We do not do death well.
We avoid it. We deny it. We even pretend we can control it.
Last week, the French National Assembly advanced what many observers have called “the most extreme euthanasia law in Europe since Nazi regulations in the 1930s.” French President Emmanuel Macron supported legislation framed as “medical aid in dying” but the proposal goes much further than many existing “death with dignity” laws.
The bill would legalize both assisted suicide—where a person receives a prescribed poison to end their own life—and euthanasia, where a doctor administers the deadly dose.
Sebastian Ostertag, French coordinator for Pro Life Global, warned that, “For adults who are sick with either a disease, which, if they do not take treatment, will eventually lead to their deaths, as well as people who are suffering from depression, anxiety, things that are considered severe.” Developmentally disabled persons with Down syndrome or autism would also be eligible to request euthanasia under the new law.
Particularly troubling is the brief two-day reflection period and the penalties for those who attempt to dissuade someone from pursuing their “right to die”: a fine of 30 thousand euros (about $35,000 US) and up to two years in jail.
According to Christian journalist Jenny Lind Schmitt of The World and Everything In It, “The Assembly struck down numerous proposed amendments to protect suicide prevention organizations and the conscience rights of doctors, pharmacists, and psychologists. The bill also has no conscience provision to protect establishments like religious nursing homes, in spite of testimony from nuns representing the care facilities.”
Sebastian Ostertag summarizes the deeper issue: “This is a part of the ideology that we must be the masters of our own Destiny and always, including death, it is essentially the total rejection of God and the putting oneself as God.” In other words, it is dethroning Christ while enthroning self.
The gulf between the world’s understanding of life and death compared to the Christian vision of life and death continues to widen.
Around the same time I read these reports, I watched former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse’s interviews with the Hoover Institution and Sola Media. Ben Sasse was given three months to live after being diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer in December 2025. He spoke with candor, sorrow, and hope about his love for his family, his country, and above all, his Savior. Sasse says, “Death is a wicked thief. It’s an enemy. But it’s pretty great that it’s the last enemy. All the stuff I regret… I’m going to be freed from all of that.” But there are no short cuts to heaven. Sasse is not surrendering to despair. He is pursuing treatment and participating in clinical trials, fighting for more time. There are no shortcuts around death. Yes it is an enemy, but a defeated enemy.
One reason we recoil so deeply from death is that we often assume the richest life must be the happiest life. We believe pain and sorrow are at odds with the life God intends for us. But scripture challenges that thin vision. Nearly one-third of the 150 psalms are laments—cries of grief, confusion, and longing. The psalms teach us that some of the richest communion with God occur in the valleys of suffering. “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18). Again, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Ps. 23:4).
Consider your own life. When have you felt the nearness of God most deeply? If you are like me, it has been in seasons of weakness, heartbreak, and loss, not ease and abundance.
In Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, Mark Vroegop writes, “A broken world and an increasingly hostile culture make contemporary Christianity unbalanced and limited in the hope we offer if we neglect this minor-key song. We need to recover the ancient practice of lament and the grace that comes through it. Christianity suffers when lament is missing.”
Lament is one of Christianity’s great gifts to a world confused about death and dying. We don’t deny, romanticize, or sanitize death. We cry out knowing that we worship the One who became “obedient to the point of death” (Phil. 2:8). We bend the knee to the God of the Angel Armies who declares, “I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Rev. 1:18).
Because we entrust ourselves to this Savior, we neither attempt to control death as the world does nor “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13). We face death honestly, soberly—even tearfully—but not hopelessly.
We can stare death in the eye and, like Ben Sasse, grin a tearful grin, and say with the Prophet Hosea and the Apostle Paul, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55).
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