Ending Suffering by Ending the Person Suffering?

The prevention of suffering is Aleksandr Nikonov's main argument in his article, "Finish Them Off, So They Don't Suffer" for a Russian tabloid magazine. Using a most derogative Russian term 'debil' to describe people with developmental disabilities, he makes a case for what he calls 'postnatal abortion', and what everyone else calls infanticide, for children born with them.

From the article:

"Let me introduce myself: I am Adolf Hitler. This is the way people want to portray me," Nikonov says. "But the real bastards are those who tell me, 'Yes, it is good and fair that people are in pain. We'll look on and say people can suffer, as long as our scholarly conception of humaneness is not affected.' To hell with you. People shouldn't suffer. This is my opinion, and you won't shut me up."

Wow. "People shouldn't suffer." What a humanitarian. As if those who would prefer the murder of children remain illegal are in favor of human suffering?

No parent watching the torment caused by Hunter syndrome rack her child with pain is in favor of suffering. No fellow church member of a child born with NKH whose heart breaks with her parents' at hearing the news that the little girl is having multiple daily seizures is in favor of suffering. And no friend of a man with Down syndrome who hears him being called 'retard' within ear shot at the mall or reads that a Russian journalist chooses the most offensive word possible to describe those whom he deems suffering, causing hurt and suffering, while decrying they shouldn't suffer is in favor of suffering.

We all want to end suffering. That's why scientists work on cures for diseases. That's why people become doctors and nurses. That's why ABC banks on the tv series Extreme Home Makeover. No human with any kind of sympathy or empathy can bear to watch another suffer. We have an instinct about us, we humans, to react to ease another's suffering and to end it when we can. But to end the person suffering?

Wouldn't, Mr. Nikonov, instead of jumping on the killing bandwagon, your time be better spent advocating for disability rights, better health care for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, and better support systems for those with disabilities and their caregivers, as these things are of very poor quality in your country? Surely the suffering you deem of those with developmental disabilities would be greatly reduced. (Suffering both real and imagined, I might add, as many people with developmental disabilities do not necessarily see themselves as suffering anymore than anyone else.)

But, no, of course it wouldn't end. Human suffering will have no complete end until Christ returns, and oh, how we groan inwardly waiting for the redemption of our bodies waiting for that time. (Romans 8:23)

And, my how we suffer. We all suffer. People with and without disabilities suffer.

Oh, but what is our answer? Who shall free us from a lifetime of pain, from the entire human history of struggle, strife, and sorrow?

My friend, the answer is always Christ and His cross. It was there that this holy God-man, this One of whom no one suffered more, bore our sorrows and carried our griefs, this man, this God, took upon Himself our sin, absorbing the wrath of God that was upon us, this Jesus, this son of God who agonized in the garden over His Father's will to crush Him, suffered and died an atoning death for our sin.

We look at the Cross of Christ and we understand love: "This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and gave his son as atoning sacrifice for our sin." (1 John 4:10) We look to the Cross and we find our salvation, our forgiveness, our reconciliation with our Creator. We look to His suffering and know that by His stripes we are healed. The hope we have in Christ and His empty tomb give us more hope than we can ever comprehend.

In Christ we have love. In His death we have forgiveness of sin. In His resurrection, we have the promise of our resurrection from pain, suffering, and death into life and freedom from sin and struggle.

Finishing 1 John 4:10, 1 John 4:11 says, "Beloved if God so loved us, we ought to love one another." 1 John 4:19 says, "We love because he [God] first loved us."

We are not to do harm to those suffering. But because God loved us, because Christ became poor so that we could become rich, because Christ humbled Himself and made Himself a servant, because we who are His are new creations enabled by the Holy Spirit to do so, we are to care for those suffering! To grieve with those grieving and to rejoice with those rejoicing. To clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, visit the sick, and to visit those in jail.

So, we respect human life. Nay, we revere it, for humans reflect the very image of our Creator. Because we revere human life, we strive to end the suffering of it we are able to end, to ease what we can ease. And we give the world our fellow human beings, our fellow sufferers, the hope of the Gospel- the forgiveness of sins in Jesus' name and the promise of a new life and an end to suffering at God's appointed time.

Meanwhile, "we know that for those who love God, all things work for good who have been called according to his purposes. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son, that he might be the firstborn of many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called he also justified; those he justified he also glorified." (Romans 8:28-30) And we "consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." (Romans 8:18)