Imagine that a young woman with a sad childhood — a broken home, poverty, time in the foster system — ends up with an even sadder adulthood: she is raped by an ex-boyfriend and then later gang-raped at a nightclub. This causes her understandable trauma.

Now imagine that a young man moves in next door to her who reminds her very much of the men who raped her. Every time she sees him, every time she hears him outside or through the walls, every time she thinks about how close he is, she relives her trauma. After this has gone on for months, maybe even years, she finally decides she can’t take it any longer: She applies to the authorities in her city and because of her pain and suffering, they agree to help her end it: they send a doctor to administer lethal drugs and kill her neighbor.

Unbelievable? One would hope so. The taking of innocent human life is not something God allows or approves of. He’s quite clear about that in Scripture, even devoting one of the Ten Commandments to it: “You shall not murder.” The decision as to when anyone’s life is supposed to end is his alone: “I put to death and I make alive” (Deuteronomy 32:39). He does delegate this authority to the state in the case of the guilty — Genesis 9:6; Romans 13:4 — but that’s not what’s described above, which is killing a person just to end someone’s suffering.

Yet that imagined situation is really not that different from what happened recently in the tragic case of Noelia Castillo Ramos. She was a young woman in Spain who had suffered these sorts of traumas — and more — and got permission from the government to end the life of the person who was causing her pain and suffering. Only it was Noelia she killed. She died last Thursday (March 28, 2026) from a lethal infusion of drugs.

The fact that it was her own life doesn’t change the moral arithmetic in any way. Her life wasn’t hers to take; no one’s life is one’s own to take. 

Suicide, even if it’s approved by the state, even if the culture calls it compassionate, even if it’s managed by medical doctors, even if the individual seems to have really good reasons for wanting to be dead, is nothing other than self-murder. There’s no exception to God’s commandment that says, “Don’t murder — unless you’re really sad and hopeless and don’t want to live anymore.”

In fact, Scripture tells us that it is precisely the weak, hurting, hopeless, and vulnerable that we as Christians are to defend, lift up, speak for, and support. Saying, “Well, I guess if they really want to die that’s OK” is the precise and heartless opposite of that.

“Medical Assistance in Dying” (MAiD) is the name given to this kind of suicide by euthanasia to make it sound like health care instead of what it really is: the immoral, unrighteous, ungodly, and actually uncompassionate killing of a human being that God values and has not given anyone the right to kill. The fact that it has been made legal in far too many nations and states and is popularly supported in even more only shows how far a society has fallen; it doesn’t even come close to changing wrong to right.

Noelia was a human being. She had a soul. She mattered so much to God that Jesus died for her — and should have mattered to other people enough that they would not have helped her die. It wasn’t yet her time; God hadn’t decided that yet, and sinful and unqualified human beings arrogated that power to themselves. This should disturb us. Deeply.

But even more disturbing is the spiritual reality that this moral and societal travesty reveals. The greatest tragedy of her situation is that she did not have hope in Christ to hold onto and sustain her through her suffering. And that should move us to repentance and prayer — and possibly tears.

None of this is to suggest that Noelia’s suffering was no big deal. There’s no question that she

had endured things no one should have to endure. No one’s saying her life was pleasant; but everyone should have been saying that her life was important. 

Or at the very least Christians, who know better, should be saying that. And praying, speaking, working, and voting to protect life and defend the voiceless and vulnerable, wherever they are found and in whatever situation they are in.

God help us.