The slippery slope of the new assisted dying Bill

Some thoughts on the Sabbath in advance of a study series we are planning

Worldly pleasures prove empty – until Jesus fills the void

We must face the truth about Islam.

How are Christians to understand the merciless slaughter of those who were celebrating the Risen Christ in churches last Sunday? Is there anything in the Bible that leads us to an understanding of what is happening in our world today? We will come to this in just a moment - but first look at how the events have been reported.

The terrible attacks on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka are still very much in our minds, but it is notable how quickly they disappeared from the Western media or were relegated to personal stories of those who lost family members. It took a long time for major news agencies to report that those who were responsible for these terrorist attacks were Islamic fanatics – NTJ (National Thowheeth Jama’ath) - and our leaders and reporters have generally been reluctant to call the attacks what they were: Muslims attacking Christians.¹

Getting the Balance Right

By contrast, the Western media maintained focus for many days upon the Christchurch mosque murders carried out by a white Australian. He was heavily denounced as a white supremacist whose views were not representative of any mainstream Western institutions.

Photo: Alan Hamilton

The Prime Minister of New Zealand went to great lengths to identify herself with Muslims, declaring how she had abandoned her Mormon religion because of their narrow views.

Churches across the Western world also went out of their way to declare their love for their Muslim friends and neighbours. Churches in Luton still have posters such as that to the right in front of their buildings.

Our leaders and reporters have generally been reluctant to call the attacks what they were: Muslims attacking Christians.

Of course, it is right that we should love our neighbours, including those who hate us. The teaching of Jesus is unequivocal – “You have heard that it was said, ‘love your neighbour and hate your enemy’. But I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:43-44). But this does not mean that we should be unaware of the dangers that face us in the modern world as we try to live our lives in accordance with Kingdom values, rather than those values forced upon us by our secular humanist politicians.

The fact of the matter is this: despite the heavy focus in our media and culture on Islamophobia, Christians remain the most persecuted religious group² – and the vast majority of the persecution they face comes from the Muslim world.

Avoiding the Truth

Yet, Western political leaders will go to any lengths to avoid criticism of Islam. The British Government downplayed criticism of Saudi Arabia’s mass beheading of 37 members of the Shia minority this week, probably to protect oil interests. The Western mainstream media regularly portray Muslims as the victims rather than the aggressors.

They avoid the simple truth that suicide bombers who indiscriminately slaughter Christians and any others who may be around them are carrying out the commands of Muhammad in the Qur’an, who tells them in numerous places to kill ‘infidels’, especially Christians and Jews.

Young Muslims are brainwashed with this teaching by fanatical imams who quote passages in the Qur’an such as Surah 9:111 and tell them that they go straight to paradise if they lose their lives by killing Christians. Such a promise is attractive to young people growing up in poverty who see little prospect of improving their life chances, but the Sri Lanka bombers are reported to come from wealthy, middle-class families. Their hatred obviously goes much deeper.

Western political leaders will go to any lengths to avoid criticism of Islam.

Christians are facing danger in every part of the world, because these beliefs are fundamental to Islam. They are not just the beliefs of a small fanatical minority; they are the teaching of the founder of Islam and are inseparable from the religion and its texts.

It is, of course, a fact that most Muslims choose to ignore the jihad passages in the Qur’an and live their lives peacefully, accepting Jewish and Christian neighbours and business associates. But until the Muslim scholars and imams declare that the jihad teaching is no longer valid for today, all Muslim communities potentially present a risk.

Persecution Foretold

How should Christians understand what is happening in the world today? Regular readers of Prophecy Today UK will be familiar with the prophecy in Haggai 2 that speaks of God shaking all the nations and even the natural environment. We are certainly seeing evidence of that today.

The next book in the Bible is Zechariah, who was a contemporary of Haggai. He had a vision of four horses sent from Heaven and going throughout the earth. That vision was picked up by John in the revelation given to him when in exile on the island of Patmos.

John foresaw a time coming upon the earth when there would be great turmoil, warfare, famine, disease and death. The fourth horse of the Apocalypse was a pale horse that brought a spirit of death that would lead to a time of great persecution of Christians with an increase of martyrdom – many being killed for their faith in Jesus.

