The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses personal autonomy and the demand for death, the death of the Dignitas founder, life and death before Gov. Hochul, and personal autonomy and the death of marriage.Part I (00:14 – 12:56)Should You Be Able to Ask a Doctor to Help You Die? by The New York Times (Stephanie Nolen)Part II (12:56 – 17:33)Dignitas founder ends his own life through assisted death by The Guardian (Hannah Devlin)Part III (17:33 – 18:56)To Sign or Not to Sign, That Is the Question by The New York Times (William McGurn)Part IV (18:56 – 25:48)The Case for Ending a Long, Mostly Good Marriage by The New York Times (Cathi Hanauer)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Wednesday, December 10, 2025. I'm Albert Mueller, 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 claim. 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 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, et cetera. 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 not a number of, So 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 is, assisted suicide or so-called medical aid and 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.

Quote, 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. Julieta 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, quote, 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 bioethesis 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 is still important. And that M-A-I-D 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 of 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, you know, 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 what 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, well, 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, and 16. And so pretty soon, you know, 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 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 set 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, you know, 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 going to 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 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, 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 Manelli, who founded the group in 1998, died just days ago, as I said, just days before his ninth third 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. End quote. 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 committed. 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. But, and by the way, self-determination is over against something else determining you. And of course, the big issue there in Christian theology is the relationship between God's sovereign will and our

authentic but limited human wills. And what is the relationship there? The point is, however, that this is a secular context. And so there is no divine sovereignty. There is no God. There is no divine will. There is nothing but human will and human agency. There's nothing but human autonomy and self-determination. And guess where that ends up? Once again, it ends up with death. The founder of Dignitas is dead, but the group in announcing his death went on to say that it would, quote, continue to manage and develop the association in the spirit of its founder as a professional and combative international organization for self-determination and freedom of choice in life and at the end of life end quote now i read to you from their statement they used the word combative in their

own statement their group exists to be a combatant in the fight for death for self-determination in death and i want to go back to the fact that when i was a very young person and some of this was being discussed. People with enormous foresight like the theologian and apologist Francis Schaefer were looking at this and saying, this is coming. This is inevitable given the worldview slide into the pure secularism. And yet it wasn't legal anywhere but Switzerland at the time. And in Switzerland, it was considered an arcane leftover from a very liberal era in the early 20th century. It was considered itself kind of an exotic case. But now, It is all throughout Europe, not in every jurisdiction, but it's all over the map in Europe.

And in North America, like I say, Canada has one of the most extreme laws, and it's about to become even more extreme given court decisions there. And you look at also South America, as I said, in Asia places in which there would have an enormous resistance to this. And one of the things to think about the way in Asian culture is that the aged had been so honored. So old age was something that was deeply honored. But now, you know, physician-assisted suicide, this self-determination and autonomy means, you can just will yourself out of existence. And that's exactly what increasing numbers of people are doing. All right, we'll be tracking all of this.

I wanted to talk about it today because, you know, when we look at so many things, we have to say, here's the worldview issue underneath it. When we look at this, it's like they just announced to us, hey, here's the worldview issue. We're going to put it right in print, right in the lead of the art. article. This is the latest front in absolute self-determination and personal autonomy. Yeah, well, it won't be the last except for the individuals who exercise it in terms of their earthly life. You can imagine even more horrible things yet to come. One final aspect related to this, the governor of New York, Kathy Hockel, is going to have to decide whether or not she will sign

an unexpectedly expansive assisted suicide bill that the legislature there has. has forwarded to her. And I mentioned former President Joe Biden, you know, claiming to be, you know, a very faithful Roman Catholic, but defying the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church in terms of his public policy on issues like abortion. That's the issue now with Kathy Hokel. She's going to have to decide to sign this bill or not to sign this bill. And the chasm, the worldview chasm, literally the chasm that represents life and death, is coming down to whether or not she signs this bill. Just think about that when you. you think about personal responsibility. Well, all right, let's turn to a different issue,

and yet I think you'll notice it's not all that different. In this case, it was a piece that ran in Sunday's edition of the New York Times. It's by a woman who with her husband had started the modern love column in the New York Times. We turned to that column several times over the years because it's run some really interesting arguments. And I guess this one comes full circle. The headline on Sunday was this, the case for ending a long, mostly good marriage. Okay, so I think this is important, not just because of the article, but because of the data coming to us. The data coming to us is telling us that there is an unusual surge right now in divorce among couples in their 60s. This has not been something that we've seen

so much of in the past, especially when you get to say retirement and other things that the divorce rate has not been really high at that stage, I think, for all kinds of understandable reasons. Now, with personal autonomy being the idolatrous thing that it has become, at least some people in some marriages are deciding, you know, that was really pretty good while it lasted. I just don't need this anymore. In order to be me before I die, I need to find out what it's like to be me without husband or wife. And that's exactly what's going on here. Kathy Hanauer, writing the piece begins like this, quote, when I married 33 years ago, I did not want to promise to love my husband until death do us part. I did want to try.

