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It's Wednesday, December 10th, 2025. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. We do know that we're living in a clash of worldviews. And the first thing we would say is that there's a clash between the Christian worldview and a secular worldview. And on a host of issues, that clash is becoming more and more apparent. But one issue that should draw our attention is the issue of personal autonomy. Assumptions about personal autonomy, claims about personal autonomy. Now, one of the things you see developing in the secular worldviews around us is the idea that secular visions of personal autonomy are now becoming absolutely common and absolutely deadly. And when we talk about personal autonomy, let's just say that everyone, including Christians to some degree, believes in personal autonomy. We believe that we have personal moral responsibility and ought to have some range of operational autonomy. We really aren't committed to a world or a civilization in which, you know, someone tells you you have to be in carpenter, you have to be a computer programmer or whatever. We believe in some appropriate zone of personal autonomy. We don't want, you know, government officials telling us who we have to marry, how many children we can have, etc. So personal autonomy is not something that either exists or doesn't exist. It's a continuum. And at every point along the continuum, there is going to be some affirmation of personal autonomy. But you know what? The biblical worldview doesn't give us grounds to put personal autonomy above moral responsibility or above other absolutely objective categorical goods and divine commands. So in other words, the Christian worldview says we do not have personal autonomy to declare ourselves free to reject the law of God, free to deny the existence of God, free to say, even tamper with the words of Scripture. Our personal autonomy has very, very important limits. It's real, but it is really, really limited. If you overthrow the Christian worldview and you try to create a worldview based in purely secular terms, then at some point personal autonomy is going to rise to the very top of the hierarchy of concerns. Eventually, personal autonomy claims are going to trump everything else. Personal autonomy is going to be the idol to which everything else has to be sacrificed. And that includes life itself. And just think about it for a moment. And this is where some attention to the language will betray the problem. It's the auto in autonomy. It's the focus on the self, the idolatry of the self. You can't tell me who I am. These outlandish, ridiculous claims of personal autonomy is what is behind the transgender revolution, for example, you can't tell me on biological terms who I am. I will tell you who I am based upon my own sense of myself. You can't tell me what to do, and you can't tell me who I am. And now you can't tell me whether I will live or die. That's where this is going. Rarely do you see this acknowledged right out loud. So even though the idolatrous nature of so much of the worldviews around us in terms of personal autonomy, rarely do they say it out loud. Just in the last few hours, they've said it out loud. And this is because of a report recently released in this case by the New York Times. The headline in the big report is this, should you be able to ask a doctor to help you die? Stephanie Nolan is the reporter on the story. And it really is an analysis piece, and it's a combination piece. So in other words, this reporter's done some really good work in reaching out to describe the landscape right now in terms of physician assisted suicide, aid in dying, euthanasia. And this is what she comes up with. She comes up with the fact that all across the world, and especially beginning in Europe, beginning specifically in Switzerland, but now all around the world, including North America, most deadly in its form right now in Canada, but in several American states, in an increasing number of nations, even in Central and South America and in Asia, physician assisted suicide, or what's called medical aid in dying is a euphemism. This is becoming a very big thing now, as no one writes, quote, until recently, the deaths that she describes earlier in her article, they would have been considered a murder. But a monumental change is underway around the world, from liberal European countries to conservative Latin American ones. A new way of thinking about death is starting to take hold. So again, you rarely see this kind of candor. This is something I appreciate. I appreciate the Times running this piece. I appreciate the reporter writing with this candor. Yes, most, if not all of the deaths through the kind of physician assisted suicide or so called medical aid in dying, they would a short time ago have been considered legally murder. It tells you a lot that they now are considered a Right. Okay, but here's the big worldview issue. This is actually in the article, quote, it is a last frontier in the expansion of individual autonomy. There it is named right out loud, individual autonomy. More people are seeking to define the terms of their deaths in the same way they have other aspects of their lives, such as marriage and childbearing. This is true Even in Latin America, where conservative institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church are still powerful. Dr. Giulietta Marino Molina identified as a bioethicist. So that's an ethicist with a specialization in medical ethics, usually biomedical ethics. We are told that this particular ethicist has advised Columbia's Ministry of Health. She said, we believe in the priority of our control over our bodies. And as a heterogeneous culture, that means cultural diversity. We believe in choices. If your choice does not affect me, go ahead. End quote. Okay. We should be thankful when we see this kind of candor. It's right out there. No one's putting a disguise on it. In just a matter of two paragraphs. It's all out there. What we're looking at here is the last frontier in the expansion of individual autonomy. Now, by the way, when it's called the last frontier, I think the last part is referring to death, because this won't be the last frontier in terms of moral claims or moral change and legal transformation around this, but it is the latest one. But in the last frontier that does mean in a human lifespan, death is the last thing in terms of earthly existence. And now we want control of that. I want to point to an obvious fact. It's a biblical fact. It's also just a physical fact every human being should be able at least to recognize, and that is that not one of us in all of human history, ever, and that includes every single human being alive right now, not one of us had anything to do with exercising personal autonomy that we would be. So if we're claiming total personal autonomy, well, you know, there are some philosophers out there who are writing books with titles like Better Never to have Been claiming that the fact that you were born or conceived can be legal grounds for you to sue somebody for wrongful life. Let's just say that's another discussion. It's the kind of insanity that we're going to hear more of. Because if personal autonomy is the absolute good, and if that's what it