Bill English is a Papist, but a highly intelligent bloke. I think he is a bit too liberal when it comes to social issues, but I note he was a good minister of health when my kids were very small and he now is a very good treasurer and deputy PM. His wife, Mary, I have not heard a bad thing about.

And, at a time when the emotional part of the local press is stirring up a pro-euthanasia bill (because a prominent female lawyer, while dying, argued it was a human right to be able to get a doctor to kill her) he spoke the truth,.. and is getting excoriated. By the local Tories.

Bill English has declared he will vote against any euthanasia bill put before the parliament. no debate, no reading the legislation, he is just going to let his Catholic dogma dictate how he will vote.

Finance Minister Bill English says he’ll vote against any legislation allowing euthanasia in New Zealand. The death of Wellington lawyer Lecretia Seales from natural causes on Friday just hours after her family were advised the High Court had not ruled in her favour in an attempt to choose when she could die has prompted calls for law reform.

Prime Minister John Key said any moves by parliament on the issue would be a conscience vote and the best mechanism would be a private members’ bill. “In the past, I have personally voted for euthanasia, as I do have some sympathy for that argument,” he said.

His deputy, Mr English, a Catholic, said today he would vote against any law change. “The law says that if the doctor helps them die that would be breaking the law and that’s what the judgement said pretty clearly,” Mr English said on TVNZ‘s Q&A programme.

Mr English, whose wife is a GP, said he personally did not believe the law needed to change. “My personal view is that the law is where it should be,” he said.

No debate, no reading the legislation, he is just going to let his Catholic dogma dictate how he will vote.

Key is a secular Jew. Slater, who is a very liberal Presbyterian, does not consider that he and Key are also acting on dogma. He wants MPs to survey their local electorate and vote accordingly on a bill yet unwritten, and on a conscience issue.

Bill is correct on this issue to listen to his church. Now, I do not believe that the Bishops of any church lie in a line of authority back to the apostles. I consider the apostolic ministry as not dead — but something that exists for those who found churches in the first place. And the authority to teach with power and in the name of Christ is not one that any should claim casually.

I will add that this Presbyterian is against euthanasia. Because I signed a vow many years ago, to heal whenever possible, to relieve suffering when I could and to always comfort. I became a doctor to cure, not to kill. I see what has happened in Holland and is happening in Oregon, where the merchants of death now do not wait as much for consent as euthanize when they consider a life is inconvenient, and call that evil. The liberal mind cannot see a slope that damns a society, but I can. Slater, who I quoted before, began his argument by saying that we allow abortion, why not euthanasia? A slippery slope argument if ever I saw one: if life is not sacred, let us kill the inconvenient.

And he calls those of us who have thought through this (and it is something every doctor is challenged with: we have to care for the dying) as blindly following the dogma of the church.

Paul, however, was accepted as an apostle by those who were with Christ, and he did have people challenging him. The dichotomy between “Christ is a nice guy, but this Paul….” is ancient. It is also false. Christ’s teachings are much harder to swallow than Paul’s.

And Paul says that he teaches as he was taught: that his words are those taught by Christ. We no longer have is quiet conversations: we have his bold letters.

I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!—I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.

Look at what is before your eyes. If anyone is confident that he is Christ’s, let him remind himself that just as he is Christ’s, so also are we. For even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I will not be ashamed. I do not want to appear to be frightening you with my letters. For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.” Let such a person understand that what we say by letter when absent, we do when present. Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.

But we will not boast beyond limits, but will boast only with regard to the area of influence God assigned to us, to reach even to you. For we are not overextending ourselves, as though we did not reach you. For we were the first to come all the way to you with the gospel of Christ. We do not boast beyond limit in the labours of others. But our hope is that as your faith increases, our area of influence among you may be greatly enlarged, so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you, without boasting of work already done in another’s area of influence. “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.

(2 Corinthians 10 ESV)

At times we Reformed have to defend the Papists. Because their Popes at present are saying the truth, when your leaders are being wimps. Because we no longer live in a Christian age, but a post-Christian one. Because life is considered less important than sentiment.

We need to discount the plausible, the pretty, the persuasive. People have used rhetoric around the live that is not worth living to justify infanticide and surgeons opening veins from ancient times. The church as always stood against these things, and at the risk of conflating pagan and religious sources, the oath of Hippocrates (which, interesting, is not taken by doctors now: we swear the declaration of Geneva) banned the use of euthanasia and abortion.

You may argue that we are arguing from authority, and we are following blindly doctrine. As if this is a bad thing. As if we do not have thousands of years of ethical discussion — between physicians and priests and pastors — on these issues. As if life is just a matter of convenience. As if we have progressed, when instead we have fallen.

And as if we measure our life and our achievements by our own boasting, and think we can control all things from birth to the grave.

The Greeks would call that hubris, and say that those that do that are made insane by the very gods they have offended. There is some wisdom there. If our arguments get too lofty, it is the words of Christ, the statements of the gospel, and the grating words of the apostles that take us from trusting our own self-esteem and puncture our pride.

And that leaves us human, in front of the cross. Choose Christ, and not the poison of this generation.