Is there a Christian response to dying in dignity or assisted suicide? There is a raging debate in the province of Quebec on the question "Does someone have the right to kill another because the first one is suffering?" There are more and more cases in the news that look like the following that arrived just yesterday.

Here is a video of an example : http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Canada/Montreal/1305551527/ID=2213970096

Does the Bible tackle the issue? From an evangelical perspective how do I answer this question/issue?

Edit :
I'm looking to a way to answer a fellow Christian with little knowledge of the Bible, and a non-Christian as well. The question is not simply assisted suicide, but it's implied therapeutic relentlessness as well.
From a general Christian perspective, I believe that assisted suicide is wrong.  I have multiple reasons for this.  The obvious, but too obvious, answer is that God commands that we shall not murder.  A common objection to this argument is that it's not murder if the person is suffering and wishes to die.  Perhaps so, so allow me to argue a separate point. 

Ultimately, the main reason I believe that assisted suicide is wrong, falls more on the person committing the suicide, assisted or unassisted, than it does the person who aids in the suicide. 

1 Corinthians 6:19-20


  Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who
  is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you
  were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.


Ultimately, I believe this is probably the strongest evidence against the argument.  For those who choose to commit suicide, they are implicitly stating that they are their own.  In the cultures that are discussing these situations, there is already an existing undercurrent that essentially claims that our bodies are our own.  You can see this argument when it comes to all sorts of things dealing with human life, most noticeably abortion and assisted suicide.  The argument can almost always be boiled down to: "It's my body, therefore I am allowed to do anything to it that I want to do."  

If the scripture holds true here, which I believe it does, then our own comfort and enjoyment of life comes second to what it is that God would have done in our lives.  Assisted suicide denies loved ones the opportunity to learn patience and love towards someone who cannot repay.  It runs on the assumption that comfort, happiness, and productivity are the most important things in life, and once those things are gone, there is nothing more to live for.  It robs God of the opportunity to do great things, and possibly recuperate the person.  

Sadly, I cannot think of any good way to convince a non-Christian of the moral bankruptcy of assisted suicide.  Their perspective is typically to say that their body is their own.  This has been the same argument used for years in regards to abortion, where the child is viewed as an unpleasant and inconvenient intrusion on the mother's well-being and happiness, and therefore must be eliminated.  

It's really the same argument all over again, only this time, instead of killing another, we kill ourselves. 

Regarding Therapeutic Relentlessness

I've been asked (at the end of the very long comments at the bottom) to update my answer to reflect my viewpoint on therapeutic relentlessness.  Obviously, this is a very sensitive subject, and I'm honestly less clear on what scripture has to say about "how much treatment is too much treatment" when it comes to sustaining a life.  There are plenty of other limitations in place, such as financial limitations, availability of technology, etc, that make for hard decisions in this area.  How do we balance the physical restrictions, with our moral obligation in this area?

To be honest, I can't think of any place where the Bible speaks directly to the issue of therapeutic relentlessness, mostly because the technology to do such things didn't exist at the time of Christ.  But I think it's important to remember that the Bible ultimately isn't designed as a "rule book" that we're to follow, but it's ultimate intent is that we become dependent upon God for our daily lives.  It gives us a framework on some clear issues, but sometimes, we'll be called upon to pray and ask God what he would have us do.  If the Bible clearly explained every moral dilemma we're bound to face, then there would be no need for wisdom, and quite frankly, it wouldn't drive us into relationship with God.  We'd be happy following rules, and that would be all we would do.  

In the end, I think it comes down to stewardship, which is implicit in the verse above. We have been given our bodies not for our own purposes, but so that we might steward them properly. To steward something, it's necessary to have the recognition both that the object of our stewardship is not our own, and that we will answer to one greater than ourselves in regards to how we performed our stewardship duties.  

A good example of this is in 2 Chronicles 16:12, Asa did not consult God, but rather, consulted the physicians.  I don't believe here that the problem was that he consulted the physicians, but rather that he never consulted God.  He was being a bad steward in not asking God what God would have for his foot malady.  God may have said, "go to the physicians, and they'll heal you", but he might have said to do something else.  We'll never know.  Asa died in the next verse.  

As Christians, we are called to be dependent on God for all things, which means, that ultimately, what we do here isn't always a matter of black and white.  God may give us difficult situations for no other reason but that we might become more dependent on him.  It's a matter of godly submission.  When faced with difficulties like this, which I honestly hope I'm never faced with, our proper reaction should never be to lean in our own understanding, but rather to trust in the Lord. 

Personal Viewpoint

I know it sounds like a cop-out answer, but I really don't think there's a hard and fast rule here.  From my personal perspective, something seems strange to me about artificially keeping a body of an unconscious person alive for years, when to remove the life support, the body would fail.  I see that as somehow different than actively killing the person, but again, that's my opinion on that, and I know some Christians who would probably disagree.  Another person, when faced with the same difficulty, may pray and ask God what God would like them to do, and he may lead them to sustain the body for a while.  They may view that as good stewardship of what God has given them.  Again, no hard and fast answer on that one, I'm afraid.