Christopher Pearson and a strange expiration in rapture hovers over the pond ...

(Above: Nicolas Poussin's The Battle of Joshua with Amalekites. Kill baby kill, slaughter baby slaughter, and all on god's comman).

It will come as no surprise to dedicated readers of the bible that Jesus Christ killed himself.

Consider the meaning of this passage John 10:17-18 in the King James version:

Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.

No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.

Lay down my life? Lay it down of myself? I have the power to lay it down?

There's plenty more but that's a decent enough start to get a trolling war raging on Christian forums. After all, Christ put himself in the path of Judas, knowing the fix was in, then went off to face down Pontius Pilate, knowing the fix was in, riled up the Jews to make sure the fix was in, and then made the Romans do the dirty work. And naturally they obliged. No point in trying to talk someone out of it if they're so determined to end it all, and achieve a life time goal, including the salvation of humanity based on an arranged killing ...

Now some might argue that this is a passive kind of suicide, but really no more than the lot of some despairing wretch who decides to throw himself in front of a passing train, knowing the driver's unlikely to be able to brake in time ...

Yep, Jesus was a dedicated suicidalist, fancying he could set up his own demise to save humanity, and knowing he could pass go and collect eternal bliss by sitting beside god the father, who really, if he'd wanted to stop his son's passive suicide, could surely have pulled a few strings.

The one bewildering thing about the whole saga is that more Christians aren't rushing helter skelter to the exit aisles, seeking their own Judas and a painful kind of crucifixion as a path to eternal bliss. The bigger the nails, the better ...

What's this got to do with anything?

Well nothing much, but about as much as this opener from Christopher Pearson discussing euthanasia in Test of conviction on a life and death issue:

There is nothing in the least kitsch or sentimental about the biblical account of Christmas. When Mary went into labour in Bethlehem, there was no room at the inn. When the Magi presented their gifts to the child, along with gold for the infant king and priestly frankincense, there was a vessel of myrrh, a precious oil for anointing the dead.

Western Christendom has traditionally regarded the Incarnation as so fraught with meaning that it needed to be celebrated over not just one day but eight, a full octave. During the octave, from a liturgical standpoint normal time collapses in on itself and each day counts as Christmas Day.

It is often referred to as the blood octave, because of the bloodshed associated with the feasts that fall during the eight days. The 26th is the feast of Stephen, the first Christian martyr stoned to death. Some days later is the feast of St Thomas A'Beckett, the martyred English archbishop.

In between falls the memorial of Mary's ritual purification after the bloodshed of childbirth and the encounter with the elderly Simeon in the Temple. He greets the Christ-child as the Messiah, with the prophecy that he will be the cause for the fall and the rise of many in Israel and that he will be "a sign of contradiction", and then expires in rapture.

I'm sorry, I quoted it at length because I found all the talk of stonings and martyrs and blood shed and no room at the inn and hail the Messiah and purification - waiter, bring my cilice, I'm in the mood for bloodshed - quite charming, and by the end of it, I'd expired in some kind of amazed perplexed rapture.

Where on earth is the man heading in his own ecstatic delusional way?

The bloodiest feast of the octave and the earliest fulfilment of Simeon's prophecy of many falling is the Massacre of the Holy Innocents. They were the male children of the district where Christ was born whose deaths Herod had ordered in the hope of killing the Messiah. A sign of contradiction seems to understate the case. What Christians celebrate as the Incarnation has been, for the intervening centuries, coupled with an incomprehensibly brutal exercise of the power of the state, for those among whom it took place.

It's at this moment of course that the stirrers in our midst would race off to the bible to find the incomprehensibly brutal exercise of the power of god by god, but there's no need to, because surely the flood that wiped out all of humanity will do the trick, save Noah and his flock of course, and if you need any follow up, there's always the evil bible's handy list of god's murders for stupid reasons, or god murdering children, or families, not to mention in the case of Amalekites, as well as the men, women, children and infants, also the oxen and sheep and camels and asses (1 Samuel 15:2-3). Not just a massacre but a bestial slaughterhouse ...

But then selective readings and selective eyesight are always handy when a conservative Catholic loon like Pearson rails about the activities of the state, not seeming to understand that it was god who told Joshua to take an entire army and attack the Ai, and destroy the bloody lot of them.