means to be human, well, you know, we should have that choice. Of course it's insane, but, you know, that's where we are these days. Insanity is becoming public policy. Okay, the second thing we saw here is this bioethicist that tells you another part of the problem who said, we believe in the priority of our control over our bodies. If your choice doesn't affect me, go ahead. Okay, so now we're saying that personal autonomy is so absolute that the entire society has to conform itself to my individual autonomy. It has to conform its laws, it has to conform its policies. And you know, the big thing in this article, which is really interesting is the doctor part. Should you be able to ask a doctor to help you? And the reason that's so important is because what we are talking about, well, even if you want to call it maid, M A I D, medical assistance in dying, the medical part's still important. And that maid was a way to euphemize, to try to dress up what used to be called physician assisted suicide or physician assisted death, which was more honest. But you know, the physicians didn't want the word physician used and the advocates for it didn't want the word suicide used because that's laden with moral meaning. Of course it is. And so even though it still is physician assisted suicide, they want to call it something different. But even in calling it something different, they have to use the word medical, which means you've got to have some kind of medical authority here, generally a medical practitioner, a physician. And so the big question is, should you be able to ask a doctor to help you die? Well, in increasing numbers of countries you can do that. You can ask a doctor to help you to die. Now then that raises a host of other questions like who can, who is qualified? Well, in most jurisdictions, at least it started out with, it should be someone with a terminal diagnosis, an adult with a terminal diagnosis. But then you say, well, what about something short of terminal? And that's why we've seen in Canada intractable suffering become a big issue. And who can define that? Well, only the individual. There's your personal autonomy again. And this article, by the way, talks about one 18 year old girl who decided she just didn't want to live because she wasn't romantically fulfilled and she convinced at least a suitable number of people that she was serious and she's no longer alive. And this is the kind of thing that's going to happen. But so it was persons with a reasonable, reasonably close, foreseeable death is the way it was originally defined. And then again, intractable suffering. But then, well, why should you deny that to a teenager? If a 40 year old has access to this, then on the grounds of personal autonomy, how can you deny this to a teenager? And then pretty soon, well, what is the real cognitive difference between 8 and 18, or for that matter, 6 and 16? And so pretty soon, frankly, it's whoever wants to make this demand on whatever grounds. And that's exactly where this logic is headed. And there's at least some acknowledgement here. What about dementia that comes up in this article. Well, currently, in at least some jurisdictions, someone who is concerned about dementia in advance, or someone who is even diagnosed but still considered to be able to exercise personal responsibility, they can say, when I reach a certain point, I want to die. But then the question is, well, who at that point decides it's that point. And you know, what a horrifying. What a horrifying equation that we have taking shape here. Now, I'm not going to get into all the personal accounts here. I'm not even going to look country by country or state by state. I want to look at the worldview level. Because the big issue here is the admission that it all comes down to personal autonomy. And that is just something that hasn't very often been said out loud in public debate. But, you know, at this point, what else could you say? What else can you say if you're saying that everyone should have the right to determine his or her own death? And of course, in these days, personal autonomy also means the limitation of pronouns to his or her is no longer acceptable by the same mentality. Whatever, however old you are, you should have this particular right. But, you know, one of the complications in this is that at some point, one is conceivably unable even to do this at the final stage. And so, at least in some jurisdictions, you have doctors who can put everything together, but can't, so to speak, pull the trigger. But what happens when the patient can't do that anymore? Is it legal for someone else to do it? Is there a legal agent who can be appointed here? Once again, just think of where we are. Think of where this logic leads. It's a very sad report, but I think it's so important it deserves the time today because it's said out loud. And at some point, for instance, in the abortion debate, things started to change when people had to admit, this is just what it is. I just don't want a baby. And yes, at some point in the debate over abortion, it comes down to the fact that people say, yes, I think I know this is the termination of a human life. It doesn't matter. I want the abortion anyway, or I'm gonna support abortion policy anyway. And that's kind of where Joe Biden was, by the way, the former president, you know, saying he's a practicing Catholic and, you know, was the most pro abortion president in history in terms of his activism, his executive orders and things. But, you know, he's personally opposed to abortion, but he's for it. As a matter of politics, it is look at that and you go, what? What? What insanity is this? But frankly, there are a lot of people who are never in public office who follow the very same logic. I want to point to another interesting development in recent days, and this was a suicide. The suicide by the founder of the assisted suicide activist group in Switzerland. He died at age 92, and he did die by assisted suicide. And just days before his 93rd birthday, he elected to go ahead with his own assisted death. The Guardian says, quote, the head of the Swiss right to die organization, Dignitas, has ended his life through an assisted death. Ludwig Minelli, who founded the group in 1998, died just days ago. As I said, just days before his 93rd birthday. The statement from the group said, quote, right up to the end of his life, he continued to search for further ways to help people to exercise their right to freedom of choice and self determination in their final matters. And he often found them, okay, notice the language here. It's self determination here rather than autonomy in another context. Still in the English language, you cross the Atlantic. And what was autonomy in the New York Times? Is self determination in the Guardian? Once again, let's just ask ourselves the question. In the Christian worldview, what is self determination? Now, once again, we would say it is a thing, it is a reality. There is some sphere of self determination in our lives. You know, theologically, it's sometimes expressed like going in an ice cream parlor. You know, you are actually committing agency in saying, you'll have two scoops of this or a scoop of that and a scoop of this. That's self determination in some sense, that's autonomy in some sense.