She says, Dan was my soulmate and sweetheart, and I felt lucky and excited to start a life and family with him. But death we hoped was light years away. She said there were 29, quote, and I rebelled against vowing my entire life to a monogamous cohabiting partnership. I'd always needed private space to fully unfold. I'd also enjoy dating and sleeping odd hours. I'm an obsessive thinker and writer, love or not, I worried marriage might suffocate me. end quote. Okay. So she mentioned this to the man she was going to marry and he said, well, leaving that language out is going to draw some attention like you don't plan for this to last. He said, quote, people won't come to our wedding to hear, I'll give it my best shot. But. However, she says, what she wanted to say at her wedding is exactly what she believes. And later, and at this point, 33 later, she wanted out. She said, quote, Now, I'm proud of our long, loving marriage, nurturing children, homes, friendships, pets,

collaboratively writing and editing books and articles. We laughed and learned and lived. First, struggling financially, but together as artists, later finding our footing. We were a connected, compatible team for a charmed, exciting, mostly happy chunk of our lives. And then later, she says, that they had drifted apart, quote, each feeling less loved and less loving, we had always laughed and now we didn't, at least not enough. Quote, no one was cheating, swearing, slinging plates. We could have tried to put band-aids on our issues.

Instead, we made an increasingly common choice. We hugged, apologized for our shortcomings, and freed each other. She says, to me, it was and still is less of failure than the end of a long, productive, good marriage. So the first thing we need to say here is that this is not marriage as the institution of creation order that the creator gave us. That was, indeed, till death did we part. And not only that, it's a permanent union of intergenerational consequence. And so the biblical worldview tells us that divorce is a disruption in this creation order institution for human good, for human holiness, and for God's glory, and that it has

multigenerational consequences. But you see how that's being redefined here. Hey, it was a good marriage. It lasted a long time. But it just doesn't fit us now. We raised our kids, and by the way, the kids didn't appreciate this. I think you can understand that. But you know what?

You know, when they needed us as parents, we were there as parents. But, you know, they're grown now. We're free to be ourselves. And we can be ourselves really only without the other. She says that they married when they were 29. These days, by the way, that's fairly young. But it wasn't normally that way. It was more likely in the very early 20s.

But the point is, here's the personal autonomy again. It's personal autonomy when it comes to ending a marriage because these two people who have been married together and entered into marital vows, although we now know she had big issues even in the beginning. The point is they've redefined marriage as a passage of life, a stage of life, a project in life. And, you know, it was pretty good while it lasted, but now it's over. And by the way, I'm not going to go into details. Let's just say it's over. Except it's not over because they're still legally married because they still want the first. financial benefits of being married. But let's just say when it comes to the sexual part,

she puts right out here in print that she's very glad to be so recently liberated. And she details a bit of what that means. I will not share the details here. Let's just say, this is the dissolution of marriage. It's the redefinition of marriage, but it's the redefinition of marriage in such a way that it no longer really is the thing that we used to refer to as marriage. And so, again, Christians have to look at this and say, You know, this is not a minor change. This is a fundamental change. Whatever this is, it is an arrangement that is not the same thing as the covenant of marriage.

As a matter of fact, this is a temporary arrangement for so long as it was good. And we know that the divorce revolution brought a lot of this. And of course, the arrival of no-fault divorce basically legislated this, in which any partner wanted to get out of marriage could do so unilaterally. But marriage has been destabilized. I want to point out something else. And this is something else that shows up in the recognition of how personal autonomy is now turned into an absolute idolatry. You could not have legalized same-sex marriage until you had already destabilized and redefined marriage.

And so it was redefined by heterosexuals before it was redefined to include homosexual couples as well. And, you know, we as Christians need to observe these connections. We need to connect things. The society wants to keep disconnect. But I want to end on this. That article in the New York Times on the spread of physician-assisted suicide, it actually does make the connections. Not only does it say the personal autonomy stuff out loud, it also says this, and I quote, In many countries, decriminalization of assisted dying has followed the expansion of rights for personal choice in other areas,

such as the removal of restrictions on same-sex marriage, abortion, and sometimes drug use. end quote. As I say, most of the time what we note is that they don't say it out loud. I guess it tells you we turned another corner when repeatedly in one article, they say it right out loud. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsbtskleeu. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.