My Life is not Mine to have Absolute Rights Over

With a house of commons debate and vote scheduled, 'Assisted Dying' is very much a current topic of news and discussion. A key theme that comes through the arguments in favour of changing the law (i.e. to allow circumstances for assisted dying) is an individual's 'Right to Choose'. Above all the arguments in favour or against, this assertion of 'Right to Choose' is very important for us to understand from a mission perspective.

The problem with this 'Right', alongside the many other 'Rights' (or 'Human Rights') that we assert or talk about in contemporary society, is the implicit assumption that we should have them without any consideration of why we should have them. Where do these rights actually come from? What is their basis?

That is not to say that we humans don't or should not have any rights ... but from a Christian perspective we need to think more deeply of their basis. The right to change religion, for example, can be traced (with a Christian perspective) to God giving people free-will.

Some rights should come about because 'world society' (i.e. nations agreeing collectively) agrees that each individual should be accorded that right. In other words some rights are humans conferring them on each other ... agreeing that life (& society) is better for all if we all try and respect such rights. The rights of refugees are an example of this.

The problem with the 'Right to Choose' concerning one's death, is that from a Christian perspective (and likely various other faith perspectives) the life of each individual is a gift of God, along with a sense that the 'on-earth' beginning point is up to God, and the corresponding end-point is also up to God. If a life 'is taken' by actions of others, an accounting of their actions is required of them (e.g. see Genesis 4 Cain & Abel). This means that in a Christian understanding, my life is not mine to have absolute rights over, but is instead given to me by God, with the timing of that gift best left to God's hands.

The push to assert a 'Right to Choose' is part of the relentless cultural trend of individualism: each individual is a person with rights of their own without any external claims. In that sense it is the natural outworking of secularism: 'I feel ... therefore I am', without need for reference to God. Put another way, it is another resonance with the assertion made in Genesis 3: 'I can grab this on my own - I don't need God'.

Christians in mission will want to counter this cultural trend, but that needs to be done compassionately. It is no use saying "You do not have such a right - tough luck"! Person by person, individual by individual, we would want to lovingly encourage them to see that life is a gift, even when things go wrong (be it medically or by tragedy). That life-gift sits in a context that is way bigger than any one of us, and so there is a call to lift our eyes to a greater perspective - through which we might be able to see our circumstances differently.

The life-gift from God implies certain rights, and as people living this life-gift together we can (and should) collectively confer rights on each other ... but all in the context of life-gift from God, and therefore each understanding (and accepting the understanding) that our own life is not ours to have absolute rights over.

Praying into the Flow

A key aspect of the strategy that we are pursuing is to work out who among the people we meet and talk to is spiritually open. Who is the person where the Spirit is already working, leading them to have a curiosity and spiritual hunger to discover?

A Biblical example of someone very open is Cornelius in Acts 10: a Roman centurion who is already fervently praying and seeking ... so much so that God arranges to fetch Peter to come and preach directly to his household. Lydia in Acts 16 is another. Of course not everyone is already seeking as clearly as Cornelius, and some maybe don't even know that deep down they are searching - perhaps they will only realise much later.

A clear principle we adhere to is to only invite people to some kind of Discovery Bible Study when we sense that a person is spiritually open and potentially interested enough that they might sit down with us. That is based on us gauging the conversations and level of interest (praying of course in the background!). For those that do say "yes" to our invitation, we then find that the preliminary sessions give indications of a person's inner hunger. The simple test is in scheduling the next session - the more open & hungry the person is, the easier it will be to schedule and hold to it. Of course it is not an exact science - things happen, arrangements fall foul of circumstances and so on.

The people who are open to spiritual conversations from time to time, but not really so hungry to explore Jesus, tend to be the ones who let discovery sessions be missed and seem to be hard to follow up. Again there is no exact calculation: circumstances, personality types, and a host of other factors can be a part. We should also pinch ourselves and remember that for a person it may simply not be the right time for them at the moment. Perhaps there will be a different link in the chain of witness that will stir their hunger later.

These observations should feed into our spiritual discernment - discerning who Jesus is calling us to concentrate our own personal finite resources on. We cannot pray intensively for everyone we ever meet, and our limited time & energy means we cannot continue to the nth degree trying to meet up with someone who in reality is not in an open & hungry place to want to meet up. Put another way: it can be okay to let someone drop off our personal prayer list, and it could be the right thing to do to not follow up someone yet again to re-schedule. This can be coupled with an ongoing trust in the Spirit: if the Spirit is intending you to be part of their journey, He will arrange something - be it a meeting out of the blue, the person messaging you, etc.

All this means learning to Pray into the Flow - praying with the direction and flow of the Spirit so that your thread of praying for people, chatting with people, inviting them to discovery sessions, becomes ever more resonant with what the Spirit is doing in people's lives out there in the community. Hitting that resonance will involve bumping into the person the Spirit has already prepared for you (e.g. like Lydia). Those occurrences will seem relatively easy and not a struggle compared to the many others that we interact with. That is not to say that every session will always be easily scheduled or go perfectly well, but a God-given momentum will be established that leaves us concluding: 'This must be God!'.