Boundaries of Choice

It is generally assumed we are free to choose and this freedom is an inviolable 'human right'.

The right to choose is at the heart of the case for 'assisted dying', 'gender reassignment' and 'same-sex marriage'. The 'right to choose' is the main argument used to defend the Bill for 'assisted dying' currently before Parliament: the phrase 'The Bill is about choice' was repeatedly used and supported during the debate in Parliament on 16 May 2025.

The Christian's perspective in relation to choice was settled for all time in the early chapters of Genesis. God's direct command to Adam removed his right and freedom to choose on the matter God specified. God's 'you shall not' (Genesis 2.17) excluded Adam's right to choose so far as that particular matter was concerned, eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That subsequently the couple chose to eat was an act of defiance and 'brought death into the world and all our woes'.

The principle established at the dawn of human history remains valid for all time: God sets boundaries to choice: there are things God denies to us the right to choose.

Among the choices God denies are those that breed deep confusion and anxiety: 'assisted dying', 'gender reassignment' and 'same-sex marriage'. These are choices the Word of God in Scripture places outside the boundary of choice, denies to us the right to choose, a principle universally accepted by the entire Christian Church for 2,000 years – until now. 

Until now - but now the boundaries are breached by the force of the spirit of the world's rebellion; the virus of a general delinquency that now also infects the professing church.

For example, 'assisted dying'. The same defiance that ignored the boundary set by God's decretive will in Eden, is the defiance that ignores the Lord's sole sovereign right over death and the grave: I am the first and the last and the Living one; I was dead, and see, I am alive for evermore and have the keys of death and the grave. (Revelation 1.18); The Lord is the giver of death and life: sending men down to the underworld and lifting them up (1 Samuel 2:6); See now, I myself am he; there is no other god but me: giver of death and life ... and no one has power to make you free from my hand (Deuteronomy 32:39).

These absolute statements remind us that the most vital and significant choice, a choice that affects us more than any other choice, is a choice over which we have absolutely no say whatsoever: the when, where, who, and what I am - our birth: 'the Lord is the giver of death and life...'.   

At the heart of the question of 'assisted dying' is a profound anomaly. A Christian believer has the certain promise of eternal life, that is to say, an open access to glory, to be with Christ, which is far better' (Philippians 1.23). But the believer is asked to entrust the time and manner of their death to their Heavenly Father's care. The prospect for the unbeliever is different. They have been warned of certain condemnation, a condemnation that involves eternal pain and regret: in the words of the Lord Jesus: I will forewarn you who you shall fear: Fear him, which after he has killed has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, Fear him (Luke 12.5); 'where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched' (Matthew 9.48). It is a 'fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God' (Hebrews 10.31) – the more terrible to arrive unbidden. The peaceful appearance of the dead body belies the torment of the eternal soul. It is no kindness to assist a person's progress into that plight. It is kindness that the divine will put that choice on the far side of the boundary of human choices: for where there is life there is hope: hope of the acceptance of the grace of eternal life offered freely in Christ. 

Virginia Woolf understood well the essence of the human problem that desires to take the choice of death out of the hand and will of God into our own determination: the suffering of felt alienation: 'Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the center which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.' (from Mrs. Dalloway). Sadly, tragically what Virginia Woolf did not understand was the remedy: Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11.28) 

Tracey Emin speaks as the bulldozer of all boundaries, and so speaks as the voice of the alienated spirit of the present - where chaos is culture and defiance is affirmation of isolation: 'When people say 'No' to you don't listen to them. You just go ahead and do what you want to do'.