Blessed Assurance

The 20^th Century was the bloodiest in the history of humankind, with more people dying in warfare and political upheavals than at any previous time. But what we are seeing in the 21^st Century is not so much open warfare as political, economic and social upheaval bringing enormous uncertainty, instability and fear for the future.

Cyber-attacks, terrorist bombs, vast changes in technology mixed with economic volatility, political corruption and social upheavals have created a climate of chaos and confusion. Changes in the weather and reports that the future of the earth is threatened by climate change add to the general sense of unease in the world.

On the island of Patmos, John foresaw a time of great persecution of Christians with an increase in martyrdom.

But God has sent us forewarning of these times, which will intensify as we get nearer to the return of the Lord Jesus. The message in the Book of Revelation is one of woe to the great city of Babylon with its wealth, power and corruption that human beings love. But for Christians there is the firm assurance that believers in Jesus will never be separated from him in life or death and that God’s good purposes will triumph over evil in the end, when there will be great rejoicing in Heaven as the multitude of believers join in singing ‘Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns!’

Yes, we can expect plenty of difficulties ahead for Christians: but the firm promise of God is that “nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:39).

References

1 E.g. see articles from Maajid Nawaz at LBC and Rod Liddle for The Spectator (£).

2 According to figures from the Pew Research Centre. Read more here. Open Doors estimates that violent attacks on Christians doubled between 2017 and 2018.

What our suicide problem says about our society.

Why are young men in Britain killing themselves at the rate of 17 every day? It is a national scandal that has rattled the Government, hence the announcement this week of the appointment of a Minister for Suicide Prevention.

Prime Minister Theresa May said the appointment of Health Minister Jackie Doyle-Price to the new role will help tackle the stigma surrounding suicide. She was speaking on what has been designated World Mental Health Day, and she also announced increased funding for the Samaritans and for schools’ mental health work among children.

Mental health is a worldwide issue of immense proportions, especially in Western nations. In the USA nearly 45,000 people killed themselves in 2016 – more than double the homicide rate. In Britain severe mental illness has been rising steadily since the beginning of the 1990s and has become the biggest problem area for the NHS. Women are now more prone to severe mental disorder than men, but men under the age of 49 are more likely to take their own lives.

It is this particular problem of suicide among young men that is troubling mental health experts. The train I was due to take to London last week was cancelled due to “an incident on the line”. Yet another young man had jumped from a railway bridge in front of a train. I did not know this one but I did know a young man who did the same thing recently. I knew his wife and two young children. He had become unemployed and introverted so no one could communicate with him. He was just 36.

The particular problem of suicide among young men is troubling mental health experts.

We probably all know similar tragedies that are happening in families throughout the land, creating untold misery, hardship and poverty. It is, of course, those left behind who suffer most – regret and self-recrimination are hard to live with when tragedy has hit a family. The first suicide funeral I had to conduct is still a vivid memory when I too suffered personal blame. She was a beautiful young woman in my church congregation and I had deep regret that I had not been aware of her problems. But is there something as a society that we can do?

Understanding the Symptoms

We all need to become more aware of the symptoms of mental health problems – stress, anxiety and depression are all signs that should alert us to the difficulties that someone is facing. It’s when we ignore these signs that we blame ourselves later on. Being more alert and more caring for others would undoubtedly save lives. But we are all too busy, too self-centred on our own little world to bother with other people.

The number of young people you see today walking the streets with their eyes glued to their smartphone and unaware of what is going on around them is a vivid expression of the level of individualism and unreality that now afflicts a whole generation. Many young people live in a virtual world where they have hundreds of contacts but very little personal interaction – a situation exacerbated by social media, which has been linked to numerous mental health problems.

Many social studies show that loneliness is suffered by millions in the population, even when they are living in densely populated cities. Of course, much of this is due to the breakdown of family life: once, large families cared for each other and interacted with other similar families, providing plentiful opportunity for friendships to flourish. Today, we lack community and live in a virtual world.

Individualism and unreality now afflicts a whole generation, with many people living in a virtual world.

