Life

Starting to wrestle with the end of life

As with the prophet Elijah's desperate 'prayer for death', the dark aspects of life illuminate the destiny to which human beings are called, says Fr Martin Henry

Fr Martin Henry
Fr Martin Henry Fr Martin Henry

ONE of today's most controversial subjects is the issue of the end of life, more traditionally known as 'death'.

The matter becomes controversial when human intervention is considered a legitimate means of inducing or hastening a person's final breath.

Whether the preference for the expression 'end of life' over 'death' signifies an acceptance of human life as eventually coming to an absolute finale, or whether it still leaves open the possibility that earthly life is 'only' an important stage in human destiny, is a difficult question to answer.

What has customarily been taken for granted, in the Western world at any rate, has been the belief that life is an indisputable good, and should not be deliberately terminated; 'Thou shalt not kill', as one of the Ten Commandments has it.

Is it permissible, however, to wish that it be terminated? This question might occur to someone reading the story about the prophet Elijah recounted in the First Book of Kings (19: 4–8).

For the story in question shows one of the great figures of the Old Testament actually praying for death. The passage reads: "He prayed for death, saying: 'This is enough, O Lord! Take my life.'"

On his way to the mountain of God, Mount Horeb, Elijah found the task he was entrusted with apparently too much for him, and he wanted to throw in the towel.

What is interesting about this scene is that it contains no element of disapproval of Elijah's attitude. Elijah isn't criticised for his longing for death.

Far from being criticised, the story relates that God sends Elijah a messenger - an angel - to encourage and strengthen him for the rest of his journey.

The angel doesn't criticise or scold or chide him either for wanting to give up. He just encourages him not to give up.

This incident is perhaps somewhat shocking when closely examined. For doesn't our religion, as already intimated, teach that life is God's gift and that we shouldn't want deliberately to end it?

Admittedly, Elijah doesn't contemplate ending his life deliberately, but he does pray for death all the same. How is this to be understood? And why does the biblical story not even contain a hint of criticism of Elijah's attitude?

At least part of the answer to this question, must presumably lie in the biblical writer's appreciation of the potentially crushing nature of the pressures many people experience in life. These pressures are sometimes so overwhelming that they make even death itself seem a preferable option to the continuation of life.

But why is the Bible interested in such dark moments of human experience, in those moments when the pain or the seeming pointlessness or absurdity of life appears to be so undeniable and so all-pervasive?

Are such experiences not the very opposite, the very antithesis, of religion? Well, the Bible's answer appears to be that they're not.

On the contrary: such experiences are seen by the Bible as in fact deeply religious experiences, that can, albeit painfully, convey a more genuine appreciation of what religion really is, of what faith really is. Otherwise these kinds of stories surely wouldn't be in the Bible, to begin with.

For the Bible, in other words, the dark aspects of life can paradoxically illuminate the destiny to which human beings are called, and for which they were created. They can do so by a kind of aversion therapy.

For, people wouldn't feel so intensely, so certainly, so acutely, and so definitively that the dark side of life is something they want to shake off, not something they wish to be saddled with or stuck with forever, if what they are called to, what they were created for, what they were destined for, didn't lie in fact beyond all the negative experiences of life.

Hence, then, Elijah's prayer to be delivered from his apparently hopeless and intolerable predicament, even at the price of death, is a strong sign that he believed the anguish he was experiencing couldn't be the final destiny for which he had appeared on earth. There must be something else, something better, something beyond pain and anguish and negativity.

The other side, of course, of the Bible's great message of hope is that human beings don't have the resources within this life to reach their goal by their own efforts.

Only God can bring them to their final goal, for the very simple reason that humanity's final goal, we believe, is God.

So, as far as Christianity at least is concerned, human beings are not required to be God, or to play God, or to replace God, but what they are asked to do, what Christianity invites and encourages us to do, is - like Elijah - to keep going, and not to give up, even in difficult times, especially in difficult times, in the hope of one day finally reaching the Mountain of God, and sharing in God's glory for ever.

:: Martin Henry, former lecturer in theology at St Patrick's College, Maynooth, is a priest of the diocese of Down and Connor