Never again!
Canon Michael Hull, our Assistant Priest, writes:
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) affirms ‘faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person’. It rightly notes that human dignity is ‘inherent’ and human rights ‘inalienable’ (Preamble).
The Declaration was proclaimed on the back of a plethora of human-rights atrocities in the first half of the twentieth century and contemporaneous legislation devaluing human dignity particularly of the ill, disabled and elderly (Article 25), for instance, the Nazi government progressed the ‘T4 Programme’ whereby disabled persons were euthanised rather than burden others. ‘Never again!’ humanity shouted in 1948 to this and other brutalities.
Whilst the Declaration makes no mention of God and appeals solely to unaided human reason, it is akin to divine revelation. ‘God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them’ (Gen. 1.27; cf. 5.1; 9.6). The uniqueness of human beings in God’s created order is one of inherent dignity and inestimable worth. Every human life is sacred at every stage. Salvation history finds God teaching us that his love and justice are for all. ‘For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’ (Deut. 10.17-19). And, later, St Paul reminds us that, in Christ, ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3.28). The broad-stroke takeaway from Holy Scripture is clear: no one is a burden.
When the ill, disabled and elderly are considered anything other than images and likenesses of God, we have already lost traction on the slippery slope that led to our ‘Never again!’ in the last century. In fact, we find ourselves well into the twenty-first century stumbling and losing ground. Take, for example, the innocent child Luca, who is facing deportation because of disability-discrimination laws dating back to 1901 in Australia; or the talented actress Liz, about whom the BBC produced ‘Better Off Dead?’, a documentary around fears that governments like ours will legislate in such wise that the ill, disabled and elderly are burdens to themselves and others, and, consequently, better off dead.
Have we learned anything since the T4 Programme? It is difficult to answer affirmatively. We too often glorify health, albeit physical and mental health rather narrowly defined, as goodness itself. We too often venerate the agile and dexterous as if agility and dexterity were virtues. We too often lionise youth to the extent that those whose youth is now spent in the service of their families, friends and countrymen are devalued.
On the one hand, we must constantly recall that the ill, disabled and elderly are very close to God and especially to Jesus who suffered physically and mentally for others. Jesus is the suffering servant. He is fully human because he aches, not despite his pain. As St Matthew tells us, ‘This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took on our infirmities and carried our diseases”’ (8.17; cf. Isa. 53.1–12). Jesus’ stripes of which St Peter speaks— ‘By his stripes [we] are healed’—include not only the marks of his Passion, but also the humanity of the illness, disability and mortality Jesus bore in order to save us in his Incarnation.
On the other hand, we must remember that the ill, disabled and elderly are ourselves, not others. Though perhaps healthy now, we will one day be ill, maybe terminally ill; though perhaps lithe at the moment, our feet will fail; though perhaps ‘young’ now, we are mortal and therefore old age and death are inevitable. Who shall shout ‘Never again!’ on our behalf if we do not do so ourselves?
Our human dignity is inherent, and our human rights are inalienable. Their affirmation is the foundation of social justice and peace in this world. However, human dignity and rights are not established by the largesse of government but freely given by God alone. We have a duty to defend that dignity and those rights for those who may be unable to do so themselves because they lack resources. Part-and-parcel of that duty is to pursue the common good in the circumstances in which Providence has placed us. When the powers-that-be, no matter how benevolent they may seem, menace the ill, the disabled and the elderly, it behoves us to stand up and shout in their defence: ‘No, never again!’
The Reverend Canon Professor Michael Hull has been an Assistant Priest at St Vincent’s since 2015. He is also the Principal of the Scottish Episcopal Institute.
