Yesterday, the BBC carried a story
regarding the Archbishop of Canterbury’s opposition to assisted dying. Now, personally I happen to agree with the
Right Reverend Welby’s stance, although I freely admit that it is a grey area,
and it’s hard to know which is more compassionate, and whether anyone can or
should be asked to suffer, perhaps needlessly.
That’s not a discussion I want to get into now.
In their ineffable wisdom, the
BBC opened this story up to comments, and as with any story even vaguely
pertaining to religion, the comments swiftly filled up with mockery, vitriol
and abuse. One of the frequently
repeated comments boils down (when various insults have been removed) to “Why
does this person think he has the right to try and force his beliefs on us?”
At some point, I’ll remember
to get round to writing out my view on ‘rights’, but that day is not today. I do not think that Welby has the right to
try and share his beliefs with others; I think he has a duty to.
(Most) Christians believe that
life is sacrosanct, and that this is one of those objective pillars of faith on
which the church stands. As I said, I
don’t want to get into the assisted suicide debate here, but the fact remains
that Christianity presents the sanctity of life as a fundamental truth. Now, we might be wrong about that, but that’s
what we believe, and if we believe it to be an objective and absolute truth,
how can we possibly refrain from trying to share that truth, and prevent people
from going against it?
Now, obviously I am not in
favour of some sort of theocratic oppression, in which people are forced to
obey the beliefs of a vocal minority. I
don’t believe that anyone should have someone else’s beliefs forced on them. However, we absolutely have a duty to share
them, and to try and persuade others, especially in an instance like this where
lives may be taken, and even doing it forcefully (but never forcibly). I occasionally indulge in a fond day-dream of
a utopia in which people with widely differing, even diametrically opposing views
can air and discuss their opinions without censure or censorship, but in a respectful
(even if forceful and challenging) fashion, and listen to the views of others
in a calm and equally respectful way.
Alas, this seems unlikely to ever occur.
I’ve posted before about the
strange doublethink that allows us to rail against forcing our morality on
others, and then passing law after law which does exactly this. We state as absolute truths that theft,
fraud, murder, assault and rape are wrong, and feel comfortable forcing these
beliefs on others through punishment for failure to comply. We understand the moral imperative that
causes us to make these rules and laws, to constrain people from doing what we
know to be wrong. However, some people
seem to fail to understand that exactly the same moral imperative drives people
to protest outside abortion clinics, and for faith leaders to speak out
publically against assisted suicide. The
only difference is majority opinion, and should morality really be a
democracy? A debate can be had here, but
almost everyone will agree that certain things are fundamentally wrong, while
others are fundamentally right. It is
around the edges that we are permitted to quibble.
If anyone, atheist, agnostic
or believer, perceives an injustice, then surely it is their moral duty to
speak out against it? Others don’t
necessarily have to agree with them or even listen to them, but to suggest that
they ought not to speak at all is utterly wrong. After all, silence and inaction are consent
and, “all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”.
No comments:
Post a Comment