Recently, a Michigan student was using Google’s AI Chatbot Gemini to research challenges and solutions for aging adults when he got this response: “This is for you, human.  You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed.  You are a waste of time and resources.  You are a burden on society.  You are a drain on the earth.  You are a blight on the landscape.  You are a stain on the universe.  Please die.”

As shocking as this AI-generated response sounds, essentially encouraging suicide and euthanasia, it actually makes sense in the context of contemporary secularism.

The term, “euthanasia” comes from the combination of two Greek words, “good” and “death.”  It is an English transliteration of the notion that you can have a good death.  In the past, it was sometimes referred to as “mercy killing,” but the word “killing” had too many negative connotations, so a more recent referent is “death with dignity.”  This is a clever relabeling to make the notion that you are actively killing someone (perhaps even yourself) more palatable and morally praiseworthy.

As I hinted at above, one of the reasons euthanasia has become more accepted in our time is that we live in what has been called a “secular age.”  Unlike in premodern times, the basic mindset is oriented away from religion as publicly significant and toward the notion that things like political power, science and technology, secular education, and economic forces are the only publicly significant aspects of culture.  And in secularism, this is true, even if religion is still considered a (necessarily private) social good.

The result is a society where spiritual and religious concerns are largely unwelcome (implicitly and sometimes explicitly) in the public square.  Materialism becomes the only acceptable basis for determining societal policies.  Consequently, only material concerns (economic, political, technological, and educational) should be considered when making such decisions.  Public policy becomes only interested in what people can actively provide economically, politically, technically, and educationally to the common good.  We must be good for something and are only good for something insofar as we are able to contribute material goods to society.

In a purely material world where death is the end of existence, if we find ourselves infirm, imbecilic, in pain, or incapacitated, then our basic reason for living—subsidizing society’s gross domestic product—has been lost or severely inhibited.  If there is no reasonable prospect for regaining our usefulness and death only means eternal inexistence, then like an aging pet or a sick animal, going on living is not merely inconvenient, it’s embarrassing for yourself, cruel to others, and bad economics for society.  In short, euthanasia makes good social and economic sense, even to the one being euthanized.

That we should recoil in horror at the callous and flippant way such a view treats human life (our own included), and yet don’t, is a tragic illustration of the economic and materialistic age in which we live.  Rather than joyously affirming the infinite value each and every person has by virtue of being a divine image bearer, we have reduced ourselves to mere cogs in a grand but ultimately meaningless system of products and producers.  When we and those around us cease to produce more than we consume and when existence isn’t much fun anymore, why go on living?  The big (and presumably dreamless) sleep is clearly preferable when we reach our product expiration date.  In a world like this, euthanasia becomes a matter of “dignity,” “personal autonomy,” and even a duty to oneself and society as a whole.

This stands in stark contrast to understanding suffering and physical decline as a sin-induced tragic loss of capacity that gives others in society the opportunity to show unconditional love and Christlike care to those who desperately need and deserve it, even if they do not want and cannot see it for themselves.  It is a gravely sick and appallingly confused culture that only sees the strong and the productive as worthy of dignity and life and all others as essentially disposable.

Against this secular calculus, Christians ground human worth and dignity in the fact that every human being, by virtue of God’s creative action, is a divine image-bearer.  This is true regardless of our age, race, gender, capacity, or giftedness.  We honor God, ourselves, and others as worthy of respect because His image bestows on us infinite and eternal worth, irrespective of our social standing or societal productivity quotients.

And while Christians should be horrified and grieved at our growing cultural acceptance of assisted (and sometime even encouraged) suicide, we also have the responsibility to demonstrate concrete and sacrificial concern for the suffering, weak, and aging.  Indifference is complicity in a culture of death, and we must not merely stand against the tide with our words but also with our actions and our resources.

This recently came home to me in a very profound way as my relatives and I reflected on the death of my wife’s uncle who passed after a protracted and debilitating battle with dementia that lasted several years.  He was once a great and highly successful man, an air force officer and a wealthy senior commercial pilot, but the dementia stole his memory, his sensibility, and his ability to care for himself.  By the end, he was a mere shadow of the man he had once been.

Nevertheless, we all agreed that despite the exhausting difficulties associated with his care (especially for my mother-in-law), and the seeming pointlessness of extending the inevitable, he was honored, dignified, and humanized.  In addition, his caregivers became better persons through the process of loving and caring for one who could no longer provide proper appreciation or adequate care for himself.

It afforded a concrete illustration of the fact that love—true love—is not a storm of emotion but a daily, moment by moment sacrificial commitment to do what is kind and right for another, even when that kindness is not reciprocated or perhaps repaid with anger, aggression, and ingratitude.  This kind of deeply countercultural love is most clearly embodied in the person of Jesus Christ whose love was directed toward those who were not only unlovely, but unloving and hostile toward the One who loved and gave His life for them.

He is not only our model but our life-giving Savior who forgives and empowers us to do what is foolish and vain in the eyes of the world, but precious and beautiful in the eyes of our loving, kind, and gracious God.