Another big culture change that has particularly hit young men is a loss of masculine identity in a world where women demand equality and sameness. Men were once proud to be the breadwinners and take care of their young wives while they were nursing children. Today, career women employ nannies and childminders so that they can become the breadwinner, pursuing their ambitions to make it to the top in their professions.

Lack of Peace with God

Human beings have immense adaptability and no doubt men will adjust to their new status in society, but we are clearly in a transition period which places extra strains, anxieties and insecurities upon individuals. The social changes we have been experiencing in the past two generations have coincided with the loss of faith in God and the abandonment of our Judeo-Christian heritage that provided fundamental security in the lives of individuals and whole communities.

It is the lack of this sense of being at peace with the God of Creation who made us in his own image that is the most serious absence in our modern culture. If we really want to understand the problems in our society we need to read the first chapter of Romans, where the Apostle Paul offers a penetrating analysis of social change. He says that once we suppress truth, we are driven by the powers of darkness that lead from one degree of corruption to the next.

Jesus taught his disciples the cure for anxiety. He said “If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth.” He also said “My command is this: love each other as I have loved you” (John 14:15 and 15:12).

The combination of family breakdown, bringing the loss of fatherhood to millions, together with the loss of the Fatherhood of God, is the devastating product of our postmodern, atheistic, humanistic world.

If we really want to understand the problems in our society, we need to read the first chapter of Romans.

The only cure for all the ailments in society, especially the anxieties and insecurities that lead to black despair and suicide, is the rediscovery of the Gospel, biblical truth and the Fatherly love of God for each of us his children. The Bible tells us that “The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence for ever” (Isa 32:17). In the New Testament Paul tells us that “The peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7).

It is being at peace with God that transforms our whole worldview and our interaction with other human beings. Paul urged the Christians in Rome “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom 12:2). This is the message that the new Minister for Suicide Prevention needs to understand if she is to make any real progress in her work of transforming society.

Charlie Gard and the sanctity of life debate.

What is life? When does it begin? When should it end?

Should we keep on life support those who have severely impaired faculties and quality of life?

Great Ormond Street Hospital is seeking to switch off the life support of critically ill baby Charlie Gard so that he may “die with dignity”, a phrase used by euthanasia supporters. However, this week Professor Michio Hirano, an expert in mitochondrial disease, flew in from the US to assess Charlie’s case and has said that a brain scan does not show evidence of irreversible damage from Charlie's rare genetic condition.¹ In recent hours the US Congress has granted Charlie and family permanent residence in the States if they wish to pursue Hirano's experimental treatment.²

Incidentally, it was revealed this week that Victoria Butler-Cole, the lawyer representing Charlie’s state-appointed guardian, heads a charity that supports assisted dying.³ So, has his case had a fair hearing?

In the same week that Charlie Gard’s case is being re-assessed, the High Court is hearing the legal challenge of a British man with motor neurone disease, dreading the progression of the disease and ‘locked-in’ syndrome, who wants to be granted a medically-assisted death.⁴

How should a Christian respond to distressing cases such as these, while staying faithful to the Bible’s teaching?

The answer is that we need to take a step back from the unsteady ground of human debate and plant our feet on the solid rock that is God’s word.

The True Value of Life

Human life is valuable not because of its quality, but because we are made in God’s image:

Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man. (Genesis 9:6)

From conception to final breath, human life is valuable and no one has the right to destroy it wilfully: “You shall not murder” (Ex 20:13).

How should a Christian respond to distressing cases such as Charlie Gard’s, while staying faithful to the Bible’s teaching?

We are created in God’s image, but we are also sinners who mar that image within us. Both our sinful nature and our awareness of the divine are present from conception:

Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb;
you taught me wisdom in that secret place. (Ps 51:5-6)

God also foreknows us: Jeremiah was told,

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. (Jer 1:5)

If we destroy life, we destroy God’s destiny and purpose for individuals and nations.

Jacob, Esau, Samson and Jesus himself were all described as beings of destiny and purpose from conception. Jesus was “God with us” from conception. He did not become divine at a later date.⁵

Logically, how could it be any other way? At what arbitrary point (which could vary between individuals) do we say a life in the womb passes the ‘value’ or ‘potential’ test?⁶

It may be the influence of Greek thought that has led us away from biblical truth and allowed us to draw distinctions between viable collections of physical cells and human life with potential for growth and personality. Greek philosophy teaches the separation of body and soul, whereas the Bible teaches that man is a nefesh, a “living being” (Gen 2:7), inextricably body and soul from the point of creation.

