Euthanasia and 'quality of life' questions

Yesterday, I had a good conversation with a friend about euthanasia and 'quality of life' arguments. Praise the Lord that my friend was challenged in his thinking to base all our decisions and conclusions on Scripture, not merely what we may feel is right or pragmatics.

One thought that he had was that witholding medicine or technology from an elderly person who had a high percentage of dying within days would be acceptable, but witholding similar drugs/technology from a younger person in good health was not acceptable. The problem was that he had not biblical basis for making that distinction.

In my view, which I try as much as possible to base on Bible principles, precepts and examples is that we should try to save life and extend life as much as possible because God is the One who gives and takes away life. In other words, we ought to do all that we can to save and extend someone's life whether they are 50 or 99 years old. One big reason is because we don't KNOW whether someone will die in a few days. God is sovereign and able to work miracles of healing. We ought to be basing our decisions on biblical principles and not pragmatic percentages. Someone may have a 99% likelihood of dying within a week whether we treat them or not, but that should not mean that we withold life saving/extending drugs/technology because we don't KNOW for sure that they will die 'anyway', only God knows.

An analogy that came to my mind later is that of abortion. Christians abhor killing babies because God abhors it. Whether the baby is in the first trimester or last trimester makes no difference, because life starts at the point of conception. Once life is there, we ought not to take it away. In the same way, withholding drugs/technology from someone whether they are 40 or 99 years old is wrong because life is still there. We may think that the 99 year old only has weeks to live based on historical data and percentages of his condition, but we cannot know that, only God does. Therefore we should always seek to save and extend life as much as is possible.

Pray for me and my friend, that we would have continued biblical discussions on this topic as well as others.

Thanks.