LIFE IS GODS GIFT

 

 

When a Nation Claims the Right to End Life, It’s Making a Claim About God

An op-ed from a Christian worldview

Canada likes to see itself as compassionate. We tell ourselves we are “progressive,” “humane,” and “kind.” We use soft language when the subject is hard: choice, dignity, health care, personal autonomy.

But there comes a point where a society’s moral vocabulary becomes a fog machine—words that soothe the conscience while hiding what’s actually happening.

Abortion and euthanasia (now wrapped in medical language and legal procedure) are not just “policy questions.” They are authority questions.

Because the real issue is not who suffers or whose circumstances are difficult. The issue is: Who owns human life?

From a biblical Christian perspective, that answer is simple and non-negotiable: God Almighty is the author and giver of life. Human beings are not owners. We are not creators. We are not gods. We are stewards—accountable to the One who made us.

That belief used to be part of the moral soil of this country, whether people could quote chapter and verse or not. It shaped laws, customs, and a general assumption that life has value because it is life—not because it meets a standard of convenience, capability, or consent.

But modern Canada increasingly treats life as conditional.

If the unborn child is unwanted, life may be ended.

If the sick person is suffering, life may be ended.

If the disabled person feels burdensome, life may be ended.

If the elderly person is isolated and despairing, life may be ended.

Notice what ties these together: not justice, not mercy, not love—but power. The power of the strong to decide for the weak; the power of the system to “manage” human problems by removing the human.

This is the great moral inversion of our age: we call it compassion when the solution is death.

Real compassion does not eliminate people. It carries them.

Real dignity is not granted by the state, a doctor, a judge, or a committee. Dignity is inherent—bestowed by God—because every human being bears His image. The unborn bear it. The disabled bear it. The mentally ill bear it. The poor bear it. The dying bear it.

A culture that normalizes killing at the beginning and at the end is not simply “freeing” people. It is teaching them a terrifying lesson: your life is only worth living if it is comfortable, wanted, and useful.

And what happens to a society when that lesson sinks in?

Families fracture under fear and confusion. The vulnerable become anxious about being a burden. The depressed hear a whisper dressed up as mercy: maybe you should go. The definition of “unbearable suffering” quietly expands. The safeguards become paperwork. And the conscience, once numbed, demands the next redefinition.

This is not progress. It is a slow march away from God—and away from the idea that life is sacred.

You don’t have to be a theologian to see the spiritual reality: when a nation claims the right to decide who may live and who may die, it has placed itself on a throne that does not belong to it.

Canada can keep calling this “choice” and “dignity.” But the spiritual truth remains: a society that authorizes the taking of innocent life is rejecting the Creator’s authority over life itself.

If we want to be truly compassionate, the answer is not more death with better branding. The answer is better care, stronger families, deeper community, honest mental-health support, and palliative care that treats people as precious—right to guaranteed natural death.

Life is not ours to end. It is God’s gift to protect.

And any nation that forgets that will eventually discover what always follows when humans play God: not freedom, but darkness.