A recent column with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation shared the story of John Scully, who suffers from PTSD from years as a war correspondent. Scully is afraid that restrictive state regulations won’t allow him “to get the help he needs,” which, for Scully, is the option to die.  

From his comments, you’d think he was being denied some miracle drug. No, he is being denied access to Canada’s ever-expanding “Medical Assistance in Dying.” As he put it, Scully longs for someone “[t]o tell me that here’s hope around the corner for me—I’ve looked around the corner, and there’s nothing there. There is no hope.” Somehow, in his worldview shaped by his nation’s embrace of death, he has completely inverted the moral status of life and death, and redefined hope. 

He is a victim twice over, first of his mental suffering and then of his culture’s bad ideas. Pray for him … that his heart and mind will be turned back to life, and its Author.