Nowadays, the feast of the Holy Innocents is often associated with two forms of contemporary state-sanctioned slaughter; abortion and euthanasia. It is unlikely that the issue of abortion will be debated in any Australian parliament this year, but euthanasia will certainly resurface in the South Australian legislature in a few months, thanks to the indefatigable enthusiasm of the Greens.

Uh huh. The whole benighted, intoxicated, delusional, ecstatic, rapturous rant was just a preliminary for a discussion of euthanasia.

At that point, I became decidedly bored, perhaps tepid, and most certainly unable to expire in a rapture, as Pearson delivers up a standard bunch of lollypops:

Euthanasia legislation has always seemed to me a deeply subversive, amoral response to a problem of now nearly negligible proportions. After all, the law no longer prohibits those who want to end their own lives from doing so and there are fool-proof, painless means readily to hand. Of course, those who would have preferred to die rather than be left helpless -- felled by a stroke or other sudden illness -- and whose sufferings are being protracted against their will, deserve our sympathy.

This is of course nonsense. There aren't that many fool-proof or painless means readily to hand, and not even that many painful ones since John Howard stripped the nation of its guns and its means to defend itself against the invading horde of penguins surging up from the south any day soon, to form a pincer movement with refugees flooding in from the north ...

And the hapless hand wringing to those "deserving our sympathy" reminded me of Pontius Pilate and his bowl of water and his hand wringing and washing when confronted by the wretchedly determined suicidal Christ, who refused to even consider any other alternative to his painful self-immolation, based on the notion that rising from the dead is a trick available to all of us in due course ...

Meanwhile Pearson goes on making unsubstantiated statements which he takes care to dress up as fact:

The Dutch experience of euthanasia has much to teach us about a demoralised medical profession. It also points to two other great evils: coercive expectations on the sick and elderly and the trajectory towards the state sanctioning involuntary euthanasia.

If you want an insight into the situation of Euthanasia in the Netherlands - first instituted in 2002 - you would be better off reading this Radio Netherlands report from 2009, here in an FAQ. The Dutch like to conform to the stereotype of being extremely practical and pragmatic, not to mention a canny way with money, and you'll find no evidence for Pearson's assertions ... but you will find a majority of Dutch people have swung behind the law ...

There are a dozen other assertions in Pearson's piece which could be challenged, but the ennui, the sense of existential tedium, the desire to end it all immediately, began to grow as I waded through the tripe.

That's when it came to me. Pearson's column is the best argument for me indulging in euthanasia as my life draws to a close since ... well since Christ showed the way ...

Well it wouldn't be Pearson without a grand rhetorical flourish for the wrap up:

My first prediction for the year is that a grand coalition of the major faiths, assisted by some heavy-weight moral philosophers, will see the campaign against euthanasia as one they can't afford to lose. For a change, it will be adequately funded and professionally run.

Thank the long absent lord they'll be using heavy-weight moral philosophers, instead of Pearson dribbling on about expiring in rapture.

Meanwhile, as part of a new year's resolution to feature alternatives to the dismal columnists on view in The Australian, why not drop in on Bruce Falconer's piece for The Atlantic in March last year, Death Becomes Him, which recently bobbed to the surface in our bathroom reading materials.

Being American Falconer is ambivalent about the Swiss experiment, and especially the activities of Ludwig Minelli, but he's actually talking more about the ethics of suicide tourism, as opposed to the ethics of home grown Swiss seeking a way to die with dignity.

As Falconer notes, assisted suicide is legal in the Netherlands, Belgium Luxembourg and the American states of Oregon, Washington and Montana, and it will spread even further in the next decade.

Meanwhile in Australia, the mealy mouthed hypocrisy which sees doctors assist the elderly to die, often with the connivance of relatives, and with the judicious use of drugs, withheld or applied, will continue on, it seems to the inestimable satisfaction of the likes of Pearson that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds ...

Well an intelligent debate about euthanasia in Australia is long overdue, but is it remotely possible to have one when an alleged leading columnist in an alleged national rag allegedly at the heart of national debates leads off his piece about it with sanctimonious claptrap about Christmas, the Incarnation, purification, the massacre of the innocents, and expiring in rapture ...

Roll on Easter. Can't wait to celebrate that suicide ...