On October 22nd, 2025, Jackie Ferrara died at the age of 95. Ferrara was a distinguished sculptor whose work is featured in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Despite being in good health, Jackie Ferrara chose to end her own life through medical assistance, travelling to Switzerland to do so.
The reason that the 95-year-old gave for taking this step was a desire not to dependant on others. “I don’t want a housekeeper,” she told the New York Times. “I never wanted anybody. I was married three times. That’s enough.”
For many the fear of being a burden on others in old age or illness is a very real one. Sadly this has led people to choose to end their life rather than be dependent on other people for their care.
In Oregon, assisted suicide has been legal since the ‘Death and Dignity Act’ was passed in 1998. Since that time, almost 50% of those who chose to end their lives in this way gave their reason as not wanting to be a burden on friends, family or caregivers.
The reality of old age and dependance
It is not too difficult to see where this fear of being a burden comes from. Long term illness and old age reduces our abilities and can make us dependant on others for even the most basic of daily tasks. It is also something that the Bible is very honest about.
In 2 Samuel chapter 19, King David returns to Jerusalem after fleeing from his son Absalom. A wealthy but elderly man called Barzillai, who had helped David in his exile, came to support the king. In turn, David invites Barzillai to come and live in Jerusalem where David would provide for him. Barzillai, however, answers:
“How many more years will I live, that I should go up to Jerusalem with the king? I am now eighty years old. Can I tell the difference between what is enjoyable and what is not? Can your servant taste what he eats and drinks? Can I still hear the voices of male and female singers? Why should your servant be an added burden to my lord the king?
Barzillai is brutally honest about the difficulties of old age. He doesn’t hear or taste as well as he used to. He doesn’t enjoy the things he once did. He is worried he will be more of a hinderance than a help to the king. He doesn’t want to be a burden.
The book of Ecclesiastes is also honest about the struggles of living in a world broken by sin. In chapter 12, the author skewers the difficulties of old age with biting satire. It talks about old age as a time:
when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim; when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when people rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; when people are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets
Old age can be a time of reduced capacity and increased anxiety. The Bible is honest about that, and we should be too. To think further about a Biblical perspective on aging, read CARE's Biblical Deepdive on Old Age.
As we grow older we may need others to do things for us. We might need help with cooking, cleaning and shopping. We may need carers to do things for us that are intimate and embarrassing, such as washing, dressing and personal hygiene.
Even if we get to our nineties in good health, as Jackie Ferrara did, we may still feel we are a burden on others for a wide range of reasons. Are we right in fearing being a burden, and is being a burden as bad as it may seem?
You are not a ‘burden’
What does it mean to be a ‘burden’? The word means a heavy load, and by implication something difficult or unpleasant. It is something that is only ever used in an negative sense in everyday language. A burden is something that we resent, something that we would prefer to be absent, and something we would be better off without.
To call someone – or ourselves – a burden, therefore, is a fundamentally negative thing. Nick Spencer, from the Christian think-tank Theos writes, “‘Burden’ is a dangerous word, one that morally colours just as much as it describes… No–one says, “she’s just such a burden to us” and means something positive or enviable from it. In this way, introducing the word “burden” into our conversation… does the thinking for us.”
If I talk about ‘being a burden,’ then I am accepting the idea that I am a burden. As Nick Spencer says, this language does our thinking for us. It means I think about myself in a negative fashion. I am saying that I am a cause of pain and difficulty for others, that I am a heavy load to be carried, and that others would be better off without me.
This could not be further from the truth. While the Bible is honest about the pains and difficult of aging and illness, it is also equally clear about the honour and value of every human life.
Consider the words of David in Psalm 8:
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour.
None of what David affirms here is dependant on the health or age of a person. Every human being is the work of God’s hand. God is mindful of every single person, and cares for them, no matter their condition. Each and every individual is crowned with glory and honour in God’s sight.
We need to be very careful when we talk about ‘being a burden.’ Using that word can inadvertently communicate something different to the Bible’s truth about humanity. A human being has worth and value, even if they are dependent on others for their basic needs. Old age or illness does not remove the fact that they are made the image of God.
We carry each other’s burdens
We need to avoid calling ourself, or someone else ‘a burden.’ Nevertheless, as human being we do have burdens to carry, especially in old age or illness. The Bible speaks a different message to the world around us when it comes to bearing burdens.
A key verse is found in Galatians chapter six:
Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.
As he writes to the Galatians, Paul says that the law can be fulfilled by keeping the commandment “love your neighbour as yourself” (Galatians 5:14). He then goes on to say that fulfilling this commandment – which he calls ‘the law of Christ’ – is done by carry each other’s burdens.
Western individualism promotes the idea that independence is of prime importance. Other backgrounds and cultures can often think about things quite differently. As Chine McDonald, director of the Theos think-tank explains:
In Igbo tradition, just as in many African communities, there is a strong sense of existing not as an individual, but knitted into a family… The idea that someone who is facing death might not want to be a burden… is anathema to West African tradition. You can’t be a burden because you are not a separate entity. You’re part of a whole.
The idea of ‘being a burden’ attacks the need to be dependent on others and losing our own independence. But the Bible promotes neither dependence nor independence, but interdependence. We are designed by God to live in community with one another, carrying each other’s burdens.
As the theologian John Stott puts it in his final book, The Radical Disciple:
I sometimes hear old people, including Christian people who should know better, say, ‘I don’t want to be a burden to anyone else. I’m happy to carry on living as long as I can look after myself, but as soon as I become a burden I would rather die.’ But this is wrong. We are all designed to be a burden to others. You are designed to be a burden to me and I am designed to be a burden to you. And the life of the family, including the life of the local church family, should be one of ‘mutual burdensomeness.’
God has appointed us to live in interdependence with one another. I must carry your burdens, and you must carry mine.
Of course, this happens at different times and seasons of life. Nobody criticises a baby for being dependent on their parents for food, clothing and care. A child would not be viewed as a burden because there are things that they are not capable of doing. Equally as we approach the end of life, there will be things that we are unable to do for ourselves and need others to help with. This is a normal, and natural, part of life.
There will be seasons of life when we are able to help others, and seasons where we need help ourselves. We should not see one as ‘good’ and the other as ‘bad’ but both part of the interdependence that God has designed for us.
The church does a brilliant job of looking after those in need in lots of different ways, but this is not a call to outsource the role of carrying burdens to those employed by the church. As Paul tells Timothy:
If any woman who is a believer has widows in her care, she should continue to help them and not let the church be burdened with them, so that the church can help those widows who are really in need.
There will be a role for the church, and the state, to care for those with nobody else to look after them. But where we have others we are close to, we are called as part of Christ’s family to care for them and look after them.
Interdependence, or ‘mutual burdensomeness’ to use Stott’s term, is what Jesus calls us to cultivate. It is the way in which we love our neighbour as ourselves. This will involve us being willing to be vulnerable and looked after. We will have to give our burdens over to someone else to carry, to ‘be a burden’. To do otherwise would deny those we love the opportunity to love us back by caring for us and looking after us. We need not fear being a burden, but rather we can see being a burden as a joyful way of fulfilling the law of Christ.