In fact, the Hebrew word nefesh is commonly translated as ‘soul’. Similarly, in English, an older use of the word soul implies rescue of the complete person, body and soul (as in SOS or Save Our Souls).

We need to take a step back from the unsteady ground of human debate and plant our feet on the solid rock that is God’s word.

Biblical Principles of Love and Protection

We accept that the Bible teaches us to care for our fellow man, so how can we sanction neglect or harm to the most vulnerable - those who cannot speak?

“Love does no harm to a neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law” (Rom 13:10). In other words, the whole of God’s Law (the Torah) is based on love and protection. Indeed, God’s law is summed up as: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’” (a combination of Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18).

Jesus told a story to epitomise that ‘royal law’, where a man treats a stranger’s medical emergency and pays for a form of hospital care.⁷ Helping the helpless and vulnerable, especially the stranger (without rights or voice), is a fundamental biblical principle: the sin of Sodom was not simply moral, rather, the residents outraged biblical decency by seeking to abuse and deny hospitality to strangers.⁸

It has been pointed out that the most inhospitable and dangerous place for any human being in today’s world is the womb. The place which should provide the utmost protection and care has become a grave for millions of human beings. Our end-of-life care centres are in danger of becoming similarly precarious places.

Trusting God’s Sovereignty

God’s word is absolute and we have to stand on its principles of absolute, divinely-revealed truth. Those who argue for assisted dying do so from a position of relative truth and situational ethics, seeking to extract overriding principles by pleading from the circumstances of individual sufferers. Indeed, it is with heart-wrenching personal cases that the media is redirecting the moral values of the nation away from God-given certainties.

Mature Christians know that they cannot exercise judgment based on relative truth and transitorily distressing and emotionally charged circumstances. Believers must stand on God’s promises and trust him to be the Sovereign Lord of all situations, even if upholding his principles becomes costly or difficult.

Believers must stand on God’s promises and trust him to be the Sovereign Lord, even if upholding his principles becomes costly.

Do we trust the Lord enough to allow him to govern all aspects of human suffering, while at the same time doing what we can to alleviate suffering and maintain life?

Keeping Charlie Gard on life support and allowing his parents to seek all possible treatment is biblically correct. By withdrawing life support, the medical team at GOSH would not be doing all they can to maintain life (which most doctors have sworn to do⁹). It would also be an unpleasant, slow way for the child to die and is effectively euthanasia because death is being chosen over life. If man possesses the power to sustain and treat him, then morally and scripturally, medics are obliged to exercise that ability.

If we believe that God is sovereign over life and death, then he can take the child to be with him at any point, whether on or off life support. If we think we must help God along by withdrawing life support, we are saying that God cannot take (or heal) the child unless we remove care. That implies that man is sovereign over life and death.

The Father’s Sacrificial Love

Just as human parents possess the unconditional love that should guide and decide their child’s treatment (unless their choices proceed from cruelty or conclusively injurious motives), so our Father God through his perfect love has the ultimate right to decide whether we live or die.

When we say that man should decide whether man lives or dies, we are denying that we have a Creator and a loving Heavenly Father, who knit us together in our mothers’ womb (Ps 139:13) and who demonstrated his love with the costliest sacrifice he could make.

When we say that unborn children and the seriously impaired (i.e. the voiceless) should be denied life or left to die, we should remember that God demonstrated his love when we too were helpless and vulnerable strangers to his promises (Eph 2:12, 19) in an inhospitable world: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Messiah died for us” (Rom 5:8).

Who should decide how our lives should begin and end? Surely the One who created us and laid down his own life for us.

References

1 Mendick, R. Charlie Gard's parents angry that baby's lawyer is head of charity that backs assisted dying. The Telegraph, 18 July 2017.

2 Forster, K. Charlie Gard granted permanent residence in US by Congress 'to fly to America for treatment'. The Independent, 20 July 2017.

