Our "imaginary friend in the sky" will not go away. Assisted suicide raises the question: sanctity of life versus quality of life. The imaginary friend is the one person who, when he walked the earth, protected the weak, imparted significance to the most insignificant, confronted the evil of corrupt power and offered hope to the hopeless.We live with the illusion that death is dignified, but when faced with the ugliness of it we either rage against it or act without scruple towards those facing it.What an indictment against our society that life is not valued as a precious gift. Our friend showed compassion towards the suffering, but he never extinguished the flickering flame of life.Life is cheap in South Africa. Consider the carnage on our roads, and we don't care. Consider the ugliness of racism as Adolf Hitler is praised as a wonderful example of leadership and we excuse this ugliness.The example of Jesus Christ's love, compassion and kindness towards all human beings is now relegated to being an imaginary friend in the sky. The failure of his followers to live up to his demands is not an indictment of him, but of them.If our country took his sayings to heart, we would honour each other. We would carry the cries of the suffering and ease the pain through companionship.We would seek to help the poor; actual delivery would transform communities.To fulfil these demands will require less corruption and self-centredness in our government, economy, education and families...