Julie James explained that her decision to help her 23-year-old son, Daniel, kill himself was based on love and compassion. Julie and her husband, Mark, traveled to a Swiss clinic so their son could kill himself after he was paralyzed in a sports-related accident. His mom said because of his paralysis he was living “a second-class existence.”

While training with the English Nuneaton Rugby Club in March 2007, Daniel James’ spine was dislocated, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. His mother defended her actions by saying:

Three weeks ago our son was at last allowed his wish of a dignfied [sic] death in the Dignitas apartment in Zurich. Dan was 23 years old and had broken his neck in a rugby accident in March 2007.

He couldn’t walk, had no hand function, but constant pain in all of his fingers. He was incontinent, suffered uncontrollable spasms in his legs and upper body and needed 24-hour care.

Dan had tried to commit suicide three times but this was unsuccessful due to his disability. His only other option was to starve himself.

Whilst not everyone in Dan’s situation would find it as unbearable as Dan, what right does any human being have to tell any other that they have to live such a life, filled with terror, discomfort and indignity, what right does one person who chooses to live with a particular illness or disability have to tell another that that they should have to.”

What blew me away were the comments people left in response to the story celebrating the family’s “courage” and unselfish love. Lee Pike from England wrote, “True love shown by Dan’s parents, the hardest decision they will ever have to make and one that could only have been made with unconditional love for there [sic] son. I wish the family well and that this will not descend into another condemnation of a brave family’s decision.”

How is assisting in your 23-year-old son’s suicide brave or an example of unconditional love? A life of suffering and pain is not a life without dignity. As many Christians have been taught, causing someone’s death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder and is contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator. The error of judgment into which one can fail to preserve life does not change the nature of this as a murderous act. Let’s be clear: Intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder.

Assisting in your child’s suicide because he is in pain is contrary to love. It rejects the command to love God, and violates the command to love our neighbors as ourselves because it destroys the solidarity within family, community, nation, and human society in general.

Daniel’s story is tragic and painful. One can understand his parents’ desire not spend the rest of their days watching their son suffer, but this does not give them the right to help him take his own life. We are stewards of human life and have no right to simply dispose of people because they live in pain—nor can we let hurting people willfully dispose of themselves.

If the James family could only know, from God’s perspective, that there is no such thing as a “second-class existence” because all human beings share a common story of being made in His image, affected by the brokenness of the world, called to live a redemptive existence of dignity, and can have deep communion with their Creator regardless of life’s contingencies.