As you will probably have guessed I was deeply disappointed to learn that a majority of MPs voted to progress the bill to legalise assisted suicide. As I’ve said elsewhere, I believe that if passed it will normalise suicide as a positive option and in so doing place the most vulnerable at risk especially if doctors are allowed to raise it as an option. Given the constraints and pressures on the health service and the palliative care sector I find the prospect troubling.

I say ‘disappointed’ but I didn’t find the vote surprising because it appears to chime with the views of the general public. Polls seem to have regularly shown a majority in favour of assisted dying. A recent opinion poll for one national paper for example found that almost two-thirds support the proposal to make it legal while a fifth are opposed.

That doesn’t surprise me either for the simple reason that British culture is no longer moulded by the Christian faith. The haemorrhage we have witnessed in church attendance has been accompanied by a similar loss of faith and this has inevitably resulted in radical changes in the way people think about ‘life, the universe and everything’

Take the emphasis on the importance of personal autonomy for example. Most people seem to believe that we have the right to choose when and how we should die rather than view life as a gift of God and that suicide is not an option.

There are other implications too. Take our understanding of the ‘after life’ for example. I guess most people who are committed to the principle of assisted suicide would either assume that there is no ‘life after death’ or we all ‘go to a better place’. These may or may not be comforting thoughts, but they do not reflect traditional Christian teaching.

Jesus and his apostles certainly said that his followers could look forward to all God had prepared for them after death. For example, Jesus comforted one of the criminals who was being crucified alongside Him with these wonderful words “I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise.” Paul the apostle made the same point when he told some of his friends ‘For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain’.

But the New Testament also suggests that there is a ‘dark side to hope’ and this is reflected in the use of a very suggestive Greek word. We only have to look at one of the best-known verses in the Bible to appreciate that. Talking to a very significant religious leader named Nicodemus Jesus said, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life’. ‘Perish’ is a troubling word because it stresses the serious consequences of being separated from God and explains why Jesus was convinced that He should die for peoples’ sins. Paul uses the same Greek expression when he wrote to his friends in Philippi and said that for some ‘their destiny is ‘destruction’,

Now we are free to reject all of this of course. That is our God-given right. But as I see it our current understanding of life – or no life – after death is linked to our abandonment of traditional Christian teaching.