3 See 1.

4 Walsh, F. Terminally ill man Noel Conway in right-to-die fight. BBC News, 17 July 2017.

5 References: Genesis 25:21-26; Judges 13:1-7; Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:39-45.

6 For an excellent study on this topic, see The Christian Institute’s ‘When does human life begin?’ by Dr John R Ling in their Salt and Light series.

7 The Good Samaritan, Luke 10:25-37.

8 Genesis 19:1-29.

9 “Medical students usually take an oath when they graduate but there is no standard approach across the UK.” Oxtoby, K. Is the Hippocratic oath still relevant to practising doctors today? BMJ, 14 December 2016.

Two personal perspectives on the up-coming Assisted Dying Bill.

On 11 September, Rob Marris MP's Assisted Dying Bill will receive its second reading in Parliament. That this date has been chosen for such an important debate on British freedom, democracy and the sanctity of life, is perhaps pertinent – perhaps sadly ironic.

We bring you two personal perspectives on the bill and some practical advice on how to pray and act in the days leading up to it.

Charles Gardner

An alert has gone out from concerned Christians about a deadly Bill to be debated in the British Parliament on September 11. The so-called 'Assisted Dying Bill', better known as assisted suicide, is a bid to make it legal not only for people to take their own lives, but for others to assist them in doing so.

I trust it will not escape the notice of too many that it comes on the day we recall the death and destruction committed on a grand scale 14 years ago by a group of suicide bombers who flew jet liners into New York's tallest skyscrapers, leaving some 3,000 dead and a world in shock.

Although primarily an attack on Israel and the Jewish people whom America is perceived as supporting, it was also seen as an attack on Western democracy which allows the freedom of thought so despised by Islamic fundamentalists.

But if the Assisted Dying Bill is passed, it would spell a death of democracy of our own making as we would effectively be committing democratic and national suicide; for the effect of the Bill would be to pressurise the weak, vulnerable and elderly into ending their lives prematurely out of fear of being a burden to society.

Their right to have a say in the destiny of their own lives will have been withdrawn forever, with the result that a much-envied civilisation built on Christian foundations of care and compassion would collapse as surely as did the 110-storey Twin Towers of Manhattan.

If the Assisted Dying Bill is passed, it would spell democratic and national suicide. Our much-envied civilisation built on Christian foundations of care and compassion would collapse as surely as did the Twin Towers.

As its detractors state, the Bill does not speed people towards a natural death, but rather sanctions state-sponsored killing. Thank God for campaigns like Christian Concern who are doing all they can to 'help keep death from Britain's door'.

Certainly 9/11 was a devastating, earth-shattering event. But who remembers the millions of innocent babies murdered in the womb for spurious social reasons? So now we have death lurking in the shadows both at the beginning and end of our lives – and in the latter case, all in the questionable cause of the relief of suffering.

The Religion of Secular Humanism

This is the poisonous fruit of so much humanistic, secular and atheistic influence on our once Christian culture which says that since this life is all there is – and there is no God – we should alleviate pain and discomfort at any cost. And we are daily bombarded by noble-sounding campaigns to rid the world of disease, poverty and environmental destruction. And we humans are capable of dealing with this. On our own!

But we aren't. For as long as we ignore the real reason for our troubles – our sinful obsession with self – and act independently of God, we are only putting off the evil day when divine judgement will show up our pitiful attempts at making the world a better place.

Not Belittling Suffering

I do not wish to minimise the dreadful plight of those who suffer – and those who care for them. I watched my late wife dying in agony of cancer, which had spread from her breast to her bones. In all she suffered for some four-and-a-half years; and that was in addition to being blind since the age of 16. But she 'saw' through her pain and sorrow to a better world beyond this life as she trusted implicitly in Jesus. I well remember how, with very little lung capacity left, she raised her arms in worship of her Lord as I played some Christian songs on my guitar.

True, in view of her suffering towards the end, she wanted to go sooner rather than later. So when she asked her lady doctor how much time she had left, and "two weeks" was the reply, she was somewhat exasperated, saying she would rather it were two days. And it was! But that was a prayer to God, not a nudge for her doctor to prescribe a lethal injection.

