicide is humane as it ends a person's suffering. Even Dr. Kevorkian made sure that each "patient" went through rigorous psychological and medical screening before they were given the okay to terminate their own lives.
Once you put God into the equation, you introduce the notion that suicide in any form prevents you from going to heaven. Thus the crux of the assisted suicide debate.

Answer 5

It's always up to God to decide the hour of our death. Suicide in any form is a crime against Him.
I do believe that if a person is taken off of life support via a living will for instance and allowed to die a natural death, he's not actually committing suicide. I don't believe Man is helping God along unless he is merely allowing the person to die naturally. Actions performed by people like Jack Kevorkian would be interfering with God's plan for the person.

Answer 6

Not any more than we are intervening with God in treating cancer, developing angioplasty, or giving drugs to the mentally ill. God has (for better or worse) given us the tools to be co-equal actors with him in the world we live in. No other creature in his universe has been granted this power (so far as we know yet...)

THAT should scare the living crap out of us. But it has been our burden since the Fall. Can we learn to use that power wisely or foolishly?

Answer 7

When it comes to dying, I'm not ready but if I contacted a disease and no cure??? I don't know if I think a person is correct in helping another. Guilt is something left to God. To kill myself at this is wrong but only the future can tell. Only you can answer if the pain you feel is more than you can stand.

Answer 8

Soldiers have a long tradition of helping their mortally wounded comrades to suicide. It is a mercy that has nothing to do with god.

Answer 9

By the media standards, hurting the case for it, but you know what, we could have kept my grandfather on the hospital bed for days longer, just so that we could convince him to come to Christ, but he never did, so he died in his own home, with my daughter there with him, the only one.

I really pray that my daughter knew the right things to say to him, (she is graduating this year from high school.) But he resisted us, so I am just hoping I will see him again, someday.

He never wanted any help killing himself, he always wanted me to take him to Barona or Vegas to gamble.....lol. I sometimes did, but I wish he would have accepted God. I never pushed it on him, but suggested it, but he told me that he didn't want to talk anything like that ever again.

I can only do so much, so honoring his wishes was the best. He lived for 6 years, waiting to die, but never accepted God as a way to heaven. He just wanted to see my grandmother again, and that was all he talked about.

I so hope they are together, because if not, Armeggedon is going to come quicker than thought......lol!

Answer 10

The truth is that there is no such thing as a "right to die." A right is a moral claim, and we have no claim on death—death has a claim on us. Some people see the "right to die" as a parallel to the right to life, but this is based on faulty reasoning. The right to life is based on life being a gift we can neither destroy nor discard, whereas the "right to die" is based on the idea that life is a thing we possess and may discard when it no longer meets our satisfaction.

The culture of death, which chants, "My body, my life, my choice" also chants—by the same logic—"My body, my death, my choice." Just as pro-abortion groups use the word choice in their names, pro-euthanasia groups call themselves by names such as "Choice in Dying." In both cases, death is being sold as a product, and its salespersons have to make it look better than the alternative. Pro-abortion groups make childbearing seem more dangerous and burdensome than abortion. And recently, in the case of the murder of Terri Schiavo, her estranged husband’s attorney painted her death as peaceful, dignified, and beautiful. A priest who was there for hours in her room, said that her death was as far from beautiful as he'd have ever seen. (Read more at: http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0510fea1.asp )