A nation which has rejected God will soon also dispense with all his precepts and laws, eventually leaving a society with neither mercy nor justice.

A nation which has rejected God will soon also dispense with all his precepts and laws, eventually leaving a society with neither mercy nor justice.

But for those who trust in Christ, their suffering is only temporary. They look forward to a day when "he will wipe every tear from their eyes; when there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (Rev 21:4).

Dr Mark Houghton

None of us who watched 9/11 on our televisions will ever forget 2001 when nearly 3000 people died. Yet September 11th 2015 may go down in history as the prelude to a higher – far higher -- intentional death toll. That day the House of Commons holds a critical vote on the Assisted Dying Bill (No 2).

Back in 2005, the deaths predicted by a Select Committee were around 650 a year if assisted suicide was legal in the United Kingdom and we had a law like Oregon, USA. The Dutch experience, on the other hand, could lead to around 13,000 deaths a year in the UK.

Britain, being the first large nation to legalise assisted 'killing for the willing', would show other nations how to remove laws currently in place. Globally, anti-abortion laws fell like a pack of cards after our 1967 law was passed.

My experiences, as a doctor and as a patient in pain, have shown me how much we all need the protection of the law. Good care kills the pain, not the patient - and this has been shown again and again. But show a crack in the door to the patient, the family or the carers, then the protection of the vulnerable melts away; killing for the unwilling begins. The 'safeguards' of the law allowing assisted suicide are regularly flouted in Holland and the handful of tiny countries that have legalised it.

We all need the protection of the law. But show a crack in the door to the patient, the family or the carers, and the protection of the vulnerable melts away.

Action Points

1. Pray that you "speak up for those being led away to death" (Prov 24:11). Pray that Britain will promote palliative care, not suicide. Pray for Christ to prevent Parliament from weakening his 6th Commandment: "You shall not kill" (Ex 20:14).

2. Learn about the debate. Go to Christian Concern for information, resources and personal stories from a Christian perspective. See also carenotkilling.org.uk and notoassistedsuicide.org.uk for resources from a secular perspective.

3. Say to your MP how you want them to vote on 11 September (this site makes it easy to email your MP).

4. Share resources others by posting on social media, or sharing in home groups or at church.

Britain is in the midst of a mental health crisis, with as many as 1 in 4 suffering from some kind of mental affliction, including depression.¹ How on earth have we got here? What is at the root of our troubled minds? Is there any way back?

Hardened hearts

It is now clear that we are beginning to witness the effects of God handing our nation “over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done” (Rom 1:28). Tragically yet wilfully, our nation and its leadership have hardened their hearts towards God and his laws of love, and God is now hardening hearts further. We must understand that this process of hardening is part of God’s sovereign will, being designed to encourage repentance, though it is currently difficult to see any signs of godly sorrow.

The hardening of hearts has mental repercussions- the darkening of the mind. As I have prayed over the last year, one of things I feel that God has revealed to me as being part of his manifesting wrath is the spreading of a plague of mental illness. I believe we are seeing- and are about to see -an unprecedented rise in mental affliction, particularly depression.

"The hardening of hearts has mental repercussions- one I feel God has revealed to me is a plague of mental illness."

When I first thought I heard the word ‘plague’ from God I drew back with horror, but I have learnt to understand that the plague is not God-inflicted, but rather a natural result of the rejection of God and his love. I think that many of those who will be touched by it will be those who have been gravely sinned against in the past, but there will also be others affected who have wilfully chosen a path of disobedience.

150 Die in Plane Crash

I had been wondering and praying about whether or not to share this word, when the shocking news about the co-pilot Andreas Lubitz and the Germanwings flight disaster hit the international headlines. This pilot, who deliberately took all his passengers and fellow crew members to their deaths in the Alps, had a history of mental illness. I felt this was a confirming sign from God, one that should make the world sit up and think.

Root causes

In the UK, so much of the rise in mental illness comes as a result of family breakdown and its subsequent fallout. The breakdown of marriages, and the even higher rate of breakdowns between co-habiting couples, causes untold damage to mental wellbeing, especially where children are involved. Statistically, children from 1-parent families are twice as likely to have a mental disorder as children from 2-parent families,² and 72% of children in care have a diagnosable behavioural or emotional disorder.³

What God has made plain about the true nature of marriage, family wellbeing and sexual ethics has been shunned, rejected and even overturned, and the consequences for the nation’s mental health are very serious. God’s heart truly grieves.

The negative and damaging effects that this has had on at least two generations of young people and children is now beginning to emerge. We are witnessing rises in:

• Self-harming amongst children and young adults. Between 1 in 12 and 1 in 15 young people actively self-harm,⁴ and the UK has one of the highest self-harming rates in Europe, at 400 per 100,000 of the population.⁵
• Serious eating disorders. Hospital admissions due to eating disorders rose by 8% in 2012/2013, with the biggest rise being amongst young people.⁶
• Suicides and attempted suicides, overdoses etc (including high-profile celebrities regularly reported in the media). The NSPCC has reported a 117% rise in ChildLine counselling sessions about suicide between 2010 and 2014.⁷
• Bullying in schools and online, causing much anxiety and depression. 70% of young people have been victims of cyber-bullying.⁸
• The need for counselling (putting mounting pressure on counsellors, who end up suffering themselves).
• Intense feelings of loneliness and, consequently, depression, the severest form of which affects 80,000 young people in the UK.⁹

In addition to this, and often connected into the issue of family breakdown (though not always), we are seeing rises in depression relating to:

• Huge financial debts.
• Homelessness and poor housing.
• Horrendous child neglect and child sexual abuse.
• Sexual immorality, perversions and the struggles over sexually transmitted disease.
• Devastating addictions, particularly to pornography, alcohol, drugs and gambling.
• Poverty and gross inequality.
• Crime and being the victim of violence, including domestic violence or cruel financial scams.
• Low self-esteem and self-worth; this affects hundreds and thousands of young people daily.

Much of the above I have come into contact with in my work as a local pastor and university chaplain. But I sense it increasing significantly, with more and more people being affected, which is why I sensed the Lord speaking from his grieved heart about “a plague.”

Looking forward

Currently, it is estimated that as many as 1 in 4 of the adult population will suffer some kind of depression or mental illness during the course of a year.¹⁰ The mental health of our nation will become an almost daily topic and I feel the Lord is revealing that our NHS services will be completely overwhelmed (mental health care already costs the NHS and social services £21 billion a year¹¹). Much of it is already at breaking point- 74 out of 96 NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups have cut or frozen their Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services budgets since 2013.¹²

Please pray about this. NHS staff themselves will likely become victims of depression due the immense stresses and strains of their workloads.

"Can a brave prophetic voice rise up from the Church urging the nation to return to God?"

The hardening of the heart towards God is clearly having significant mental repercussions upon the wellbeing of our nation. What is the solution? Can a brave prophetic voice rise up from the Church urging the nation to return with repentance to the God whose first commandment is to love him with all your heart, mind, soul and strength (Mark 12:30)?

The Solution

The healing from such a plague comes through being reconciled to God through Christ- this is what the Church must implore upon the nation. With God it is possible to know “the peace that passes all human understanding [which] will guard your hearts and minds in the knowledge of Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:7). The mind can be lovingly renewed and healed by the Holy Spirit and lives can be made whole, so that they start to correspond to the mind of Christ. What an offer- and how much we need it!

Healing is possible, but so is further hardening (remember Pharaoh in Exodus 7-14). Lord, in wrath, remember mercy.

References

1 Mental Health Statistics: UK & Worldwide, Mental Health Foundation.

2 Sedghi, M, 2015. What is the state of children's mental health today? The Guardian, 5 January.

3 Mental Health Statistics, Young Minds.

4 Ibid.

5 Mental Health Statistics: Self-Harm, Mental Health Foundation.

6 New agencies, 2014. Eating disorder increase among young people, The Telegraph, 30 January.

7 Huge increase in suicidal feelings amongst young people. NSPCC, 31 October 2014.

8 The Cyber Bullying Report 2013, Ditch the Label.

9 See note 3.

10 Ibid.

11 Yew, M L, 2010. Cost of mental ill health soars to £105bn per year. The Guardian, 4 October.

12 See note 2.